Practice Enterprises – Key Enablers for the Development of Students’ Entrepreneurial Skills: An FSQCA Approach

Abstract

Although active learning in practice enterprises is a well-known and widely used instructional method for entrepreneurial skills development, it remains a challenging issue to analyse how students immersed in practice enterprise learning journey developed their hard and soft skills and become interested in applying to startup funding programmes. In this study, a project-based storytelling approach is proposed to address two research propositions. Based on semi-structured interviews, the storytelling approach has been applied to a sample of 20 students involved in three practice enterprises from Faculty of Economics and Business Administration”, Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati. All of them had previous experience in dealing with practice enterprises challenges, during their studies at the Economic College “Virgil Madgearu” of Galati. FsQCA methodology was employed to assess the causal conditions that led to students’ success in entrepreneurial initiatives, built on their experiences with Simpract project (Transition from school to active life through internships and practice enterprises). The results show that the project-based active learning within practice enterprises enhanced the students’ hard and soft entrepreneurial skills