Students from humanities and human sciences are basically the same aren’t they? Cultural factors affecting entrepreneurship in Iran

Abstract

In a third-generation university, concepts of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, help link the university with industry and society. These concepts, however, have not been uniformly distributed across all university disciplines. This paper, reviews the characteristics of a third-generation university, focusing on the capabilities of the humanities faculties to address the challenges and barriers of entrepreneurship. Identification of these notions is important for the development of the humanities in academic entrepreneurship. This research was conducted among 80 Iranian humanities entrepreneurs, using the Hofstede Model of National Culture and Entrepreneurial Tendency and Action questionnaires as data collection tools. Entrepreneurial tendency among those in the human sciences disciplines was greater than those in the humanities. Short-term orientation was only influential in the humanities group. However, individualism–collectivism and short-term orientation were influential to entrepreneurial tendency in both disciplines. While the power distance (high) was influential to entrepreneurial tendency in the humanities. The findings of this study showed significant entrepreneurial tendency differences between students from the humanities and human sciences. The findings also show that entrepreneurial tendency in the humanities is mostly influenced by cultural factors. This research has provided invaluable knowledge of the entrepreneurial differences from a cultural perspective in the third-generation university.