The determinants of the entrepreneurial triggering: a study of the graduated students from the National School of Engineering of Sfax

Abstract

In many countries such as Tunisia business creation by young graduates is of major importance since it is supposed to stimulate growth and employment. This investigation explores three types of determinants of the entrepreneurial triggering: the entrepreneurial intention of the individuals, the positive displacements occurred in their lives and the negative displacements. We addressed a questionnaire to 665 young engineers from the Tunisian National School of Engineering of Sfax 3 years after they got their diploma in the academic year of 2012/2013. Eight-four respondents completed the questionnaire; 43% of them were engaged in an entrepreneurial process. Following the conceptual approach of Shapero and Sokol (in: Kent, Sexton, Vesper (eds), Encyclopedia of entrepreneurship, Prentice-Hall, INC, Englewood Cliffs, 1982) and DeGeorge and Fayolle (J Small Bus Enterp Dev 18(2):251–277, 2011), we mix the theory of planned behaviour and a situated action perspective to develop a structural model that we estimated with a partial least squares path model. The results indicate that there is a close-knit tie between intention and the entrepreneurial triggering which is coherent with a planned process of entrepreneurial decision-making. However, positive displacements related to economic opportunities have a positive and significant direct effect on triggering that is not mediated by the intention. According to the situated action perspective, it reveals that the process of entrepreneurial triggering is not fully determined by a traditional process of decision-making but also the direct result of contextual factors. Concerning negative displacements, their direct impact on the triggering is not significant but the sum of their direct plus indirect effects is positive and significant.