The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention (EI) of university students. In order to do so, EI, individual entrepreneurial orientation, self-efficacy, perceived educational support, perceived relational support, perceived structural support, knowledge sharing, and gender were used within the proposed model, and the constructed hypotheses were evaluated using SEM. The findings of a survey of 268 students show that self-efficacy is the strongest influencer of students’ EI. The findings also show the mediating influence of self-efficacy on the environmental components. Additionally, male students are more likely than female students to have EI.
Our paper investigates the microfoundations of sustainable entrepreneurship and aims to shed light on trade-offs made in decisions about social, ecological and economic sustainability. Balancing the three dimensions of sustainability (social, ecological and economic) inherently requires choices in which one dimension or another has less optimal outcomes. There is not much known about the rationale that sustainable entrepreneurs use for making such trade-offs. Thus, we ask how does entrepreneurial orientation affect decisions and trade-offs on sustainability impact? Our study is an exploratory, qualitative study of 24 sustainable entrepreneurs. We collected data about entrepreneurial orientation and sustainability trade-offs and held in-depth interviews with a subsample of six firms. We conducted a cluster analysis based on four entrepreneurial orientations (innovativeness, proactiveness, riskiness and futurity) and three sustainability trade-off dimensions (environmental, social and economic). From the findings, we derive a typology of three types of sustainable entrepreneurs: green-conflicted, humanitarian-oriented and holistically-oriented. We uncover salient characteristics and aspects of entrepreneurial orientation in relation to trade-off decisions. We find that the entrepreneurs accept slower economic growth or lower performance in order to maintain the integrity of their social and ecological principles and values.
The learning innovation we report in this article is an international rapid-prototyping event (48 hours) in which teams of international BSc and MSc students from two universities (Western Europe and South-East Africa, respectively) jointly designed and developed a prototype for a local small-business owner in a developing economy. The learning innovation has its origin in the simple observation that the majority of the current theories, cases, and learning activities that characterize entrepreneurship education have their origin in western-oriented epistemologies and ontologies. The goal of this entrepreneurial learning activity was to develop students’ entrepreneurial competencies through interaction and cross-boundary entrepreneurial problem-solving between university students from western and non-western origin. The results underpin that it is very worthwhile for higher education teachers—who look for new, cost-effective “wide” entrepreneurship education programs—to adopt such events. The results show that the program not only contributes to short-term impact (e.g., joy of learning and collaborating, confidence in the own expertise, and seeing where to contribute) but also enables longer term impact (e.g., moving from intention to an actual start-up). Moreover, the activity produces actual solutions that, in this case the cheese maker can implement, can help the business to grow and survive.
This research is dedicated to the study of marketing opportunities and consumer behavior, as well as the impact of technology on marketing relationships (eg, interorganizational, company-consumer). It is also in its interest to explore the form and nature of the entrepreneurial phenomenon beyond the contexts in which it can occur. A sub-area of specialization that has been deserving special interest is that of entrepreneurial skills. Another area of commitment is related to information systems and information technology with decision support in organizations.Partners: CAPES Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazil), Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil)
