Cultivating Entrepreneurs: Role of the University Environment, Locus of Control and Self-efficacy

Abstract Contributing to the economy has become a great challenge for most of the universities of today. Meeting this challenge universities started fostering entrepreneurship among its students. Past studies have focused on entrepreneurial education, however, this study is an attempt to examine the role of university support and environment, locus of control and self-efficacy towards students’ entrepreneurial intention. The study collected data from 245 business students from the University of the Punjab on a convenience basis and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses. The study noted a positive impact of university environment on students’ entrepreneurial intention. Further, locus of control and self-efficacy were found to mediate the association between the university environment and entrepreneurial intention. The data for this study was collected from a developing economy at the time of recession at one point in time. The study has implications for universities and students.

[1]  H. Levenson.  Activism and Powerful Others: Distinctions within the Concept of Internal-External Control , 1974 .

[2]  J. Rotter.  Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. , 1966, Psychological monographs.

[3]  Edmund R. Thompson,et al.  Individual Entrepreneurial Intent: Construct Clarification and Development of an Internationally Reliable Metric , 2009 .

[4]  Justin B. Craig,et al.  Entrepreneurship education: towards a discipline‐based framework , 2006 .

[5]  J. Moriano,et al.  A Cross-Cultural Approach to Understanding Entrepreneurial Intention , 2012 .

[6]  Rohit H. Trivedi.  Does university play significant role in shaping entrepreneurial intention? A cross-country comparative analysis , 2016 .

[7]  T. Islam,et al.  Learning organizational environment and extra-role behaviors: The mediating role of employee engagement , 2018 .

[8]  Jiun-Hao Wang,et al.  The contribution of self-efficacy to the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial intention , 2016 .

[9]  Carl A. Rodrigues.  The importance level of ten teaching/learning techniques as rated by university business students and instructors , 2004 .

[10]  Nikolaus Franke,et al.  The 'making' of an entrepreneur: testing a model of entrepreneurial intent among engineering students at MIT , 2003 .

[11]  Lamberto Zollo,et al.  Factors affecting universities’ ability to foster students’ entrepreneurial behaviour: An empirical investigation , 2017 .

[12]  D. Urbano,et al.  The development of an entrepreneurial university , 2012 .

[13]  Duygu Turker,et al.  Which factors affect entrepreneurial intention of university students , 2009 .

[14]  Truls Erikson,et al.  Entrepreneurial capital: the emerging venture's most important asset and competitive advantage , 2002 .

[15]  Yi-Wen Chen,et al.  Development and Cross–Cultural Application of a Specific Instrument to Measure Entrepreneurial Intentions , 2009 .

[16]  J. Lumpkin.  Establishing the Validity of an Abbreviated Locus of Control Scale: Is a Brief Levenson's Scale Any Better? , 1988 .

[17]  Vangelis Souitaris,et al.  Do entrepreneurship programmes raise entrepreneurial intention of science and engineering students? The effect of learning, inspiration and resources , 2007 .

[18]  M. Glas,et al.  The Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy Of Nascent Entrepreneurs: The Case Of Two Economies In Transition , 2002 .