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Students’ Attitudes and Intentions toward Entrepreneurship in India ISSN:0975-9271 Article · April 2014

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Students’ Attitudes and Intentions toward Entrepreneurship in India

ABSTRACT: The objective of the current paper is to identify the students’ attitudes and intentions toward entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship is considered as engine of economic growth. That plays a great role in the economic growth and development of the country, more so in a rapidly developing country like India. Entrepreneurship development today has assumed great significance as it is a key to economic development. Entrepreneurs are the seed of industrial development and its fruits are greater employment opportunities, increase in per capita income, higher standard of living and balanced regional development. The current paper attempts to review and analyze the empirical studies undertaken to find out the entrepreneurial intention among university students and find out the factors influencing their decision to venture in entrepreneurship.

KEYWORDS: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial intention, Students entrepreneurial intention, Venture creation. 1. Introduction For generating economic growth and moving towards the entrepreneurial society it is imperative, in the opinion of economic theorists, to have a development of entrepreneurship capital, which reflects a number of different legal, institutional and social factors and forces, and involves also a social acceptance of entrepreneurial behaviour, individuals who are willing to deal with the risk of creating new firms and favorable business environment

Hence,

entrepreneurial initiative of individuals must be regarded as an important factor of economic growth, whereas a major role in working up attitudes towards life, raising enterprising people is played by educational system, which should be developing and propagating entrepreneurial initiative among students and graduates. Opportunity identification is the very first step in entrepreneurship and this process is clearly an intentional process. Therefore, entrepreneurial intention merits scholarly research. And it has been empirically proved to be the best and unbiased predictor of entrepreneurial behavior. Understanding the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention allows teachers, consultants, advisors and policy makers to get a clearer picture of how

intentions are formed and how new venture founders’ beliefs, perceptions and motives impact the intent to start a business.

Entrepreneurial intent among students: Recently there has been a growing interest in undertaking and intensifying actions promoting and supporting the idea of entrepreneurship as an attractive alternative to wage employment among students. There are several reasons for this interest. Firstly well-educated entrepreneurs are expected to create ventures that grow faster than their counterparts. The importance of education to successful performance of new ventures is well recognized by management parishioners and researchers. secondly due to the process of restructuring in organisations following intensified competition in the market worldwide, previous advantages with wage employment in large ,established enterprises, such as job security or reward for loyalty have lost on their actuality, thus increasing the desirability of self-employment. The unemployment among graduates has also been increasing.

Ethen Duyglues in his study of 170 MBA students tried to investigate whether entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs have systematically different psychological characteristics, especially in terms of proactive behaviour or personality. He used the entrepreneurship model proposed by Kostova (1997). The model suggests that among other things, those certain entrepreneurial activities and these characteristics make them different from non-entrepreneurs. It was found that 67.9 percent of the students were found to be entrepreneurially inclined. The income of the family and profession of the family members was found to be a significant factor that influences the entrepreneurial orientation of students. A strong relationship between proactive behaviour and entrepreneurship orientation was found in the study. Evan, d (2005), investigated the role of entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial selfefficacy on an individual’s intention to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour. Their sample consisted of 414 students surveyed at the beginning of their first entrepreneurship class in MBA programs in Australia (46), China (39), India (204) and Thailand (125) between 2003 and 2004. They measured the entrepreneurial intentions of the students using a 7 point scale ranging from very unlikely (1) to very likely (7) over eight items measuring intentions to engage in a range of

entrepreneurial behaviour. Their result found that individuals who prefer more income, more independence and more ownership have high entrepreneurial intentions. The study found no relationship between risk propensity and entrepreneurial intention significant positive relationships were also found between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Douglas, E., (1999), in his study investigated the relationship between the intention to start one’s own business and individuals attitude towards income, independence, risk and work effort. Results of his study suggest that individuals having more positive attitude towards independence and risk are characterised by higher willingness to become an entrepreneur. Factors which Impact Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions A conceptual model of the entrepreneurial decision process

Internal factors / Personality • Willingness to Take risks • Need for Independence • Locus of control • Etc.

Other Factor

Attitude towards Self-employment External factors / Environment • Market • Financing • Society • University - Inspiration - Training - Networking - Etc.

Entrepreneurial Intention

Entrepreneurial Activity

Entrepreneurial Attitudes An attitude is “a complex mental state involving beliefs, feelings, values, and dispositions to act in certain ways” Attitudes tend to change across time and situations through an interactive process with the environment, and can offer a prediction about a person’s future actions (Carlson, 1985). The work of Robinson, Stimpson, Huefner, and Hunt (1991) was one of the first to use an attitudinal scale to predict entrepreneurial activity. They designed the Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation (EAO) scale to measure entrepreneurial attitudes based on the constructs of achievement, innovation, personal control and self-esteem. Achievement in business refers to concrete results associated with the start of a business; personal control of business outcomes concerns one’s perception of control or influence over his or her business; innovation in business relates to acting on business activities in novel ways; and perceived self-esteem in business relates to self-confidence with regard to one’s business affairs.

The theory of planned behavior argues that intention is an antecedent to behavior (Azjen, 1991), and prior studies have shown that intentions play a crucial role in understanding the entrepreneurial process (Shapero & Sokol 1982; Krueger, 1993; Krueger & Brazeal, 1994). Shapero and Sokol (1982) argue that attitudes are linked with entrepreneurial intentions, especially in perceived venture feasibility and desirability. Additional research found that positive entrepreneurial exposure can impact intentions (Krueger, 1993), though this may vary according to individual characteristics and situations (Krueger & Brazeal, 1994).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The analysis of the empirical studies carried out brings out some interesting and encouraging aspects about the entrepreneurial intention of students. It was found that majority of the students (67%) were interested in pursuing entrepreneurial careers. The educational background of the students also has an influence on their intention to venture into entrepreneurship. It was found that engineering student were more likely to venture into entrepreneurship than their management and natural science counterparts. One disturbing aspect that was revealed in the studies was that as the level of education increases the likelihood of venturing into entrepreneurship decreasing. The traditional gender influences also emerge as male students are

more likely start their business than female students. The age of the students also have an influence on their entrepreneurial intention as it was found that students in the age group 30-35 were more inclined towards entrepreneurship than the middle aged.

REFERENCES 1. Ethem, Duv (2008), Institutional profiles and Entrepreneurship Orientation: A case of Tarkish Graduate (2008) Students, MPRA Paper No. 7247, Izmir, Turkey. 2. Evan, D, (2005), Individual Intentions towards entrepreneurship Vs Entrepreneurship, working paper, University of Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia 3. Douglas, E., (1999) Entrepreneurship as a career choice. Attitudes entrepreneurial intentions and utility maximizations, Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts. 4.Bygrave, W.D. (1989) The entrepreneurial paradigm: a philosophical look at its research methodologies, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Fall, pp. 7-26. 5.Carlson, S. D. (1985). Consistency of attitude components: A new approach for an old problem. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46 (09B), 3261. 6. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior & Decision Processes, 50, 179-211. 7. Krueger, N. (1993). The impact of prior entrepreneurial exposure on perceptions of new venture feasibility and desirability. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 18 (1), 5-21. 8.Shapero, A. and Sokol, L. (1982). Social dimensions of entrepreneurship. In C. A. Kent, D. L. Sexton and K. H. Vesper (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship (pp. 72-90), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Author1:Dr.C.Gnanaprakasam HOD-Agni Scholl of Business Excellence, Morepatti, Vadamadurai, Dindigul - 624802. Author2: Arunkumar.V, Assistant Professor, Department of Management studies, Sudharsan Engineering College, Sathiyamangalam, Pudukkottai-6220501 E-Mail: [email protected] Ph:9787089988

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