Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Why people do not want to be entrepreneurs? a study of entrepreneurial intentions among university students
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Gaspar, Fernando C. |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | Entrepreneurship has become an important subject for academics and for politicians all over the western world. Particularly for countries in the euro zone, whose ability to use demand side politics has been severely shortened, the need to improve economic growth through the stimulation of the aggregate supply is one of the priorities of these days. It is a reasonable assumption that increasing entrepreneurship is an important objective. The thing is HOW. What can governments do to increase the creation of new companies? A large number of studies have been published on this subject, many of them trying to contribute for answers to this question, and most of them studying successful entrepreneurs. That means most studies look at people who, not only decided to create their own companies but also succeeded at that activity. Most studies don’t look at people who created their own companies but failed. Rare studies look at people who decided not to become entrepreneurs. Following studies about entrepreneurial intentions this communication takes the data from such a study and tries to identify differences between a) people who say they want to be entrepreneurs and b) people who clearly say they do not want to create their own organization. So this communication looks at people who flat out say, at an early age (university final year students), they don’t want to be entrepreneurs. It tries to identify what distinguishes these people from the ones who want to be entrepreneurs and it tries to answer the question: why? Why don’t they want to become entrepreneurs? Are they concerned they will not be successful? Do they believe they will not be able to assemble the necessary resources? Are they unable to identify entrepreneurial opportunities? Do they think society values the entrepreneur’s role? Conclusions are drawn, based on this sample, concerning what governments, universities and other interface structures can do to change these people’s ideas about entrepreneurship. 2 INTRODUCTION Entrepreneurship has become an important issue for economic authorities who are looking for new ways to increase economic growth, job creation and innovation (Allen and Weinberg, 1988, Reynolds and Maki, 1991, Reynolds, 1994, Reynolds, Storey and Westhead, 1994, Palich and Bagby, 1995 and Henderson, 2002) . Entrepreneurship is also increasingly important as a career choice, because the 21 st century labor market more and more faces professionals with the choice of pursuing a career in other people’s companies or creating their own. Other people choose creating their own company because they lack a job alternative, or fear losing their present one (Baumol, 1990 and Reynolds et al, 2002). For the first or the second reason, entrepreneurship is a must in nowadays press, bookshelves, politicians’ speeches and academia (Gaspar, 2006 and Gaspar, 2007). Everyone seems to agree that increasing entrepreneurship and increasing the creation of new firms is good for the economy and for the development of society, therefore, it is an important objective for economic and political decision makers (Allen and Weinberg, 1988, Reynolds, Storey and Westhead, 1994, Palich and Bagby, 1995, Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, Gartner, 2001, Reynolds et al., 2002 and Gaspar, 2007). The real question is HOW (Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovacao, 2001 and Gaspar, 2006). How to increase entrepreneurship? How can we convince people to take the risks and the pains of creating a new company? On the root of entrepreneurship and firm creation is people. The entrepreneur is a person, rational in some ways, emotional in others (Gartner, 1989). Why does he or she decide to create his or hers company is a question often studied in the literature (Gartner, 1989 and Lillo and Lajara, 2002). Why do everyone else decide not to do it, is a question much less studied. Taking the results of a study aimed at measuring university’s last year student’s, this work tries to identify what (if anything) distinguishes people who declare themselves interested in creating their own company in the future from people who flat say no. They do not want to be entrepreneurs. METHODOLOGY Final year students in a small Polytechnic Institute in Portugal (Instituto Politecnico de Santarem) were subjected to a study of their entrepreneurial intentions, replicating the many similar studies published in the literature. 3 The data was used in this study with a different objective and the sample was divided into two subsets, based on a clear question asking whether respondents were interested in creating their own company in the future. The two sub-samples were then compared. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Comparing the two sub-samples showed that people who declared they did not want to create their own companies in the future (they will be called NE – non entrepreneurs) where younger (Figure 1). More than five years younger. Figure 1 – Average Age The same comparison showed (Figure 2) that NE were mostly women (61%), while potential entrepreneurs were mostly men (63%). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://repositorio.ipsantarem.pt/bitstream/10400.15/187/1/FernandoGaspar_ISEOR2008.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
