![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
This study examines how modes of entrepreneurship education (active, such as business simulations, versus reflective, such as theory lectures) – alone and in interaction with the universities’ regional context – affect students’ self-employment intentions. Results from a cross-level analysis show that active modes are, irrespective of the regional context, positively related with intentions and attitudes towards entrepreneurship, whereas the effect of reflective modes is contingent on the regional context. The findings have important implications for the ongoing discussion on the teachability of entrepreneurship, the design of educational programmes and for future research.
Notes
1. It is important to note that entrepreneurship education also aims at preparing individuals for other careers than entrepreneurship. Examples include careers as venture capitalist, manager of entrepreneurship programmes or intrapreneur.
2. The degree of entrepreneurial activity is measured as regional start-ups per 10,000 inhabitants. See Section 2.2 for more details.
3. More specifically, the first part of the theoretical framework (Section 2.1) focuses on modes of entrepreneurship education irrespective of the context, whereas the second part (Section 2.2) gives careful attention to the role of regional context.
4. Another possibility is that entrepreneurial-minded students select themselves into universities offering particular educational programmes. We control for this possibility as described in Section 3.
5. Yet, the effect is, as we suspect, not restricted to course participants as they may converse with fellow students and thus contribute to the diffusion of entrepreneurial knowledge and inspiration within the department.
6. See Section 3.3 for more details on measurement issues.
7. We thank an anonymous reviewer for calling our attention to this possibility.
8. We do not consider first- and second-year students because they typically had, at the time of the survey, no access to entrepreneurship education at universities. These courses tended to be offered to students in the ‘Hauptstudium’ (third year and above) – the respondents of our survey.
9. The sample does not contain sufficient data of female students in computer science and electrical engineering. In Germany, these fields are typically male-dominated, with a male-to-female ratio of 7.89 and 17.73, respectively (Federal Statistical Office Citation2007). To avoid a gender bias, we excluded females from the analysis.
10. Our procedures to construct variables from this data are detailed in Section 3.3.
11. These sectors were selected as the respondents stated them most frequently as areas for potential self-employment.
12. This includes employees holding a degree from a university, college (Fachhochschule) or higher vocational school (Fachschule).
13. Furthermore, regressions unreported here confirmed the predictions of the TPB. As expected, attitude towards the behaviour (β = 0.21, p < 0.001), subjective norm (β = 0.25, p < 0.001), and perceived behavioural control (β = 0.18, p < 0.001) are all positively related to self-employment intentions. The validity of the theory was one critical assumption of our theoretical model.
14. See Section 5.2 for a more detailed discussion of the consequences of our findings.
15. While this study – in line with Drakopoulou Dodd and Hynes (Forthcoming) – has demonstrated that entrepreneurship education is contingent on the regional context there might be a feedback effect in the sense that entrepreneurship education might be beneficial for regional development. This point is made, for instance, in a study by Gordon, Hamilton, and Jack (Forthcoming). The authors find that participation in an entrepreneurship programme enabled small business owners to extend their network, thereby contributing to the growth and development of their ventures.