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Students Attitudes and Intentions toward

Entrepreneurship in India ISSN:0975-9271
ARTICLE APRIL 2014

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1 AUTHOR:
Arunkumar Velusamy
sudharsan engineering college
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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 individuals 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 ones 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 persons 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 ones 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 ones 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: arunvklplm@gmail.com
Ph:9787089988