The Influence of Formal Entrepreneurship Education on Entrepreneurship Career Development among Graduates in Kota
Kinabalu, Sabah
Kathleen Wong Min Ying1, Salmah Topimin2
1 PhD Candidate, Faculty of Business, Economics and Accountancy, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
2 Entrepreneurship Research and Development Centre (ERDEC), Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]
Accepted: 15 December 2020 | Published: 28 December 2020
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Abstract: Entrepreneurship education provides knowledge, skills and motivations to individuals who have the interest in pursuing their entrepreneurial careers. Entrepreneurship education programmes (EEPs) are offered at different levels, including primary and secondary schools as well as the university. Theoretically, the knowledge obtained from EEPs can encourage individuals to create and develop small business activities. It is through the process of EEPs that drives individuals to entrepreneurial career. Therefore, it is the interest of this study to investigate the extent to which EEPs have influenced on the entrepreneurial career development of graduates in Sabah. This study will be focusing on EEPs that are being offered by the major higher education institutions in Sabah. In investigating the roles of EEPs in influencing the entrepreneurial career of graduates, this study will be focusing on two aspects of EEPs; the entrepreneurial atmosphere and the entrepreneurship curriculum that are available in the selected higher education institutions. This study will be capitalising on mix methods approach. Quantitative method will be utilised to investigate graduates’ experiences in various aspects of EEPs that influences their entrepreneurial career development whereas qualitative method will be used to explore the entrepreneurship curriculum and entrepreneurial atmosphere of the higher education institutions that involved in this study. This conceptual paper is prepared with the focus to strengthen the research framework of the proposed study.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship Education Programs, Entrepreneurial atmosphere, entrepreneurship curriculum, graduates
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1. Introduction
Entrepreneurship has been discussed as an engine that drives the economic development of a nation through the creation of jobs, innovation and enterprises (Ng, Ahmad & Ibrahim, 2011).
As such, it becomes the interest of governments of many countries to promote entrepreneurship as income generating activities. Within this context, it is argued that entrepreneurship education can boost entrepreneurial activity (Longva & Strand, 2020). In this respect, it can be seen that entrepreneurship education becomes one of the significant elements in the education sector around the world and is offered at different levels; in schools as well as higher learning institutions. According to Duval-Couetil (2013), for more than two decades now, entrepreneurship education programs (EEP) has multiplied vigorously and in a more varied
way. Different methods in teaching and training has been introduced such as by involving field work activities (to obtain entrepreneurial experiences), co-curricular activities that involved in doing a business (such as opening a booth), exercising real business case studies, as well as doing research on local businesses. It is believed that the essential preparation in the making of a good entrepreneur is by combining knowledge, skills and experience and this can be achieved by doing a role-playing situation or business simulation during the education phase;
or for graduates to pursue entrepreneurial career, thus gaining experiences (Hytti & O’Gorman, 2004). Within this context, it is argued that an effective entrepreneurship education can lead to an entrepreneurial career (Mohamad et al., 2014), entrepreneurial intention (Fayolle, Gailly &
Lassas-Clerc, 2006) and entrepreneurial behaviour (Elert, Enderson & Wennberg, 2015).
However, the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in influencing the entrepreneurship career development among graduates has been debated in the entrepreneurship literature. For example, it is argued that the degree of knowledge utilization from entrepreneurship education is low (Lautenschläger & Haase, 2011; Pẽna, Morghan, Riggieri, Shipp, &Atta, 2010). One common reason for the ineffectiveness of entrepreneurship education as highlighted in the entrepreneurship literature is related to the issue of approach used in the teaching process.
Therefore, this paper proposes a conceptual framework on the influence of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship career development among graduates and investigates how the process of entrepreneurship education has been implemented. The proposed research setting is at Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
The reviewed literature on entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship career development will be discussed in the following section. A description on the proposed methodological approach is presented in the subsequent section. This paper ends with the discussion on the proposed conceptual framework on the influence of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship career development among graduates.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Entrepreneurship Education 2.1.1 Entrepreneurship Curriculum
The growth in entrepreneurship education has been recognized worldwide. Starting with its first introduction as a single course at Harvard University in 1947 (Sherman, Sebora & Digman, 2008), entrepreneurship education has been developed into various form of educational activities which is being offered to students from different disciplines and with different levels of education (Duval-Couetil & Long, 2014). Based on the belief that entrepreneurship can be taught, the issue of what should be taught and how entrepreneurship knowledge should be delivered becomes the concerns of entrepreneurship educators. Ideally, the main objective of having entrepreneurship education is to prepare individuals for entrepreneurial career through the development of entrepreneurial mindset, motivation, knowledge, skills and competency (Mohamad et al., 2014). In this sense, the learning process and the knowledge gained from the entrepreneurship education should enable students to identify and explore business opportunities for venture creation (Duval-Couetil & Long, 2014). However, the extent to which entrepreneurship education has achieved its objectives is widely being debated in the entrepreneurship literature (e.g. Longva & Strand, 2020). Despite the acknowledgement on the importance of entrepreneurship education in bringing personal entrepreneurial change (Ismail, Sawang & Zolin, 2018), it is also argued that graduates are not really engaged in entrepreneurship career (Akpochafo & Alika, 2018). In this respect, the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education becomes a central discussion in the entrepreneurship literature.
In trying to understand how entrepreneurship education works, special consideration should be given to the framework developed by Jamieson (1984). Jamieson (1984) develops three- category framework of entrepreneurship education; education about entrepreneurship, education for entrepreneurship and education through entrepreneurship. While the first category of Jamieson’s framework focuses on awareness creation through theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship, the second framework focuses on training of aspiring entrepreneurs for future entrepreneurial career through some practical skills courses that are directed to enable individuals to develop business plans (Raposo & do Paço, 2011).
Consistent with the rapid changes of today’s business environment, the entrepreneurial process has become more complex, thus demanding a new approach in educating individuals to act entrepreneurially. In this respect, it is argued that the entrepreneurship education should move away from the approach of ‘about’ and ‘for’ to the approach of ‘through’ entrepreneurship (Linton & Klinton, 2019). Education through entrepreneurship is an active approach to learning as it requires individuals to learn through by doing entrepreneurship and focusing on action and solving problems and gaining experiences from the real world (Linton & Klinton, 2019;
Longva & Strand, 2020). Therefore, in order to engage individuals in the real world of entrepreneurship, an active learning approach is required (Williams Middleton, 2014). As an academic field, it can be argued that the pedagogical approaches used in delivering entrepreneurial knowledge should reflect the complexity of entrepreneurial process. The reviewed literature on entrepreneurship education reveals several pedagogical issues. It is suggested that entrepreneurship education should rely on experiential learning that allows students to engage in some activity and reflect upon the activity (Sherman, Sebora & Digman, 2008). Within this context, Williams Middleton (2014: 172) introduces the need to incorporate the concepts of ‘know what’, ‘know how’ and ‘know why’ in delivering the content of entrepreneurship education as this incorporation will help to achieve the desired outcome.
However, similar to the dynamism of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education should not be seen as a linear process. In this respect, previous research has shown some contradictory results on the effectiveness of learning approach, for example, between teacher-centered and student-centered (e.g. Ismail, Sawang & Zolin, 2018). In addition, the pedagogical approach in entrepreneurship education should also capture the issue of grading and evaluation in which it is suggested that students should be graded based on the process of learning rather than the output of a course (Linton & Klinton, 2019).
2.1.2 Entrepreneurial Atmosphere
Researchers often concede the truth or validity of an entrepreneurial phenomenon by taking its environmental factors into consideration in the investigation. In a study by Van de Van’s (1993), he substantiated a point where explaining entrepreneurship success would be strengthened when entrepreneurial environmental condition is included. His research studies the internal factors of what makes an entrepreneur and by comparing subject individuals with similar level of education, exposed to the same literature and studies, as well as taught with comparable entrepreneurial skills; however results shown that there is a prominent gap later on in their entrepreneurship career development. Van de Van (1993) asserts that when subjects’
environmental conditions were dissected, he discovered contrasting level of entrepreneurial atmosphere such as social, economic and political infrastructure. Gartner (1985) proposed a model in which explains that positive entrepreneurial atmosphere create higher success in entrepreneurship career development as it facilitates venture creation. This include factors of availability of support services, venture capital opportunities, government influences, and presence of experienced entrepreneurs. To support this idea, few researchers investigated the relationship between venture creation and entrepreneurial atmosphere and has achieved
positive result on its likelihood using empirical evidence (Keeble & Walker, 1994; Aldrich, 1990; Reynold et al., 1994).
According to Sahut, Peris-Ortiz, & Teulon (2018), the entrepreneurial atmosphere is defined as a vital environment in which served as an external factors and condition in influencing entrepreneurs’ creating and growing business and career in entrepreneurship. It refers to the conditions or environment beyond the entrepreneurship curriculum. It encompasses everything from political, economic, social, technological, legal and cultural push to either encourage or discourage graduates toward venturing into business creation (Baum & Bird, 2010). Agrawal and Gibson (1999) proved in their study that undesirable conditions in the political, such as, civil unrest or political instability, result in slowed long-term growth of entrepreneurial activities within said geographical locality. This is due to poor regulatory control on supply and logistics, weak law enforcement, and bias business conducts. Entrepreneurs would then lack the security and confidence in their decision-making thus halted from pursuing meeting the demands in the market. On the other hand, Li (2002) suggested a type of management that is community-based natural resource management in which decisions on business operation are made in favour of local community of surrounding business. This approach is proven conducive on reducing the top-down governmental management. The community-based management create an atmosphere where businesses could act and operate according to the need and demand of the mass rather than governed by a more authoritarian governance.
Opportunity creation often prominent in developing market rather than developed market.
Although that developed market seems to look like a never-ending source of innovation but according to Shane and Venkataraman (2000), opportunities are likely to be discovered in an environment that is most disastrous, inhumane and/or dire compared to a more evolved or systematic environment. Graduates are at the infancy stage in the entrepreneurship world, metaphorically, can be described as having little clue on how they must survive whatever environment out there. It will be easier to make informed decision if graduates are aware of environment that are affecting their entrepreneurial pursue and act accordingly. Although graduates lack the control toward their environment, knowing how to analyse their environment is already another step-ahead toward encouraging entrepreneurial activities.
2.2 Entrepreneurship career development
Entrepreneurship offer a favorable choice as a career. This research focuses on graduates’
chosen career as an entrepreneur and/or engaging in entrepreneurial activities as main part of their career pursuing on creating and building a business. Career development in entrepreneurship is measured as individuals maintain a continuous improvement in business making. To some extent, career development in entrepreneurship reflects on the adaptability and endurance on the changing trends of business practices. This does not mean measuring an entrepreneur by the growth of their business, but rather by how well they improve in handling any business activities, be it in promoting their business, balancing financial records, scoring business deals, or planning a systematic supply chain management. An entrepreneur could be failing on a business but if the failure does positively affect the way the entrepreneur conduct business in the future, this can be considered as a career development. Therefore, entrepreneurship career development of graduates is measured by their gain of skills, betterment of decision making and how differently they adapt on their next business venture.
Feldman & Bolino (1996) argued that choosing a career in entrepreneurship comes with risks considering the nature of entrepreneurship are unpredictable and unstable. Their study shows that the success and failure of a career in entrepreneurship is by how well entrepreneurs
improve themselves alongside their business. Heslin (2005) states that there is some indicator toward assessing career development in entrepreneurship such as level of income and position.
However, these do not accurately measure career development as this is only be used as an external or a more generalized measurement. Few researchers then agreed that better indicator such as knowledge, experience and skills that are accumulated from years of conducting business (Sampson et al., 2014; Spangenberd, 2016).
3. Research methodology
The focus of this appear is to establish the literature review to support a future empirical study that investigates the influence of a formal entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship career development among graduates. The research methodology of this study consists of a mix method approach. Both qualitative and quantitative approach will be adopted to ensure the credibility of the research findings (Bryman, 2015). The quantitative research approach will be relying on a survey method and will be using questionnaires as the instrument for data collection. The collected data will be analyzed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The analysis techniques such as the descriptive statistic, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis and correlation analysis will be used. Meanwhile, qualitative research approach will be adopted in this study to understand the human behavior from the graduate entrepreneurs’ perspective. The approach offers a more dynamic data and balances the empirical part of the experiment closer to the reality. In-depth interviews and focus group discussion will be conducted with the selected participants. Purposive sampling technique (Patton, 2014) will be adopted in selecting participants of this study- male and female, graduated from higher learning institution in Sabah and had undergone EEP, and is pursuing a career in entrepreneurship. This list of participants will be obtained by means of liaising with the alumni associations of the selected higher learning institutions in Sabah.
Hypotheses
The hypotheses of this study are:
▪ H1: There is a positive relationship between Entrepreneurship Curriculum and Entrepreneurship Career Development.
▪ H2: There is a positive relationship between Entrepreneurial Atmosphere and Entrepreneurship Career Development.
▪ H3: There is a positive relationship between Entrepreneurial Education and Entrepreneurship Career Development.
4. Proposed conceptual framework
Figure 1: A proposed conceptual framework for entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship career development
Entrepreneurship education
Entrepreneurship curriculum
Entrepreneurship career development
Entrepreneurial atmosphere
Figure 1 shows the proposed conceptual framework of this study and explains the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship career development. Theoretically, entrepreneurship education consists of entrepreneurship curriculum and entrepreneurial atmosphere. The sub-elements that fall under entrepreneurship curriculum that require further exploration is related but not limited to the institutional setting, audience, type, objectives, and contents of EEP, as well as teaching and training methods and approaches practiced. On the other hand, entrepreneurial atmosphere explains the entrepreneurial environment outside of classroom that affect the career development of entrepreneur graduates. Finally, entrepreneurship career development is assessed by skill acquisition, entrepreneurship-job fit, opportunity identification, as well as knowledge utilization.
5. Conclusions
This study aims to investigate the influence of EEP toward graduates’ entrepreneurship career development. This offer an empirical and thorough explanation on how EEP can be a powerful tool in securing competitive advantage, skills, knowledge, and better decision-making process in one’s entrepreneurship career. The findings of this study will be providing a strong case on the influence of formal entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurship career development among graduates in Sabah. Within this context, the implementation process of EEP which also includes its evaluation aspect and the understanding of what drives graduates in Sabah toward entrepreneurship career can be enlighten.
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