Agnieszka Kurczewska

Connecting the dots: A discussion on key concepts in contemporary entrepreneurship education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to justify, elaborate and elucidate the concepts of action, experience and reflection, and how they are intertwined when discussing contemporary entrepreneurship education. These concepts have been given a meaning in entrepreneurship education, but have not been discussed in-depth, and by that have been abridged in meaning and purpose, and mostly been treated in isolation from each other. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is conceptual and takes its starting point in the historical development of the field and discusses the concepts, from philosophical roots and their application, in entrepreneurship education. Findings – Neither of the discussed concepts are enough to generate learning one by one, as they are intertwined within the learning process that aims to generate knowledge. From this perspective, an understanding of how these concepts work, both individually and in synergy, is of importance for entrepreneurship education. Research limitations/implications – The discussion presented in this paper may be a starting point for future empirical studies on entrepreneurial learning, by developing the meaning of action, reflections and experience, or by trying to conceptualize them. Practical implications – The study indicates that entrepreneurship education should not concentrate only on one dimension of the entrepreneurial learning process, as for example, on actions, but should try to combine all of its discussed elements. Originality/value – By exploring the origins and developments around the concepts, the paper brings a deepened understanding of what the field considers as important when learning entrepreneurship. By decomposing and mutually referring the concepts, the authors contribute to the call of strengthening the theoretical and philosophical understanding in entrepreneurship education.

Business Entry and Window of Opportunity – Empirical Results for Women Entrepreneurs with Graduate Degree

This paper explores the nascence period - the time between idea generation and business entry - among women entrepreneurs with a graduate degree. To address this research problem and to better understand the specifics of a window of opportunity, we combine selected theories of human and social capital and set up three hypotheses regarding the influence of different factors on the nascence period. To test our hypotheses, we used a representative sample of 678 graduate women entrepreneurs in Germany and ran a logit of regression on the nascence period. The estimated model revealed two main factors with a positive influence, namely having an entrepreneurial role model and having attended seminars about starting a business. In our model, these factors support waiting longer before starting a business. In light of these results, we call for a more experimental approach in entrepreneurship education.

The interplay between cognitive, conative, and affective constructs along the entrepreneurial learning process

Purpose Although the role of reflections in entrepreneurship education is undeniable, the research has focused mainly on their advantages and consequences for learning process, whereas their dynamics and interrelations with other mental processes remain unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to better understand how personality and intelligence constructs: cognition, conation, and affection evolve and change along the learning process during entrepreneurship education. Design/methodology/approach To better understand reflective processes in entrepreneurial learning this paper adopts the tripartite constructs of personality and intelligence. By employing longitudinal explorative research approach and self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm, the authors follow students’ reflections during their two-year learning processes. First, the authors try to identify how the interplay between the cognitive, conative, and affective aspects emerges in students’ reflections. Then, the authors investigate how this interplay evolves during the individual learning process and finally, by looking for similarities in these learning pathways, the authors aim to identify patterns of students’ reflective learning process. Findings All constructs are present during the learning process and all are prone to change. The individual constructs alone shed no light on the interplay between different constructs, but rather that the interplay between sub-constructs should be taken into consideration as well. This seems to be particularly true for cognition, as procedural and declarative knowledge have very different profiles. Procedural knowledge emerges together with emotions, motivation, and volition, whereas the profile of declarative knowledge is individual. The unique profile of declarative knowledge in students’ reflections is an important finding as declarative knowledge is regarded as the center of current pedagogic practices. Research limitations/implications The study broadens the understanding of reflective practices in the entrepreneurial learning process and the interplay between affective, cognitive, and conative sub-constructs and reflective practices in entrepreneurship education. The findings clearly indicate the need for further research on the interplay between sub-constructs and students’ reflection profiles. The authors see the study as an attempt to apply an exploratory statistical method for the problem in question. Practical implications The results are able to advise pedagogy. Practical implications concern the need to develop reflective practises in entrepreneurial learning interventions to enhance all three meta-competencies, even though there are so far no irrefutable findings to indicate that some types of reflection may be better than others. Originality/value The results of the analysis indicate that it is possible to study the complex and dynamic interplay between sub-constructs of cognitive, conative and affective constructs. Moreover, the research succeeded in identifying both individual variations and general reflection patterns and changes in these during the learning process. This was possible by adopting a longitudinal explorative research approach with SOM analyses.

Drawing the Boundaries between the Different Phases of Opportunity Processes

To investigate the boundaries between the different phases of opportunity processes, we adopted an empirical phenomenology and used documentary videography with an editing method as well as a critical incidents and events technique. The analysis of cases led to three kinds of opportunity process approaches. Each had a different rationale for the actions taken and set of moderators, which are represented by the different interplay of phases. The interplay between alertness, insights and creativity was characteristic to all of the approaches, although each of these concepts present different form in the identified three approaches.