Marina Z. Solesvik

Entrepreneurial motivations and intentions: investigating the role of education major

Purpose – The study explores the difference in entrepreneurial intentions, perceived entrepreneurial motivation, and cognitive profiles (attitudes towards entrepreneurship, perceived behaviour control, and subjective norms) between individuals who have participated in enterprise education programmes in the universities and those who have not. The paper also investigates the mediating role of attitudes towards entrepreneurship, perceived behaviour control, and subjective norms related to entrepreneurial motivation and the forming of entrepreneurial intentions. Design/methodology/approach – Survey information from 321 students from three universities in the Ukraine was hand collected. Hierarchical multiple regressions were used to test hypotheses. Findings – Individuals who participate in enterprise programmes tend to have higher entrepreneurial motivation and are more likely to become entrepreneurs. Empirical evidence shows that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control mediate the relations hip between perceived entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial intentions. Research limitations/implications – The study is based on data collected from three universities in one city. The implications for education managers related to the inclusion of enterprise courses into the study plans of engineering students are also discussed here. Practical implications – The findings have implications for the stimulation of student enterprise in transitional economies where attitudinal and resource (i.e., skill, competence and knowledge) deficiencies can retard enterprise. Entrepreneurial motivation is an important link between an intention and action. Enterprise education programs which stimulate entrepreneurial motivation should be offered to engineering students since many of them later start ventures. Engagement into enterprise development programs of engineering students might evoke earlier interest in self-employment career path among young people. Originality/value – The article contributes to the field of entrepreneurial motivation and intentions. The study extends insights from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (i.e., subjective norms, attitudes toward this behaviour, and perceived behavioural control) by also considering the perceived entrepreneurial motivation profiles of students.

Partner selection for strategic alliances: case study insights from the maritime industry

Purpose - The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the partner selection criteria reported by maritime firms in Norway. This study aims to analyze how a maritime firm’s competitive advantage can be enhanced by the selection of the right partner with reference to a strategic alliance.Design/methodology/approach - A multiple-case study methodology was used. Archival, survey and interview data were explored relating to the partner selection process reported by Norwegian maritime firms. Primary data was gathered from semi-structured personal interviews with managers of Norwegian maritime firms.Findings - Case study evidence suggests that the strategic alliances were successful when partners had been carefully selected. As detected elsewhere, successful alliances were associated with partners that had managed to build trustful and honest relationships, had common strategic goals, and partners that supplied resources and competencies. Notably, we detected that cyclicality in the maritime industry shaped the partner selection process. Trust between partners was used as mechanism to reduce uncertainty relating to the strategic alliance process. Firms seeking long-term alliances selected partners with substantial capital and financial stability to survive a market’s downturn, as well as the resources required for expansion during a recession.Practical implications - Presented findings have implications for practitioners, especially for managers of shipping firms, banks, shipyards, producers of ship equipment, ship design firms, and ship brokers. Practitioners need to be aware that the rationale for inter-firm collaboration change over time, and motives are linked to the phase of the maritime cycle. Inter-firm collaboration provides competitive advantage benefits to firms and collaboration can protect as well as create jobs and wealth creation in maritime communities.Originality/value - A novel conceptual contribution is the exploration of links between maritime industrial cyclicality and the partner selection process relating to strategic alliances. This study also adds to debates relating to the profiles of internationalizing smaller firms.

Student intentions to become self‐employed: the Ukrainian context

Purpose – This paper aims to explore whether an integrated conceptual model (ICM) relating to factors drawn from entrepreneurial event theory (EET) (i.e. perceived desirability and perceived feasibility) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (i.e. attitudes toward the behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control) explains more of the variance relating to the intention to become an entrepreneur than individual EET or TPB models.Design/methodology/approach – Survey information from 192 students from three universities in the Ukraine was hand collected. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses presented.Findings – Models relating to EET, the TPB and the ICM explained 40 per cent, 55 per cent and 60 per cent of the variance in the entrepreneurial intention dependent variable, respectively. Students reporting higher levels of perceived desirability, perceived feasibility, attitude toward the behaviour (i.e. enterprise) and perceived behavioural control were more likely ...

Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets: Benefit from university entrepreneurship education investment

Purpose – Universities provide entrepreneurship-specific education (ESE) to equip students with the entrepreneurial alertness and risk-taking assets required to pursue entrepreneurial careers. Building upon insights from a dynamic view of human capital, the paper explores the linkage between ESE investment, alertness, and risk-taking asset accumulation, and the outcome relating to the intention “to become an entrepreneur” (henceforth termed an “entrepreneurial mindset”). Design/methodology/approach – Survey information from 189 students from three universities in the Ukraine was hand collected. Hierarchical multiple ordinary least squares regression analysis and slope analysis were used to test presented hypotheses. Findings – ESE students reported higher intensity of entrepreneurial mindset. Further, ESE students who accumulated the connection entrepreneurial alertness asset reported higher intensity of entrepreneurial mindset. ESE students were more oriented to higher entrepreneurial mindset when they h...

Cultural factors and entrepreneurial intention

Purpose – Universities provide entrepreneurship-specific education (ESE) to equip students with the skills required to pursue entrepreneurial careers in new firms and innovative private and public sector organizations. Building upon insights from entrepreneurial event theory, cultural values theory and human capital theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the linkage between perceived local cultural environment, ESE investment and the intensity of entrepreneurial intention with regard to becoming an entrepreneur. Design/methodology/approach – Survey information from 321 students from three universities in the Ukraine was hand collected. Hierarchical multiple ordinary least squares regression analysis and slope analysis were used to test presented hypotheses. Findings – Analysis revealed that students who cited a perceived desirability and perceived feasibility for entrepreneurship, initiative taking culture and participation in ESE reported significantly higher intensity of entrepreneurial intenti...

Financial availability and government support for women entrepreneurs in transitional economies: cases of Russia and Ukraine

– This paper studies female entrepreneurship in two post‐Soviet countries – Russia and Ukraine. Employing institutional theory, the research aims to investigate the entrepreneurial environment, particularly government support programmes and the availability of financial resources, with a focus on women entrepreneurs., – This research is a qualitative investigation that comprises 60 interviews with Russian and Ukrainian entrepreneurs, bank officers and representatives of government organisations supporting the development of entrepreneurship., – The investigation provides evidence that these countries have overcome the transition from a command to a market economy and local people are gradually adjusting to the new environment. Concentrating on macro/meso and money elements from the 5M model suggested by Brush et al., the authors suggest an additional construct – “motherland” – to embed a context in a new model., – Only two factors of Brush et al.s 5M model were considered – i.e. macro/meso environment and money (availability of financial resources). Discussion of management, marketing and motherhood is beyond the scope of the present paper., – The study reveals a broad range of managerial information and empirical data on the development of female entrepreneurship in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. The findings are helpful for policymakers engaged with these two countries., – The study is an attempt to capture the context dependency of research on female entrepreneurs, and suggests a new dimension for inclusion in Brush et al.’s 5M model – “motherland”.

Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention: Do female students benefit?

This article explores links between entrepreneurship education (EE) participation, alertness and risk-taking skills and the intensity of entrepreneurial intention relating to becoming an entrepreneur. Guided by insights from human capital and socially learned stereotypes theories, we conceptualize and test novel hypotheses that consider the potential moderating effect of gender and participation in EE. Business students participating in EE modules were compared with engineering students excluded from such programmes. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that EE students reported high intensity of intention; however, EE did not generate equal benefits for all students. Women were significantly less likely to report high intensity of intention; however, those citing the alertness skill were more likely to report high intensity of intention than non-EE women students. Both male EE and non-EE students citing the risk perception skill reported higher intention, whereas women EE students citing the risk perception skill reported lower intention.

Interfirm Collaboration in the Shipbuilding Industry: The Shipbuilding Cycle Perspective

This paper investigates the interfirm cooperative strategies of shipbuilding firms. This paper aims to understand the system nature and dynamics of interfirm cooperative strategies adopted by firms in the shipbuilding industry related to the phase of the shipbuilding cycle. A theory-building approach from case studies is applied in this study. The study is based on interviews with managers of the Norwegian, Danish, Polish and Ukrainian shipbuilding firms. In addition, secondary data were collected. Issues relating to the aims of joining cooperative agreements; resources and competences which the shipbuilding firms and their collaborators contribute to joint ventures, strategic alliances and other collaborative arrangements; and how collaborative strategies were related to the phase of the shipbuilding cycle were explored. Implications for further research, practitioners and policy-makers are provided.

Collaborative knowledge management: case studies from ship design

The recent increase in information and knowledge flows within the shipbuilding industry, due to the implementation of computer-aided design and tougher market requirements for ship design, generates a need for effective collaboration between ship designers, shipowners, shipyards, suppliers, classification societies, and other supply chain partners. This paper uses a comparative case study approach to explore how two different ship design firms have organised cooperative work during the design process, and how they employed computer-aided collaborative tools for knowledge management. This study will be interesting for practitioners from shipbuilding and ship design firms, and scholars of knowledge management and applications of collaborative knowledge management tools in organisations.

Entrepreneurial intentions in post-Soviet economies

In the present paper, we apply the theory of planned behaviour and personal initiative taking literature to explore the entrepreneurial intentions of 266 female and 161 male respondents in Russia and Ukraine. Our findings show that the intensity of entrepreneurial intentions reported by Ukrainian students is higher than those reported by their Russian counterparts. We also find that men have higher entrepreneurial intentions then women in these countries. At the same time, gender moderates the relationship between perceived behavioural control and intentions, but not between attitude or subjective norms and intentions. We also find that personal initiative taking does not add to the explanation of entrepreneurial intentions above the variables in the theory of planned behaviour model. We discuss the possible reasons for these findings and their implications for future research.