Michela Loi

The theoretical foundations of entrepreneurship education: How co-citations are shaping the field

This article develops a co-citation analysis covering the period 1991–2014 outlining the collective logic of authors conducting studies of entrepreneurship education. The core themes, major contributions and topological features characterising their relationships are identified. The findings indicate that the field has a polycentric structure with five core themes of which entrepreneurial intentions emerges as the most influential while the entrepreneurial learning and evaluation themes have emerged in recent years. These two core themes appear to foster changes within the current structure with the introduction of new theoretical inputs and the formation of new theoretical hubs. We argue that future research should attempt to organise focal themes into a theoretical framework that allows a comprehensive picture of entrepreneurship education.

The power of peers

Although the role of creativity in the entrepreneurial process has long been analysed, only recently scholars have begun addressing its influence on entrepreneurial intentions, showing that complex dynamics characterise this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to understand the surrounding mechanisms (moderation and mediation) that connect creativity to entrepreneurial intentions, with a focus on social context and entrepreneurial self-efficacy.,A structured questionnaire was administered to a sample of 507 students from 17 to 21 years old. The effect of creativity on entrepreneurial intentions and the moderating role of social context were tested with a three-step hierarchical regression, while the mediating effect of self-efficacy was tested by a multiple regression analysis based on the bootstrapping method.,The results reveal that: peers who encourage entrepreneurship moderate the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intentions by strengthening this relationship, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intentions.,In light of these results, institutions should draw attention to how creative potential in students differs in order to provide new educational programmes to strengthen self-efficacy in entrepreneurial students and support encouraging social context of peers in which entrepreneurial intentions can be fostered.,The study, by responding to the suggestions of conducting research on the interface between creativity and entrepreneurship (Shane and Nicolaou, 2015), brings new empirical details regarding the mechanisms that link creativity to entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, it casts light on the interaction between dispositional and social variables, showing the crucial role of peers in enhancing the interaction between creativity and intentions.

A START-UP GENERATION APPROACH FOR TEACHING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: AN OVERVIEW OF AFFECTIVE LEARNING RESULTS

This study reports an analysis of the training objectives achieved by students with a heterogeneous educational background who attended a university entrepreneurial course. The course emphasized an experiential approach of a start-up creation. A pre-experimental design was followed to collect data on a sample of fourteen students who completed the six-month course. Findings, based on a non-parametric test, show significant differences between the pre and post-test. After the course, participants displayed a higher level of self-efficacy in making decisions, a higher level of probability of becoming entrepreneurs and a lower level of pessimism in projecting their future. Despite deserving to be corroborated with a more sophisticated research design, this study contributes to the extant literature by providing further empirical support about the role played by entrepreneurial courses in fostering harbinger variables of entrepreneurial behavior. Future research issues and practical implications are illustrated with respect to optimism and pessimism.