Steven A. Gedeon

Application of best practices in university entrepreneurship education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and apply best practices in university entrepreneurship education to the creation of a new MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation management. It is a direct response to calls for a total re-envisioning of entrepreneurship education and criticism that existing programs lack rigour, content, pedagogy, measurement and an established definition. Design/methodology/approach – This article uses reviews of the literature to identify normative best practices and how to apply them to the new program. An entrepreneurship program design framework (EPDF) was created and applied to a new MBA program being developed in central Germany. Findings – Most studies describe aspects of current programs (e.g. lists of courses) but almost none say what should be in a program. Others provide abstract guidance (e.g. programs should define entrepreneurship) but do not give specific recommendations (e.g. what the definition should be). The proposed EPDF provided a rigorous structur...

Closing the Loop: Measuring Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy to Assess Student Learning Outcomes

Accredited degree programs primarily use graded assignments in the embedded-course method to measure individual-level assurances of learning (AoL). This method is expensive, subjective, retrospective, and difficult to implement for continuous program improvement. The purpose of our research is to explore the use of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) as an individual-level AoL outcome to augment the quality management of accredited entrepreneurship degree programs. Previous research on ESE, arising from intention models and theory of planned behavior, has used the construct primarily for predicting start-up intent or differentiating nonentrepreneurs from entrepreneurs. In contrast, we begin from an educational assessment and social cognitive theory perspective in constructing our ESE scale. The new ESE scale is operationalized by theoretically justifying 8 learning outcomes, testing 70 items based on scales in the extant literature, and extracting 11 factors or subdomains of ESE using principal components analysis to create a parsimonious new 44-item ESE scale. Expanding the ESE construct to 11 subdomains also expands the use of ESE into the fields of educational assessment, AoL, and program accreditation. This enables understanding the links between pedagogy, curriculum, assignments, grades, enactive mastery experiences, and peer feedback to achieve meaningful student transformation through self-efficacy beliefs.

What Can Universities Do to Promote Entrepreneurial Intent? An Empirical Investigation

Our university has promoted entrepreneurship extensively through networking events, business plan competitions, funding sources, degree programs, and on-campus incubators. But do these efforts work? We integrate and extend intentions-based models and the psychosocial cognitive model to develop a model of entrepreneurial intent and behaviour. We test our theory using partial least squares structural equation modelling on survey data collected from 334 undergraduate business students in Canada. We find that the belief constructs, namely: subjective norms toward entrepreneurship, prevalence of entrepreneurship on social milieu, and goal-orientation are found to positively influence the attitude constructs of the: 1) desirability of an entrepreneurial career; 2) perceived feasibility of an entrepreneurial career. These attitudes, in turn, positively impact entrepreneurial intent, which subsequently positively influences entrepreneurial behaviour. We, thus, found support for the hypotheses that university support for these psychosocial influences has a positive effect on student entrepreneurial intent and behaviour. Practical implications are discussed and future directions are suggested.

Entrepreneurial desirability and intent among youth in Bhutan

The Kingdom of Bhutan has embarked on an ambitious programme of entrepreneurial training for youth, with the objective of stimulating increased new venture formation and job creation. The entrepreneurship literature on the drivers of entrepreneurial intent is well–developed for the case of opportunity–seeking individuals in developed countries, but the literature around intent for necessity–based entrepreneurship in emerging countries is much less developed. This study is an exploration into entrepreneurial intent and the precursors of desirability and positive social norms affecting the career decisions of these youths. We surveyed 364 young people with an express interest in business and entrepreneurship, located in Bhutan and Canada (as a typical representative of the scope of prior research into entrepreneurial intent). Our results demonstrate higher entrepreneurial intent and more positive attitudes and social norms in Bhutan than in Canada. These results suggest that new entrepreneurship training programmes in Bhutan should be designed to focus primarily on other aspects, such as building skills and acquiring resources.

Application of physical science analysis to strategic management monitoring and control systems

This article illustrates the potential for using mathematical reasoning and analogy from physical sciences to conceptualise and explore the effect of dynamic external forces on the response of a company. An example of a generalised second-order linear differential model is applied to study the dynamic response of a company or industry to an exogenous shock. In most systems, significantly over-damped or under-damped response characteristics are expected. However, strategic management monitoring and control systems can scan for external shocks in order to apply dynamic adaptive controls to optimise the companys response. Mathematical tools are used to predict conditions under which an efficient response to external shocks is expected. It is shown that active strategic management can provide superior response characteristics. Additional complementary mathematical modelling approaches are outlined to show how the model may be expanded to address inter-firm linkages, supply chain dynamics, and the propagation of shocks through an industry.