قصد کارآفرینانه در میان دانشجویان مهندسی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Review of literature
3- Purpose and hypothesis
4- Methodology
5- Results analysis
6- Conclusions and implications
7- Limitations and future lines of research
References
Abstract
Partly due to the current crisis and its high unemployment rates, the labor market increasingly requires multidisciplinary engineers with additional skills to their own. Engineering education therefore faces new challenges and these include equipping engineers with greater entrepreneurship. Although entrepreneurship education has consequently been integrated into the new engineering degrees, is this enough to boost entrepreneurship among engineers and on what does their level of entrepreneurship depend? This research work aims to analyze the impact of entrepreneurial motivations on entrepreneurial intentions among future engineers and identify the role than entrepreneurship education plays in the development of the engineers’ entrepreneurship. The results indicate that the need for independence is the key factor in the entrepreneurial intent of future engineers and confirm the positive contribution that entrepreneurship education has on their entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, recommendations are offered which could help the various agents involved increase the effectiveness of actions aimed at promoting firm creation in this area.
Introduction
The current economic crisis has resulted in alarmingly high unemployment figures in Spain, with a rate exceeding 25% of the general working population and over 20% among graduates (INE, 2014). In this context, one of the measures being considered by both the Spanish Employment Strategy 2012–2014 (BOE, 2011) and the Europe 2020 Strategy for Employment and Growth (European Commission, 2010) is to promote entrepreneurship development, the reason being that the importance for governments of strengthening entrepreneurship mainly lies in the spillover of benefits which generate entrepreneurship activities (Oosterbeek, van Praag, & Ijsselstein, 2010). Gómez-Grass, Mira-Solves, and MartínezMateo (2010) pin these benefits on the positive effect that venture creation has on four macroeconomic variables: growth, employment, development and innovation. One of the missions of the 21st century University is therefore to encourage the social and economic development of its surroundings through venture creation training and entrepreneurship development; published work, however, offers conflicting opinions about whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught. Some researchers highlight the importance of motivation for running a business and therefore question whether teaching can enable this motivation to emerge (Colette, Hill, & Leitch, 2005); others, meanwhile, believe that this entrepreneurial motivation may be developed with specific entrepreneurship education (Souitaris, Zerbinati, & Al-Lahman, 2007). According to the final report of the European Commission on the study of entrepreneurship in higher, non-university education, especially non-business studies, compiled by the expert group of the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry (European Commission, 2008: 67), the first of the final recommendations for action involves: “Creating a task force or steering group (including the Ministry of Education and other departments: Economy; Employment; Science and Research) to determine how entrepreneurship can be integrated into the education system across primary, secondary and higher education”.