Entrepreneurial intentions in students from a trans-national perspective

Ward, Alexander; Hernández-Sánchez, Brizeida; Sánchez-García, Jose C. Article Entrepreneurial intentions in students from a transnational perspective Administrative Sciences Provided in Cooperation with: MDPI – Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Basel Suggested Citation: Ward, Alexander; Hernández-Sánchez, Brizeida; Sánchez-García, Jose C. (2019) : Entrepreneurial intentions in students from a trans-national perspective, Administrative Sciences, ISSN 2076-3387, MDPI, Basel, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, pp. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci9020037 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/239934 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ administrative sciences Article Entrepreneurial Intentions in Students from a Trans-National Perspective Alexander Ward 1, Brizeida Hernández-Sánchez 2and Jose C. Sánchez-García2,* 1 Department of Entrepreneurship, University of Salamanca, 37005 Salamanca, Spain; alexander[email protected] 2Department of Social Psychology, University of Salamanca, 37005 Salamanca, Spain; [email protected] *Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +34-923-294-500 (ext. 3264) Received: 29 March 2019; Accepted: 28 April 2019; Published: 1 May 2019   Abstract: Studying the variability of entrepreneurial attitudes within different countries is important in order to identify where attempts to increase entrepreneurial spirit and activity should focus. This article analyzes differences within multiple countries, as well the causal relationship of three attitudinal variables, namely, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, and entrepreneurial motivations with entrepreneurial intention. We used a cross-national framework and analyzed the relation of four different countries with a sample of 800 students from Argentina (200), Chile (200), Panama (200), and Spain (200). Results show variability in all attitudes between countries with Panama rating the highest in most and Spain rating the lowest. Motivations expressed for entrepreneurship are not statistically significant between most countries, which suggests the perception of entrepreneurship as an engine for personal goals is high and similar in all four countries. Regression analysis showed subjective norm’s effect is not statistically significant in Argentina nor Chile for intentions, and Panama’s intentions are highly driven by entrepreneurial motivations. These suggest policies and programs should tap on the fairly consistent entrepreneurial spirit to capitalize on student’s interest in entrepreneurship, and pull them into training programs to strengthen their competences. Keywords: international; entrepreneurship; intentions; students; university 1. Introduction Entrepreneurship is commonly considered an engine of innovation and social growth, but it does not happen in a vacuum. More so, different environments can bring different realities in societies, meaning the degree of entrepreneurship is not always consistent due to the variability within the factors that make it a feasible option. For example, we can find variability between Chile, which enjoys extremely high Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) 25.06 and development, and its neighbor, Argentina, creator of many of the prominent enterprises in Latin America, which has declining (and currently extremely low) TEA values and entrepreneurial spirit, according to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Consortium GEM). Nonetheless, comprising of a heavily educated population (Pradilla 2012) and newly-implanted law called Entrepreneur’s Law, similar to Chile’s Law of Business in One Day, Argentina follows its neighbor’s footsteps to improve its entrepreneurship ecosystem (Cruz 2017). On the other hand other countries like Panama, while showing sub-standard entrepreneurial intentions, perceived capabilities and TEA, in relation to their regional neighbors, show a substantially higher motivational index due to their attempts to promote entrepreneurship through business accelerators like Micro, Small and Medium Sized Business Authority (AMPYME). Contrary to logic, highly developed, innovation-stage countries with high links to Latin America, like Spain, Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37; doi:10.3390/admsci9020037 www.mdpi.com/journal/admsci Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 2 of 13 due to economic constraints and high bureaucracy, show substantially lower values than previously mentioned countries. In sum, each country’s context creates different, ever-changing, entrepreneurship realities, which also translate to attitudes. Because of this, it is important to understand and regularly assess the entrepreneurial mindset within different geo-political structures, instead of using a one-size-fits-all model to explain the entrepreneurship reality in each. This is also specifically relevant in educational settings, which is commonly attributed part of the entrepreneurship activity given its nature to train and create knowledge, which translates to spillover and spin-offs (Acs et al. 1994;Caiazza et al. 2014). Most of these countries also share the status of being developing countries, which entrepreneurship has shown to reduce poverty of, more so through education (Khadeeja et al. 2017) This article comes as a response to further understand and update the variability of entrepreneurial attitudes and how they impact intentions, analyzing models using a trans-national framework by exploring to what degree people’s motives for entrepreneurship, as well their perceived behavioral control and social support impact intentions for business in four different countries: Argentina, Chile, Panama, and Spain. This article structure is as follows: In Section 2, we present our literature review on the importance of entrepreneurship, intention models, as well as attitudes. In Section 3, we describe our sample, scale, and delineate the method used, followed by Section 4with the results. Lastly, in Section 5, we discuss our results and suggest future research directions. 2. Literature Overview 2.1. Socioeconomic Background of Argentina, Chile, Panama, and Spain Entrepreneurship literature states that entrepreneurship, as a variable, is highly contextual (S á nchez-Garc í a et al. 2018). We expect the countries under this study to experience different socioeconomic phenomena, which can translate to differences in entrepreneurship activity, behavior and attitudes. Argentina has been historically one of the top business centers of the Latin America region, with many well-known startups, such as Mercado Libre and Despegar. It was also a considerably prosperous country in terms of indicators of wealth and low poverty levels (World Bank 2005), until a series of economic downfalls that started in 1970 0 s. These have dampened the growth of the country for over three decades, which despite some minor progressions currently suffers from high levels of inflation (Cohen 2018). Argentina has been trying to improve its business environment by implementing the Entrepreneur’s Law, which mimics Chile’s 2013 Law of Business in One Day. This law allows the facilitation of establishment and growth of new companies, co-investment with private investors, attraction of private investors, and provides assistance to accelerator programs. Chile, according to the OECD in 2018, has a stable economy, stable growth and low unemployment levels, partly thanks to its effective macroeconomic management (OECD/United Nations 2018), with a progressive, albeit slow, reduction of income inequality. Entrepreneurship-wise, it also leads the region with a TEA of 25.6, strongly focused in its capitol Santiago, to the point of being dubbed the Chilecon Valley. Many laws and programs, such as the Start-up Chile from 2010, and Law of Business in One Day built in 2013 are part of the force behind its success in becoming an entrepreneurship hub, which has led as a model for other countries, such as Argentina. Panama is a rapidly developing economy in the Latin America region, with its GDP per capita having increased by twofold in the past decade. It also holds one of the lowest unemployment levels in the region (Espino Cruz et al. 2017) and is the seventh most competitive country in the region, according to the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report. It is currently experiencing entrepreneurship growth, thanks to the creation of its Micro, Small and Medium Sized Business Authority (AMPYME), which is aimed towards helping promote and develop micro, small, and medium enterprises. Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 3 of 13 Spain is slowly recovering from its economic recession, which started in 2008 and plummeted its market, yet still visible today with high unemployment levels (Peña et al. 2017). Its GDP has shown some visible, albeit slow, improvement since 2014, according to the latest Eurydice report, as well increase in its education levels (European Commission Eurydice 2018). Entrepreneurship-wise, it ranks among the lowest in the region, with slow and highly bureaucratic processes, which dampen its progression in business development (Peña et al. 2017). Nonetheless, there has been an ongoing interest in developing programs to foster entrepreneurship activity, more so in educational contexts such as Valnalon and VitaminaE, which is an appreciated effort to lower students’ low perception of entrepreneurship as a feasible choice (Guerrero et al. 2016). 2.2. Relevance of Entrepreneurship in Educational Context It is of common acceptance by now of the growing interest in entrepreneurship at a worldwide scale (Fontenele 2010;Parra 2013) because, fundamentally, it is useful for improving the economy and societal development (Audretsch and Thurik 2001;Reynolds et al. 2005;Storey 1999;White and Reynolds 1996). Entrepreneurship’s usefulness stems from its capacity of innovation, competive nature, and the inherent tendency of entrepreneurs to look into solving problems in order to exploit business opportunities (Hern á ndez-S á nchez et al. 2019). These, and other entrepreneurial traits are thought to be plastic, rather than static (Kuratko 2005); therefore, entrepreneurship education has surfaced as an attempt to train people into acquiring a mindset and competence for business. Because of this, a country’s development and progress in education, research and innovation is also considered a contributing factor to its socioeconomic development ( Bonaccorsi and Daraio 2007 ; Rodr í guez and de Jes ú s 2005). Governments and organizations involved in education have taken the initiative to create strategies and programs that contribute significantly to improve its development. Proof of this is higher education, as one of the growing missions in many universities is to become a direct contribution to society in promoting innovation, creating employment opportunities and social development (Wong et al. 2005). This, together with global competition, a scientific-technical revolution and progressive interest in welfare economics, educational centers in countries with competitive economies where the third mission is being increasingly adopted in the field (Campos 2007; Commission of the European Communities 2006 ; Gulbrandsen and Slipersaeter 2007 ; Palomares-Montero et al. 2008) make entrepreneurship education one of the central axes that can actively contribute to the acceleration of the economy. Recent strides to look upon the benefits of entrepreneurship embedded in education show that this actually relates to TEA values (Hern á ndez-S á nchez et al. 2019). Universities that employ entrepreneurship programs or links with outside sources lead to knowledge commercialization and spillover (Acs et al. 1994; Caiazza et al. 2014 ). There is also a link between entrepreneurial communities and universities ( Acosta et al. 2011 ; Bonaccorsi et al. 2013 ;Giunta et al. 2016), which shows the potential of these to contribute in local development. 2.3. Entrepreneurship Through the Lens of Intention According to Krueger and Carsrud (1993), entrepreneurial intention is a state of mind which indicates commitment to perform the behaviors that carry out business initiative. It has been argued that the best predictor of behavior is intentions (Ajzen 2002), and that this also applies in the entrepreneurship context (Liñán and Chen 2009). Because of this, intention models are highly studied in entrepreneurship literature ( Krueger 2017 ). Generally, it is studied using Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen 1991), or Shapero’s model ( Shapero and Sokol 1982 ). These broadly state that intentions not only predict behavior, but that it is planned, and comes a result of social support, feasibility, and the attitude towards the behavior. These models, nonetheless, are open to explore different variables and interactions, as well how applicable they are in different contexts (Krueger 2017). Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 4 of 13 As such, this study is inspired by these models to gauge the variability in which certain attitudes could relate to the probability of business creation by measuring intention, which we formalize as hypotheses in the next section using the following three variables: Perceived Behavioral Control, Subjective Norm, and Entrepreneurial Motivations. 2.4. Hypotheses Development Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC)—Some authors have found that people who perceive themselves as entrepreneurially-competent would be more likely to set up business ( Arenius and Minniti 2005 ;Langowitz and Minniti 2007;Minniti and Nardone 2006), and Zhao et al. (2005) found that education positively impacts self-efficacy. We hypothesize that PBC enhances a feeling of capability for business, and increase the likelihood of venture creation through intentions. For the purposes of this study, PBC is defined as “people’s expectations regarding the degree to which they are capable of performing a given behavior, the extent to which they have the requisite resources and believe they can overcome whatever obstacles they may encounter” (Ajzen 2002, p. 676) . Given our sample represents the student population, we assume this will be significant in all countries, as they represent a skilled and educated population. Hypothesis 1. Perceived Behavioral Control has a significant positive effect in Entrepreneurial Intentions for all countries. Subjective Norm—External valuation of entrepreneurship among different social circles is one of the common factors in intention-based models (Ajzen 1991;Liñ á n and Chen 2009; Shapero and Sokol 1982 ), which refers to the perceived social pressure to carry out a behavior or not (Ajzen 1991). Studies tend to show this variable has some inconsistency in predicting intentions; sometimes significant (Liñán and Chen 2009) sometimes not (Autio et al. 2001;Krueger et al. 2000; Turker and Selcuk 2009 ), and sometimes moderated by certain environmental variables, such as economic stress (Arrighetti et al. 2016) . Because of this reason, the subjective norm’s effect is questioned, but given we include multiple countries in our study, we intend to observe whether it is consistently significant, and to what extent is relevant in any of the countries under study. Hypothesis 2. Subjective norm has a significant, positive, effect in entrepreneurial intentions for all countries studied. Entrepreneurial Motivations—People are motive-driven into pursuing activities. Entrepreneurship is no exception for this. Some studies have explored the relationship of these motives and entrepreneurship, and seem to relate to performance (Collins et al. 2004;Manolova et al. 2008), meaning they are somewhat driven by it. In other words, people tend to want the prospects of entrepreneurship. We suspect these also work as pull factors into entrepreneurship, comprising part of the factors that lead to intentions. Motives for entrepreneurship are somewhat dynamic between different groups (e.g., Raposo et al. 2008) , but the data points that people who look for entrepreneurship also look for autonomy (Rauch and Frese 2007), self-satisfaction and security (Shabbir and Di Gregorio 1996); novelty (Kourilsky 1980), profitability, the sake for the challenge (Cromie 1987;Maes et al. 2014) and need for achievement, the latter of which Collins et al. (2004), found is actually related to economic success. Given this, and our interest to see whether these motives are part of what drives entrepreneurial intentions, we propose our third and last hypothesis: Hypothesis 3. There is a positive and significant relationship between entrepreneurial motivations and entrepreneurial intentions. Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 5 of 13 3. Research Methods 3.1. Sample Selection Our sample comprises of 800 students from four different countries: Argentina =200, Chile =200 , Panama =200, and Spain =200. Mean age was 24 years, and gender-wise, 335 students were male, while 465 were female. Table 1details our demographic samples by field, number of universities participated, whether they had previous work experience, and gender by their respective country. Table 1. Demographics. Argentina Chile Panama Spain Field Social Sciences 2 - 3 35 Humanities 2 - 1 6 STEM 64 187 3 13 Education 1 1 - 126 Business 91 3 173 1 Law - - - 1 Health 2 - - 1 Did not specify 38 9 20 17 Previous Work Experience As employee 176 66 79 95 Self-employed 75 15 16 10 Gender Male 99 132 54 50 Female 101 68 146 150 3.2. Instrument and Materials We used four variables related to entrepreneurial intention to test our hypotheses, which use a Likert scoring of five points must be answered from 1—Completely Disagree, to 5—Completely Agree: Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC) frames the level of agreement in which an individual believes it has the ability to control actions related to venture creation, as well the confidence of its performance over it. We include a mixture of perceived controllability and perceived efficacy in its item structure, as they share high commonality and work as a second-order hierarchy (Ajzen 2002). We used items from S á nchez-Garc í a(2010). An item example of controllability is: “I can control the processes of creating a new company.”, and an example of self-efficacy is “Starting a business would be easy for me.”. Confidence values show adequate results (α=0.913) Subjective Norm frames the level of agreement in which an individual perceives that entrepreneurial activities are favored or sponsored within different social circles. We used items from S á nchez-Garc í a(2010) for this variable. An item example is: “My closest friends value entrepreneurial activity above other activities.” Confidence values show adequate results (α=0.805). Entrepreneurial Motivations frames the level of agreement in which an individual would use entrepreneurial activities to pursue specific personal objectives. We used items from Sánchez-García(2010) for this variable. An example among these items would be to start a business “For a feeling of personal fulfillment”. Confidence values show adequate results (α=0.801). Entrepreneurship Intention frames the level of agreement in which a person is determined to start a business. We adapted items from S á nchez-Garc í a(2010) for this variable. An item example is: “I have the firm intention to start a business one day.” Confidence values show adequate results (α=0.953). Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 6 of 13 3.3. Data Gathering Sampling was realized using dates that student availability was highest, hence, we chose from September to November 2018 as the most adequate timeframe to obtain the sample. This was realized with the collaboration of educational contacts across educational institutions within each country, which prompted their students to take our questionnaire. The scale was administered online through a platform specifically designed for it, and was controlled exclusively by members of the Chair of Entrepreneurs of the University of Salamanca. The database comes exclusively from this source, meaning it was all organized and structured within this platform. In order to assure full completion, submission was only permitted only after all items were answered, meaning participants had a 100% completion rate. 3.4. Data Analysis To test whether there is any difference in these variables by country, we made an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Before proceeding, we tested for homogeneity of variance using Levene’s Test. If assumptions of equality of variance were to be violated, we would proceed to use Welch’s test, which accounts for this. To truly gauge the differences by country, we did a post-hoc analysis as well. To find out whether these variables have any effect on intention, we also made a regression analysis for each country using the software SPSS 23. For model fit measures, we used R-squared values, as well correlations. Internal consistency for each value was done by calculating its alpha coefficient. 4. Results Model fit indicators show that the variables are fit to use in our model for regression analyses. The four models showed adequate R-squared values: For Argentina =0.496, Chile =0.407, Panama =0.505 , Spain =0.373, Table 2shows correlations. We calculated the mean and standard deviation of each of the variables per country, which is illustrated in Table 3. Table 2. Correlations. Intention SubNorm PBC Motivation Intention 1 SubNorm 0.500 ** 1 PerCnt 0.694 ** 0.483 ** 1 Motivation 0.436 ** 0.211 ** 0.311 ** 1 ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Table 3. Mean, Standard Deviations and Error by Country. Variable Country Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Intention Argentina 3.4400 0.99370 0.07027 Panama 4.0367 0.71908 0.05085 Chile 3.7275 0.88652 0.06269 Spain 2.2733 0.91211 0.06450 PBC Argentina 3.2910 0.89146 0.06304 Panama 3.7610 0.77879 0.05507 Chile 3.2690 0.74148 0.05243 Spain 2.3210 0.85040 0.06013 SubNorm Argentina 2.9088 0.74059 0.05237 Panama 3.7800 0.74709 0.05283 Chile 3.2600 0.77120 0.05453 Spain 2.5350 0.77575 0.05485 Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 7 of 13 Table 3. Cont. Variable Country Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Motivation Argentina 4.0275 0.66300 0.04688 Panama 4.1263 0.70399 0.04978 Chile 4.2725 0.70719 0.05001 Spain 4.0288 0.79579 0.05627 Levene’s Test showed significant results for Intention (0.000) and PBC (0.002). Given these two variables violate the equality of variance assumption, we used the Welch statistic, and Games-Howell for Post-Hoc. Table 4shows ANOVA results, and Table 5shows mean differences between countries. Table 4. Robust Tests of Equality of Means. Fadf1 df2 Sig. Intention 161.323 3 439.018 0.000 PBC 106.742 3 441.208 0.000 SubNorm 97.235 3 442.144 0.000 Motivation 5.252 3 441.434 0.001 aAsymptotically F distributed. Table 5. Post-Hoc Analysis. Variable Country Contrast Mean Difference Sig. Intention Argentina Panama −0.59667 * 0.000 Chile −0.28750 * 0.013 Spain 1.16667 * 0.000 Panama Argentina 0.59667 * 0.000 Chile 0.30917 * 0.001 Spain 1.76333 * 0.000 Chile Argentina 0.28750 * 0.013 Panama −0.30917 * 0.001 Spain 1.45417 * 0.000 Spain Argentina −1.16667 * 0.000 Panama −1.76333 * 0.000 Chile −1.45417 * 0.000 PBC Argentina Panama −0.47000 * 0.000 Chile 0.02200 0.993 Spain 0.97000 * 0.000 Panama Argentina 0.47000 * 0.000 Chile 0.49200 * 0.000 Spain 1.44000 * 0.000 Chile Argentina −0.02200 0.993 Panama −0.49200 * 0.000 Spain 0.94800 * 0.000 Adm. Sci. 2019,9, 37 8 of 13 Table 5. Cont. Variable Country Contrast Mean Difference Sig. SubNorm Argentina Panama −0.87125 * 0.000 Chile −0.35125 * 0.000 Spain 0.37375 * 0.000 Panama Argentina 0.87125 * 0.000 Chile 0.52000 * 0.000 Spain 1.24500 * 0.000 Chile Argentina 0.35125 * 0.000 Panama −0.52000 * 0.000 Spain 0.72500 * 0.000 Spain Argentina −0.37375 * 0.000 Panama −1.24500 * 0.000 Chile −0.72500 * 0.000 Motivation Argentina Panama −0.09875 0.473 Chile −0.24500 * 0.002 Spain −0.00125 1.000 Panama Argentina 0.09875 0.473 Chile −0.14625 0.164 Spain 0.09750 0.565 Chile Argentina 0.24500 * 0.002 Panama 0.14625 0.164 Spain 0.24375 * 0.007 Spain Argentina 0.00125 1.000 Panama −0.09750 0.565 Chile −0.24375 * 0.007 * Significant at the 0.05 level. Regression analyses between the proposed variables yielded significant results for all variables within our models, except for Subjective Norm, which gave non-significant, low beta values for Argentina and Chile. PBC showed to have the highest regression weight in Argentina and Spain, however, Motivation’s regression weight was higher for the rest of the countries. Table 6shows regression weights and significance values for each country. Table 6. Regression Analysis. Model Fit PBC Subjective Norm Motivation Country Adj. R2βpβpβp Argentina 0.496 0.505 0.000 0.065 0.211 0.321 0.000 Chile 0.407 0.346 0.000 0.059 0.320 0.424 0.000 Panama 0.505 0.246 0.000 0.246 0.000 0.404 0.000 Spain 0.373 0.429 0.000 0.209 0.000 0.229 0.000 B=Standardized estimate; Dependent variable: Entrepreneurial Intention; Significance at the <0.05 value. 5. Conclusions and Future Work Results show that there is variability in attitudes between countries in almost all variables. The only non-significant differences come between Argentina and Chile in PBC, and in entrepreneurial motivations: Argentina with Panama and Spain; Panama with the rest of the countries, Chile with Panama; and Spain with Argentina and Panama. This means that, at the least, they all share a similar (and high) overview of entrepreneurship as means to obtain personal goals. Panama’s students rank higher than the other three countries regarding their sense of controllability and efficacy of potential entrepreneurial endeavors, have higher intentions, and as well perceive