Impact of Business and Management Studies on Students’ Intentions to Become an Entrepreneur

Abstract

Abstract Views: 378

Entrepreneurship  has  been  considered  a  way  to  enhance  economic welfare  and  to  provide  employment  opportunities.  Entrepreneurial studies help in polishing the entrepreneurial skills. However, there is a need  to  understand  which  factors  affect   students’  perceptions  of becoming    entrepreneurs    and    the    relationship    between    their entrepreneurial  education  and  their  attitudes  (or  intentions)  towards entrepreneurship.  Some  of  the  students  start  their  business  studies without any intentions of becoming entrepreneurs while others do so to become  entrepreneurs.  They  want  to  start  their  own  business  may  be because  they  have  a  family  business  background  or  because  of  other intrinsic  or  extrinsic  interests.  This  paper  seeks  to  contribute  towards finding  whether  obtaining  a  degree  in  business  education  affects students’ attitudes and subjective norms (the perceived social pressure to engage  or  not  to  engage  in  a  behavior)  about  entrepreneurship,  and whether  these,  in  turn  affect  their  motivation  towards  becoming  an entrepreneur or not. In doing so, it enhances the understanding of how education   can   affect   students’   attitudes   toward   entrepreneurship, specifically  in  Peshawar.  This  study  was  carried  out  by  employing  a quantitative  approach  i.e.  an  OLS  regression  model.  TPB  (Theory  of Planned Behavior) and EES (Entrepreneurial Event Model) were used to check the intentions and behavior of students towards entrepreneurship. For this purpose, the final year students of BBA (Bachelor in Business Administration)  and  MBA  (Master  in  Business  Administration)  are selected at random from Institute of Management Studies (University of Peshawar) and Institute of Management Sciences. The analysis of results showed  that  there  is  a  positive  relationship  between  entrepreneurial studies  and  intentions  to  become  an  entrepreneur,  and  that  these  two variables are more important than the others.2