Entrepreneurial intention among community college students: A conceptual attempt to understand early adoption of entrepreneurial career

Abstract

A desire to engage in entrepreneurial endeavours is merely a behavior, which is intentionally planned. In this vein, competing models have been reported in the literature in an attempt to understand entrepreneurial intention phenomenon with Shapero's model of the entrepreneurial event taking the lead followed by Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior. The former model emphasized perceived desirability, perceived feasibility and propensity to act while the latter model introduced personal attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior although conceptually both models’ proposed constructs are somewhat similar or identical. These constructs are widely used in the literature to understand the entrepreneurial intention in various contexts. However, viewing it from an academic institution’s perspective flagged that entrepreneurial education is equally important in activating entrepreneurial intention among students who are nascent entrepreneurs of the future. Therefore, this study is an attempt to suggest a conceptual framework linking entrepreneurial tendency driven by the Theory of Planned Behavior and entrepreneurial intention. Additionally, entrepreneurial education is proposed as a mediator in understanding the relationship between entrepreneurial tendency and entrepreneurial intention. This research also offers relevant supporting literature and direction for future empirical investigation in order to contextualize this study.