An organizational attraction model of university entrepreneurship centre for web content

Abstract

University Entrepreneurship Centres (UEC) portray their organizational identity to potential students through their website in order to attract them to enroll in their entrepreneurship educational programs. Thus, UECs need to identify the influence of each organizational identity factors as their website content in creating the ideal attitudes in students as to attract them to their programs. The objectives of this study are, firstly, to identify the importance of UECs website content that leads to organizational attraction. Secondly, to propose an organizational attraction model for the university entrepreneurship centre web content to reflect on the influence of identified website content factors on the UEC’s organizational attraction. And thirdly, to evaluate the influence of identified website content factors on UEC’s organizational attraction. This research applied a quantitative method approach following a positivistic paradigm. Several models of organizational identity, image and attractiveness were employed and a research model was then developed based on a comprehensive literature review. A questionnaire was designed to enable the survey to be included as part of the data collection method. With 445 returned questionnaires in hand, the collected data were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results showed that the organizational attractiveness of UEC was affected by students’ attitude toward UEC as an organization, which itself was affected by UEC’s website design (WD), UEC’s identity (UECI) Perception, and Students attitude toward website (SATW). The results of this study showed that Industry Interaction (II), Producing Highly Qualified Graduates (PHQG), Team Working (TW), and Risk Taking (RT) are empirically proven to be the effective factors on Students Attitude Toward UEC as an Organization (SATO). Meanwhile, Innovativeness (INNO), Attracting Entrepreneurial Faculty (AEF), and Consultation (CONS) are empirically proven to be the effective factors on SATW which indirectly affect the SATO. Finally, the effectiveness of Proactiveness (PA) on SATW and SATO was not proven to be effective. These findings can be of pioneers in the field of UECs online attractiveness, and they contribute to the Organizational Impression Management. The proposed model in this study can be used by universities’ corporate office managers and web designers to enhance their UEC’s organizational attraction in the World Wide Web.