Entrepreneurial career adoption model: A way forward

Abstract

This study is aimed at proposing a conceptual “entrepreneurial career adoption model” which examines the entrepreneurial career choice using an integrated career planning approach. Entrepreneurial career adoption model stems from social cognitive career theory. It argues that contextual affordance (entrepreneurial education and its variables) together with person input (entrepreneurial personality) develops an entrepreneurial individual, who has entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and attitude. Such entrepreneurial individual opts to become an entrepreneur, if provided with favorable stakeholder support system. It addresses the following challenges of entrepreneurial education research. Entrepreneurial intentions were predominantly used everywhere as immediate entrepreneurial outcome in studies, which are aimed at measuring the effectiveness of entrepreneurial education despite of their inability to truly represent the actual entrepreneurial activity. These studies also have excessively used rather abused the theory of planned behavior as their grounding pad and in their findings entrepreneurial education seems to directly influence the antecedents of humans’ intention to behave in a particular manner. Considering entrepreneurial education as “undifferentiated whole” has contaminated such influence and requires further excavation in such relationship. In entrepreneurship education-intention link, the role of entrepreneurial tendencies and abilities (entrepreneurial personality) of the students remained neglected despite of the fact that students with entrepreneurial tendencies and abilities are expected to have an advantage in learning entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. The specific moderating effects of stakeholder support system on entrepreneurial career choice of a student, need to be highlighted.