Founder, Academic, or Employee? A Nuanced Study of Career Choice Intentions

Dataset on the effect of perceived educational support on entrepreneurial intention among Vietnamese students

This article illustrates the dataset that explores the effects of perceived educational supports on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, attitude towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and entrepreneurial intention. The scales from previous studies were adopted to develop the questionnaires using the five-Likert scale. 2218 fulfilled responses were included in the sample, which recruited from fourteen universities in Vietnam with the similar index. Also, a quantitative method was utilized to examine the dataset. Cronbach's alpha was used to test the reliability of each construct, then explore factory analysis was employed to estimate factor loadings of each observed variables and the validity and discrimination of variables was tested through confirmatory factor analysis. Then, the structural equation modelling was used to estimate the effects of perceived educational support on entrepreneurial intention as well as the other paths.

An Empirical Comparison of Graduate Entrepreneurs and Graduate Employees Based on Graduate Entrepreneurship Education and Career Development

Entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword. Entrepreneurs may either reap great rewards or suffer great damages from crises in the near future. Therefore, it is crucial to offer entrepreneurship education to students. This would help them broaden their horizons in graduate employment. This study compares graduate entrepreneurs and graduate employees in China, focusing on their career development. The results of the study show that graduate entrepreneurs have higher career satisfaction than graduate employees. In addition, graduate entrepreneurs have greater work commitments than graduate employees, although they also have higher job stress. We also found that most graduates in either group could earn a living easily. A certain number of the two parties spent more than what they earned mainly to provide financial support to their families.

Academic entrepreneurship intentions: a systematic literature review

Purpose

The objective of this research is to have an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge regarding the variables that encourage the individuals, within the academic community, to get involved in knowledge exploitation activities. It is influenced by the observation that there is a need for more systematic scrutiny of micro-level processes to deepen our understanding of academic entrepreneurship (Balven et al., 2018; Wright and Phan, 2018). The study proposes to answer to ‘What are the drivers of academic entrepreneurial intentions?’ and ‘What are the emerging topics for future research?’

Design/methodology/approach

The paper follows a Systematic Literature Review process (Tranfield et al., 2003) and adopts a four-step process format from previous literature reviews within the entrepreneurship context (Miller et al., 2018). From the results within Scopus and Web of Science databases, this research selected, evaluated, summarised and synthesised 66 relevant papers.

Findings

This study provides a factor-listed representation of the individual, organisational and institutional variables that should be considered in the strategies defined by the university. Moreover, the study concludes that the push factors behind the intentions are multiple, context-dependent, hierarchy-dependent, heterogeneous and, at the same time, dependent on each other and against each other. Lastly, the study contributes to academic entrepreneurship literature, especially entrepreneurial intention literature, which has recently received more researchers' attention.

Originality/value

The study corroborates that the individual factors, directly and indirectly via Theory of Planned Behaviour, strongly impact the academics' intentions. While the focus of the papers under review was an in-depth analysis of a selected group of factors, this SLR sought to compile the factors that were identified and provide a broader picture of all those factors to be considered by the university management. It contributes to the identification and clustering of the drivers that encourage academics to engage in knowledge valorisation activities, differentiating them by activity. For the practitioners, this list can be used by university managers, TTOs and department managers, and policymakers to guide questionnaires or interviews to analyse their academics' intentions and adequately support its academic engagement strategy. Lastly, this study also suggests worthwhile avenues for future research.

Entrepreneurial university ecosystems and graduates' career patterns: do entrepreneurship education programmes and university business incubators matter?

Purpose

This paper provides insights about how graduates' career patterns (i.e. academic entrepreneur, self-employed or paid employed) are influenced by entrepreneurial university ecosystems (i.e. incubators and entrepreneurship education programs).

Design/methodology/approach

By adopting Douglas and Shepherd's utility-maximising function, the influence of one entrepreneurial university ecosystem on graduates' career choices was tested using a sample of 11,512 graduates from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) in Mexico.

Findings

Our results show the critical role of entrepreneurial universities ecosystems in facilitating employability options as academic entrepreneurship for ITESM's graduates. The study shows some insights about how graduates' risk aversion and work effort are positively influenced by the university business incubator and entrepreneurship education programs, respectively.

Practical implications

Diverse implications for stakeholders have emerged from our results. These implications are associated with potential benefits of implementing programmes oriented to engage academic entrepreneurship within Latin American universities.

Originality/value

Entrepreneurial universities provide a range of employability alternatives for their students, such as to be self-employed, academic entrepreneurs or paid employees. In this scenario, entrepreneurial universities have configured entrepreneurial ecosystems (educational programmes, business incubators and other infrastructures) to support potential entrepreneurs (students, academics, staff and alumni). Despite the relevance of the environmental conditions on individuals' occupational choices, few studies have explored the role of the entrepreneurial university ecosystems on graduates' employability. In this vein, our study contributes to some academic discussions: (1) the role of context on career choice models (Ilouga et al., 2014; Sieger and Monsen, 2015), (2) the role of incubators and entrepreneurship education on fostering academic entrepreneurship on the graduates' community (Nabi et al., 2017; Good et al., 2019; Guerrero and Urbano, 2019a) and (3) the effectiveness of the entrepreneurial university ecosystems on graduates' employability (Herrera et al., 2018; Wright et al., 2017).