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Purpose: The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) has been widely used in the entrepreneurship field to identify the effect of entrepreneurship education (EE) on entrepreneurial intentions (EI). However, it is poorly understood how individuals make decisions about entrepreneurship when they face attractive career alternatives. Thus, it is crucial to investigate further how TPB elements variate for business venturing when considering other career alternatives. This research investigates the effect of EE on the EI of engineering students by applying the modified model of TPB (Ajzen, 1991; Schlaegel and Koenig, 2014). It incorporates entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) as an additional antecedent of EI. This addition helps to differentiate its influence versus perceived behavioural control (PBC), which clarifies how they distinctively transmit the effect of EE. The social norms (SN) also are decomposed to descriptive and behavioural (injunctive) norms as individual antecedents of EI. Deconstructing SN is to evaluate business venturing as a career by identifying its social prevalence (descriptive norms) and its social approval (behavioural norms) (Cialdini et al., 1990). The research also highlights the role of the opportunity cost (OC) of business venturing as a career within TPB. The study investigates the OC components that matter most to final year students, how their anticipation of OC interacts with their attitudes (ATB) towards business venturing, and how it impacts their EI. Design/methodology: The researcher applies a randomized controlled field experiment on a sample of 247 final year engineering students at Kuwait University. An EE treatment comprising of the value proposition canvas, effectuation concepts, and the business model canvas were provided to the treatment group. Alternatively, the control group had a career planning session (active control group). Findings: The study results show that students' ATB and their PBC are the primary mediators and transmitters of EE on students' EI. However, EE did not change students' normative information about business venturing, indicating that it is an uncommon behaviour (descriptive norm) with weak social support (behavioural norms). The research findings also reveal that the OC of starting a business is not confined to the economic (pecuniary) cost. Students had concerns about a non-pecuniary cost represented by work enjoyment aspect. It mediates the influence of students' ATB on their EI. These results reconceptualize OC and show that its consideration is essential to extend the TPB predictability of EI since it considers the availability of alternative career options.

Feedback seeking seems ubiquitous in entrepreneurship. It is assumed to aid entrepreneurs in navigating the uncertainty associated with starting new ventures, innovating, and making fast strategic decisions. Yet our understanding of entrepreneurs’ feedback seeking is under-theorised as it is often only vaguely described as a single act to gain information. Additionally, puzzling findings, such as that not all entrepreneurs seek feedback, despite its potential benefits, are unexplained. This doctoral thesis represents an in-depth inductive study with 37 nascent social entrepreneurs to better understand why, why not, how, and with what consequences entrepreneurs seek feedback. The data informed a dynamic model of entrepreneurs’ ambidextrous feedback seeking for venture emergence. The findings advance our current understanding of feedback seeking among individuals at work, both entrepreneurs and employees, and provide practical insights for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship support organisations. Additionally, they enrich the broader entrepreneurship literature in relation to micro-foundations, hybridity in social entrepreneurship, communities of inquiry, and close social ties, as well as paradox theory.

Instructor-leadership is defined as a process whereby instructors exert intentional influence over students to guide, structure, and facilitate activities and relationships. This dissertation focuses on instructor-leadership specifically in the context of higher education module/classroom interactions. In this context, research focused on the dominant theory of transformational leadership. This dissertation seeks to offer a balanced perspective on instructor-leadership by examining both transformational and destructive leadership. In so doing, this dissertation takes the first step towards unpicking leadership behaviours in a module by developing context-sensitive measures of both transformational and destructive instructor-leadership. These measures were specifically adapted to the unique situation of instructors in higher education institutions. For the transformational instructor-leadership measure, an education-based secondary dataset of over 2,700 students across the UK was used. The findings indicated three potential quasi-transformational instructor-leadership dimensions. In an additional independent study, these three dimensions showed weak incremental validity, and failed to tap into charisma. Therefore, this educationally-developed measure was used to enhance the context-sensitivity of an already established organizational behaviour measure of transformational leadership. This enhanced measure captured four dimensions of transformational instructor-leadership including idealized influence, consideration, intellectual stimulation, and direction and congruence. Direction and congruence substituted for inspirational motivation or vision in the higher education module context. In the final study, the items derived from the secondary dataset were reworded to reflect personal transformational instructor-leadership, and there was good support for the combined measure’s factor structure as well as its validity. For the destructive instructor-leadership measure, 13 in-depth semi-structured student interviews were conducted in order to determine how students’ perceive destructive leadership in the unique higher education module context. The results of a thematic analysis indicated that destructive instructor-leadership may be conceptualized as consisting of three dimensions, including callous communication, chaotic carelessness, and irresponsibility. The final quantitative study partially confirmed these three dimensions showing that chaotic carelessness slightly overlaps with callous communication and irresponsibility, and another dimension labelled victimization also emerged from the data. Using both of the context-sensitive leadership measures, the final study examined student engagement and burnout as mechanisms that mediated the relationship between (a) transformational instructor-leadership and student achievement, and (b) destructive instructor-leadership and student achievement. The results partially supported the hypothesized relationships. Theoretical and practical implications, along with limitations and suggestions for future research, were discussed.