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This study examines the relationship among experiential entrepreneurship pedagogy, entrepreneurial competencies and employment status of business graduates in two European countries. A proposed mod...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent Finnish university students endorse entrepreneurial intent and the ways in which they position themselves in relation to entrepreneurship according to their self-perceived abilities or “ability self”.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted by means of an e-survey, and the participants comprised the sample of students (n=1,819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study.FindingsIt was found that a great majority of the students showed a relatively low intent to become an entrepreneur. The perception of abilities, such as innovativeness and ambitiousness-competitiveness, was positively related with entrepreneurial intent, whereas the perception of academic abilities and “conventional” employee skills indicated inverse associations.Social implicationsThe findings suggest that in terms of self-perceived abilities, entrepreneurship in an academic context is perceived as a rather restricted category to which only a few specific individuals have access. Accordingly, there is a certain tension between the tenets of entrepreneurship and corresponding abilities, and the ethos of universities and related high-valued abilities such as theoreticality and criticality.Originality/valueAlthough employability and entrepreneur intent have been widely studied, little is known about students’ identification with entrepreneurship according to their ability perceptions. The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on university students’ “internal employability” that involves students’ self-assurance and views of work-related relevance with regard to supposed abilities.

The aim of this study was to examine what sort of ability expectations university students have about the requirements of working life, and how the perception of these expectations relate to students’ perceptions of their own employability. The participants comprised a sample of students (N = 1819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study. They were asked to describe themselves according to a set of abilities and to then indicate those abilities that would be particularly important for them in the labour market. It was found that being stable and getting along with others were the most commonly considered generic capabilities for coping in working life. Furthermore, those university students who identified entrepreneurial skills and extroversion as predominant ability requirements were prone to have relatively pessimistic perceptions of their employability possibilities. Accordingly, the results of the study suggest that students’ views of their expected abilities tend to shape their perceptions of their employment prospects, particularly with regard to entrepreneurial skills.

In this research article, we systematically review literature on entrepreneurial affect and emotions in entrepreneurship education (EE) impact studies. In view of the increasing usage of entrepreneurial affect in the EE literature and the multiplicity of its facets, the main aim of this article is to create a definitional framework of affect. Based on the criteria of scientific standard and relevance for EE, we critically select 46 literature sources published from 1984 to 2017 and conduct a citation analysis of their impact. We then systemize and classify these sources using co-citation analyses as well as conduct a critical review of content similarities. As a result, we identify five main groups of the literature sources: (a) Affect in entrepreneurship research, (b) Affect in EE impact research, (c) Affect-cognition relationship, (d) Affect-conation relationship, and (e) Conceptual contributions. Our critical review of the literature sources further leads to the creation of the definitional framework of affect. The framework facilitates deeper understanding of affect and advocates terminological precision. It may, therefore, serve other EE researchers in conducting impact studies. In this vein, we formulate propositions for further research by combining the affect infusion model with the theory of planned behavior.

Employability is an increasing concern for university students. Our survey set out to examine university students’ perceptions of their employability and the ways in which these perceptions relate to positions that subsequently connect students to working life: students’ self-representational position or “ability self”, and students’ life-historical positions such as chosen field of study, phase of degree and working life experience. The participants comprised a sample of students (N = 1819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study. It was found that apart from the field of study, the perceived proximity to graduation and working life was associated with the perception of employability. Furthermore, a set of self-attributed capabilities was associated with students’ perceptions of employability, particularly extroversion, ambitious competitiveness, mental strength and the desired characteristics of a good employee; however, the attribution of academic skills showed opposing effects. It was concluded that both self-representational and live-historical positions are part of the construction of students’ optimism regarding their employability.

This paper empirically substantiates a novel tripartite framework for measuring learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education (EE) by employing structural equation modeling. Three types of learning outcome are estimated&mdash, cognitive, skill-based, and affective&mdash, following Bloom&rsquo, s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives. The study is based on a sample of 249 imminent and recent Bachelor-level graduates from the leading universities of Estonia. The key fit, reliability, and validity indicators show statistically that the tested framework can serve as an instrument for measuring the learning outcomes of EE. This novel instrument may also serve as an alternative to entrepreneurial intention-based models very frequently used in EE to evaluate the learning outcomes. The studied interrelationships demonstrate that (1) the affective outcomes correlate significantly with the cognitive outcomes (r = 0.273, p &lt, 0.001) and with the skill-based (r = 0.368, p &lt, 0.001) outcomes, a correlation between the cognitive and skill-based outcomes is also significant and comparatively high (r = 0.602, p &lt, 0.001), (2) the learning outcomes explain more variance in the cognitive and skill-based outcome constructs (44.7% and 81.0%, accordingly) than in the affective outcome construct (16.7%). Conclusions and implications for entrepreneurship educators and researchers are discussed.

The importance of evaluating the outcomes of entrepreneurship education (EE) has been widely acknowledged, but how to approach the evaluation and what models and measures to use are still subjected to academic debate. In this article, the authors present an application of the European Competence Framework (ECF) – the knowledge–skills–attitude triad that stems from Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. A survey of self-assessed entrepreneurial competences acquired in entrepreneurship education courses was carried out in five Estonian higher education institutions (HEIs). An exploratory factor analysis based on the sample of 249 respondents confirmed the empirical viability of the ECF for evaluating the outcomes of EE, while also indicating a wide spectrum of these outcomes. Knowledge about entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial skills and a range of affective outcomes was perceived to be stronger by those students who had higher aspirations to become entrepreneurs before entering the HEIs.

Over the last decade, European universities have been swiftly increasing the supply of enterprise education modules across all disciplines and embedding enterprise into non-business studies. There ...

Social ventures are increasingly lauded as catalysts for social change by the media, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, yet our understanding of the processes and mechanisms of how exact...

In this paper, we present results of the quantitative analysis, which examines a relationship between learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education (EE) and occupational status choices of Bachelo...

The research paper presents a holistic framework of the outcomes of entrepreneurship education (EE) at educational and socio-economic levels. Employing the general scientific research methods, monograph and logical construction, the author investigates the fundamental origins of the European Competence Framework for entrepreneurial learning and identifies a scientific justification for its implementation. This work is also the first to exploit an integral view of entrepreneurship as a combination of employability, intrapreneurship and venture creation – for measuring the impact of entrepreneurship education, and to set linkages between learning outcomes in real life and educational settings. The target audiences for this paper include entrepreneurship educators, researchers and EE decision-makers.