Student s Perception towards Entrepreneurial Career : A Descriptive Analysis (Survey in Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Padjadjaran)

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1 Student s Perception towards Entrepreneurial Career : A Descriptive Analysis (Survey in Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Padjadjaran) Mery Citra Sondari a, *, Popy Rufaidah a, Sutisna a, Sri Djatnika a a Department of Management and Business-Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia * address: mery.sondari@fe.unpad.ac.id Received: September 2015 Accepted: September 2015 ABSTRACT This paper presents a descriptive analysis of student s perception towards entrepreneurial career. Self-report written questionnaires were distributed to final year students of faculty of economics and business Universitas Padjadjaran as samples. The research found that the students of faculty of economics and business Universitas Padjadjaran have positive attitudes toward entrepreneurship, positive perception of subjective norms and high self-efficacy. Control variables of respondents namely gender, profession of father and profession of mother do not significantly affect those three variables, except for profession of mother that have correlation with variable of self-efficacy. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial career, Student s perception, Attitude towards entrepreneurship, Subjective norm, Self-efficacy, 1. INTRODUCTION Entrepreneurship activities are believed can be a tool to boost economy growth and to solve other economy problem such as unemployment (Sondari,2014). Universities have an important role in generating new entrepreneurs. In this case, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Padjadjaran have full awareness of this by including entrepreneurship-related courses in the curriculum, as well as encouraging students to undertake activities related to entrepreneurship outside the curriculum. However, when compared with the general trend of entrepreneurship within young people and which is also being encouraged by government, the interest to take entrepreneurship as the minor of study is not very encouraging in terms of number. Beyond the curriculum, students who attend programs related to entrepreneurship such as business plan competitions, IJBMES. All rights reserved 1

2 business incubators, as well as proposals creativity of students in the field of entrepreneurship, are much less than the number of students of the faculty of economics and business Universitas Padjadjaran in overall. Thus, there is a need for studying the student s perception towards entrepreneurial career, to be used as a basic consideration in evaluating learning programs related to entrepreneurship, both within and outside the curriculum in the faculty of economics and business Universitas Padjadjaran. Therefore, this paper aims to present descriptive analysis of student s perception towards entrepreneurial career. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Researcher define career as advancement within an organization throughout one's life (Lau, 2002). According to Coetzee that was cited by Farrington, Gray and Sharp (2011), a career involves a sequence of jobs, roles, and positions carried by an individual during his tenure. Farrington, Gray and Sharp then describes their definition of career as an individual experiences during their professional lives, through employment, roles and tasks that he did (Farrington, Gray and Sharp,2011). Although many scholars have mentioned the term 'entrepreneurial careers' in their papers, most of them do not define the term explicitly (See Lau, 2002; Ahmed et. al., 2010). According to Farrington, Gray and Sharp (2011), entrepreneurial career refers to "own and manage their own small businesses". The same opinion also stated by Moy, Luke and Wright (2003) that cited Bird (1989) to describe entrepreneurial career as the process of deciding to start and continue to operate as an entrepreneur. When discussing about the career of the entrepreneur, we must realize that it is different with the traditional careers within the organization (Lau, 2002). When traditional career refers to progression or sequence within lifetime of work in organization, it does not seem appropriate to be used as definition of entrepreneurial career, because entrepreneurs do not have promotion in IJBMES. All rights reserved 2

3 term of the movement of job to the higher level in the organization. In this context then, it seems more appropriate to define a career as a sequence of lifetime employment-related roles. Thus, we define entrepreneurial career as a decision to make one own business and to play a different role in running businesses and engage in entrepreneurial activity during one s working life. To develop a framework that will be used in examining perception of student towards entrepreneurial career, we choose theory of planned behavior (TPB) from Ajzen (1991). TPB is considered relevant for examining career choice-related variables (Farrington, Gary & Sharp, 2011; Autio, et.al 1997). The antecedents variables in Ajzen's (1991) model as listed by Engle,et.al (2010), consisting of (1) attitude or desire to the proposed behavior; (2) social norms that are considered subjective and people's opinions about the proposed behavior (especially the opinions of the people who influence); and (3) perceived control, or feasibility of the proposed behavior. 3. METHODOLOGY This study is a descriptive study with a cross-sectional design, that is frequently used and acceptable in similar types of research (Ajzen, 1987). The unit of analysis of this study is the students who are studying at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Padjadjaran. Self-report written questionnaires were distributed to 150 final year students. Final year students were selected because they had entered the stage where they have to decide their career choices when they are graduated, so that their choice will be more responsible, than their juniors (Frazier & Niehm, 2008). Matlay (2005) also noted that this kind of research is very relevant to be conducted in business school. The study included three variables, namely attitude towards entrepreneurship; subjective norm; and self-efficacy. Attitudes toward entrepreneurship operationalized as evaluative responses of individuals towards entrepreneurship. Subjective norm operationalized as IJBMES. All rights reserved 3

4 the degree to which people who are important to the individual approving the behavior in question. Self-efficacy is operationalized as the degree to which an individual believes his ability to do something. The indicators of all variabels are illustrated in table 1. Table 1 : Indicators of variables Variables Attitudes towards entrepreneurship Subjective norms Self-efficacy Indicators 1. Challenge 2. Apply knowledge 3. Autonomy 4. Self-expression 5. Welfare 6. Economic goal 1. Family 2. Close friend 3. Education environment 4. Society 1. Possibility of success 2. Difficulty level 3. Ability Before the instrument being used in this research, it had been tested for its validity and reliability. Based on the validity test using SPSS 17.0, the whole items in variable attitudes towards entrepreneurship are valid; items 3 and 4 on the subjective norm variable are not valid; and whole items on self-efficacy variable are valid. Those items which are not valid then were removed and were not included in subsequent testing for reliability. In this study, the reliability test was performed using Cronbach Alpha Formula techniques. Because the Cronbach alpha value for all three variables are more than 0,6, then all variables are considered reliable IJBMES. All rights reserved 4

5 4. DISCUSSION The number of respondents who return the questionnaires which were filled out completely as many as 122 people. Of these, the proportion of respondents by sex was close to the ideal, which is 49% for men and 51% for women. It is hoped that the research would not have a gender bias. Associated with parental background which usually affect the career choice of individuals, most of the respondents had a father with a job as an employee of a private / state enterprises (37%), the second most is civil servants (31%) and third place are entrepreneurs (18%), and there are also respondents who chose other fields, namely those who had fathers with professional professions such as doctors, dentists, and others. Unlike the case with fathers profession, the majority of respondents (45%) had a mother who is a housewife (in the questionnaire is listed as other professions), as many as 24% of respondents had a mother with a job as a civil servant who took second place and private employees in the third place as much as 19%. Profession as entrepreneur, ranks in the last with only owned by 12% of respondents. First variable, attitudes toward entrepreneurship, have six indicators, namely : challenges, application of knowledge, autonomy, self-expression, welfare, and economic goal. When respondents were being asked whether the profession of entrepreneur provide challenges to establish their own standards, the majority of individuals tend to have positive attitude, and only 4% of respondents who had negative attitude over these items. The next aspect that was being asked, whether the entrepreneurial profession can be a means to apply knowledge, was answered positively by the respondents, with 60% of respondents answered agree, and 30% of respondents answered strongly agree. This is probably because all respondents were university students who studied economics and business, which have studied related matters of business and entrepreneurial professions. Profession as an entrepreneur is also often associated with autonomy or freedom in decision making. This is also reflected in the total 94% of respondents who were more favorable to the statements in the questionnaire related to this aspect. When the IJBMES. All rights reserved 5

6 entrepreneurial professions associated with the freedom to express themselves, as much as 33% of respondents answered strongly agree and 51% responded agree, the remaining 16% of respondents responded negatively for this statement. Positive attitude that is shown by the majority of respondents, might have correlation with age, that in their age, university students tend to choose the things that give them the freedom to express themselves, and tend to avoid things that curb their freedom. Unlike the previous aspects, in the welfare aspects, respondents were slightly less positive, and as much as 29% of respondents to be negative. It is shown that respondent perceived that the entrepreneurial profession can provide lower welfare than other professions. Respondents who do not agree with this statement might use the information they acquire everyday, that their parents who do not have entrepreneurial profession also have a high welfare. If in the previous statement, respondents were asked to compare the welfare generated by entrepreneurial professions with other professions, in the next aspect, respondents were being asked for a response to the statement that the entrepreneurial profession gives them the possibility to be able to achieve the economic goals set by their own. The answer is a bit of an increase over the previous aspects, as many as 80% of respondents gave positive response. This means that although in term of welfare there are other professions that might give give higher welfare, but the entrepreneurial profession is considered sufficient to achieve their economic goals. The second variable to be studied is the subjective norm, or the support of the people close to individual in affecting the individual decision to become an entrepreneur. The first indicator examined is the presence of family support. For this indicator, the majority of respondents agreed that their family would be supportive if they choose to be entrepreneurs. The second indicator is the support of close friends. In this indicator, majority of respondents agreed, with higher yields compared with indicators of family support. It is quite relevant where the parents are usually more directive and have a desire for a profession that is run by individuals, compared with close friends IJBMES. All rights reserved 6

7 The third variable in this study is the level of self-efficacy which is an individuals belief in their ability to do something. The first indicator used is to measure the extent of the respondents consider themselves to be successful as entrepreneurs. As many as 88% of respondents have confidence in the success in entrepreneurship, and only 12% of respondents who did not agree. The second indicator is the extent to which respondents consider that entrepreneurship is in fact not a difficult thing. Respondents who answered disagree and strongly disagree, that means entrepreneurship is considered difficult, are quite a lot, if compared to the previous answer, which is 20% of the respondents. This is probably due to the entrepreneurial practice that is considered not as simple as in theory. Although the respondents are students of the faculty of economics and business, they realize there are other factors beyond the knowledge they have learned that is important for practice entrepreneurship. However, in general they still have confidence in the ability (skills and knowledge) that is sufficient to become an entrepreneur. In this research, we try to explore the role of control variables, namely gender, profession of father, profession of mother. We conducted the ANOVA test to test whether the differences in those characteristics are significant. ANOVA test results listed in the table 2 below Tabel 2 : Result of One-path ANOVA Gender Profession of Profession father mother Attitude towards entrepreneurship 0,476 0,969 0,424 of Subjective norms 0,701 0,808 0,679 Self-efficacy 0,827 0,584 0,004 Table 2 shows that all test results value of more than 0.05, except for items on the selfefficacy for variable control mother s profession. It means that control variables in this study, except for mother s profession, are not have significant differences in respondents' answers to the research variables. Profession of mother, significantly have correlation IJBMES. All rights reserved 7

8 with self-efficacy variable. To examine which categories of mother s profession that contribute in delivering these differences, we use Bonferroni post-hoc test (see table 3). Tabel 3 : Bonferroni post hoc test result Mean (J) Profession of Difference (I- Std. (I) Profession of mother mother J) Error Sig. Civil servant Private employee -1,17091,45923,072 Entrepreneur -,94483,52309,441 Housewifes,16426, ,000 Private employee Civil servant 1,17091,45923,072 Entrepreneur,22609, ,000 Housewifes *,40841,008 Entrepreneur Civil servant,94483,52309,441 Private employee -,22609, ,000 Housewife 1,10909,47909,134 Housewife Civil servant -,16426, ,000 Private employee *,40841,008 Entrepreneur -1,10909,47909,134 From the post hoc test, it was revealed that categories of profession of mother that contribute to the correlation between profession of mother and self-efficacy are private employee category and housewife category (marked with * in the table). It means, those respondents whose a mother who worked as a private employee and housewife have different levels on self-efficacy compare to those who have a mother with a profession as civil servants or entrepreneur IJBMES. All rights reserved 8

9 5. CONCLUSSION This paper has presented the descriptive analysis of student s perception towards entrepreneurial career. The findings have shown that the students of faculty of economics and business Universitas Padjadjaran have positive attitudes toward entrepreneurship, positive perception of subjective norms and high self-efficacy. Control variables of respondents namely gender, profession of father and profession of mother do not significantly affect those three variables, except for profession of mother that have correlation with variable of self efficacy. From result of the study, it has been revealed that respondents whose a mother who worked as a private employee and housewife have different levels on self-efficacy compare to those who have a mother with a profession as civil servants or entrepreneur. REFERENCES Ahmed,I., Nawaz,M.M., Ahmad,Z., Shaukat,M.Z., Usman,A., Rehman,W., & Ahmed,N., (2010), Determinants of Students Entrepreneurial Career Intentions : Evidence from Business Graduates, European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 15, No. 2, Ajzen, I. (1987). Attitudes, traits, and actions: Dispositional prediction of behavior in personality and social psychology, In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 20, pp. 1-63, New York: Academic Press. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, Autio,E.,Keeley,R.H,Klofsten,M.,Parker,G.G.G, & Hay,M, Entrepreneurial intent among students in Scandinavia and in the USA, Entreprise and Innovation Management Studies, Vol. 2 Number 2, 1 may 2001, pp Engle,R.L., Dimitriandi,N., Gavidia,J.V.,Schlagel,C., Delance,S., Alvarado,I.,He,X., Buame,S., & Wolff,B., (2010), Entrepreneurial intent A twelve-country IJBMES. All rights reserved 9

10 evaluation of Ajzen s model Of planned behavior, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Vol. 16 No. 1, 2010 Pp Farrington,S., Gray,B., & Sharp,G., (2011), Perceptions of an Entrepreneurial Career: Do Small Business Owner and University Students Concur?, Management Dynamics, Vol 20. No. 2, 2011 Frazier,B & Niehm, L.S.,(2008), FCS Students Attitudes and Intentions Toward Entrepreneurial Careers, Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, Vol. 100, No. 2, April 2008, Academic Research library, pg 17 Lau, V.P.,(2002), Developing nad Validating the Entrepreneurial Career Success Scale and Testing its Antecedents, ProQuest Dissertation and Theses Matlay,H.,(2005), Entrepreneurship education in UK business schools: Conceptual, contextual and policy Considerations Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 12 No. 4, 2005, Pp , retrieved from Moy, J.W.H., Luk,V.W.M., Wright,P.C.,(2003), Perceptions of Entrepreneurship as a Career: Views of Young People in Hong Kong, Equal Opportunities International, Volume 22 Number Sondari,M.C.(2014), Is Entrepreneurship Education Really Needed?: Examining the Antecedent of Entrepreneurial Career Intention, Elsevier- Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 115, 21 February 2014, Pages IJBMES. All rights reserved 10