Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
individuals may be classified into five tendencies: the need for achievement, the need for autonomy,
creative tendency, calculated risk-taking and drive and determination. It is apparent from the literature
reviewed that certain key competencies and skills, such as need for achievement, need for autonomy,
creativity, risk-taking and independence, are associated with enterprising behaviour.
Evidence from the other school, nurture perspective on entrepreneurship development, indicates that
empirical research has demonstrated a range of results regarding the relationship between education and
entrepreneurship. There is certainly not a clear correlation between the two (Stokes and Wilson, 2010).
However, the research does suggest that education in particular is important for female entrepreneurs
(Bates, 1995). Additionally, it is claimed that an individual will be more likely to exploit an opportunity if
they are better educated (Shane, 2003). Certainly, there has been a very significant growth in enterprise
and entrepreneurship education in recent years both at school and university levels, and this is likely to
have had an impact on the attitudes of young adults towards the possibilities of an entrepreneurial career
path (Athayde, 2009). Recent position on the nature-nurture argument is a need for some caution not to
over-state the role of specific personality type characteristics. As Shaver and Scott (1991) observe that not
even the most resolute advocate for enduring personality differences between entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs
would argue that a complete map of the human genome will reveal a specific gene that can
separate new venture founders from everyone else. Nevertheless, a number of general traits or personality
characteristics have been put forward as important influences in entrepreneurship and they include need
for achievement; need for autonomy; locus of control; risk-taking and entrepreneurial self-efficacy
(Vecchio, 2003). It is against the background of the reviewed literature and a consensus of the influencing
factors of entrepreneurship that it is hypothesised that entrepreneurship education at KNUST aids in the
enterprising competencies and skills development as well as influencing students’ career intentions. The
following three sub-hypotheses are formulated for testing:
H1: A tertiary educational programme at KNUST, at large, engenders students’ enterprising
competencies and skills (such as creativity, need for independence, ability to deal with ambiguity, need for
achievement and self-confidence) development.
H2: An entrepreneurship educational programme at KNUST engenders students’ enterprising
competencies and skills (such as creativity, need for independence, ability to deal with ambiguity, need for
achievement and self-confidence) development.
H3: An entrepreneurship educational programme at KNUST influences students’ career intentions.
The study design
The study was designed in a manner to evaluate the impact of entrepreneurship education offered to the
undergraduate final year students at KNUST School of Business (KSB) in the 2009/2010 academic year
to solicit their perceived impact of their exposure to entrepreneurship education on the development of
five key enterprising competencies and skills development. With the total population of 310, ten percent
(31 students) were randomly selected for the administration of questionnaire. The valid data were coded
and results were analysed using an SPSS computer package. Significance of test results is reported in the
three ways suggested by Coolican (1990, p.174), based on the probability level (p): ‘significant’: 0.05 > p
< 0.01; ‘highly significant’: 0.01 > p < 0.001; and ‘very highly significant’: 0.001 > p. All probability
values reported are based on two-tailed tests as each comparison has two possible directions. In addition
two educationalists from Business and entrepreneurship were interviewed to gain further insights from the
survey findings.
FINDINGS
Three enterprising competencies and skills that received strong approval ratings on a five-point scale in
terms of degree programme’s ability to engender on the part of the respondents were independence (4.0),
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