people and planet

13
ENTREPRENEURSHIP SKILLS
Entrepreneurship, also a focus of target 4.4, requires
a mix of skills. The European Commission defined
entrepreneurship as ‘the mindset and process
needed to create and develop economic activity by
blending risk-taking, creativity and/or innovation
with sound management, within a new or existing
organisation’ (European Commission, 2003). Accordingly,
entrepreneurship skills encompass ‘creativity, initiative,
tenacity, teamwork, understanding of risk, and a sense of
responsibility’ (European Commission, 2014).
It helps to group these skills into three categories.
Technical skills are specific to the industry in which the
business is active. Management skills include planning,
finance, accounting, marketing and quality control.
Personal skills include self-control and discipline, creativity,
persistence, leadership and the ability to manage risk
(OECD, 2014d). A need for achievement and autonomy,
self-efficacy, innovativeness, stress tolerance and a
proactive personality have been identified as relevant
characteristics (Rauch and Frese, 2007). Inevitably, there is
no straightforward approach to measuring such a diverse
set of cognitive and non-cognitive attributes.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor included indicators
on self-perceived capabilities in a survey of entrepreneurial
activity across 60 countries in 2015. These perceptions
were lowest in Europe at 43% and highest in sub-Saharan
Africa, where more than 70% of adults in four of five
participating countries were not only confident but also
saw the most opportunities for entrepreneurial activity
(GEM, 2016; OECD, 2015i). These results raise the question
of comparability, as neither business characteristics nor
risks are comparable between poor and rich countries.
The research project on Assessment Tools and Indicators
for Entrepreneurship Education went a step further to
TABLE 13.2:
Dimensions of entrepreneurial skills
Entrepreneurial skills
Entrepreneurial mindset
Entrepreneurial knowledge
Connectedness to education
Connectedness to future career
Source: Moberg et al. (2014).
Exploration: creativity
Evaluation: planning and financial literacy
Exploitation: marshalling resources, managing ambiguity, teamwork
Self-efficacy, locus of control, self-esteem
Perceived knowledge about how to assess business opportunities; role and function
entrepreneurs have in society; and knowledge about different types of entrepreneurial
career options
(=student-teacher relationship)
(=student enterprising activities, work experience, and intention to start a company)
validate self-reported measures of entrepreneurship skills
using a sample of students across 13 European countries
and 3 age groups: 10 to 11, 16 to 17 and 20 or older
(Moberg et al., 2014). The tools covered five dimensions
(Table 13.2). They have not yet been applied to monitor
differences between countries.
Research-based studies of entrepreneurship within
countries offer interesting insights. In Sri Lanka, a survey
collected background data on a sample of wage workers,
micro-firm owners, and larger firm owners with more
than five employees to identify differences between
them in terms of measures including cognitive ability,
entrepreneurial personality, financial literacy and risk
attitudes. Larger firm owners had significantly higher
cognitive abilities and were more competitive and better
organized than micro-firm owners. Moreover, over two and
a half years, the few own-account workers who were more
similar in skills to larger firm owners were more likely to
expand by hiring more employees (de Mel et al., 2010).
In Peru, as part of a village microfinance programme, a
training session of 30 to 60 minutes per week was added
over a period of 1 to 2 years. The training focused on
basic business practices, such as how to treat clients,
where to sell, the use of special discounts and selling
on credit. Participants demonstrated greater business
knowledge and some better business practices, such as
reinvesting profit in their business and maintaining sales
records (Karlan and Valdivia, 2011).
For entrepreneurship skills to be gained and to be effective,
relevant topics and exercises should be explicitly integrated
in school curricula and assessed as an education outcome.
In Europe, the most common concrete learning outcomes
at the upper secondary education level were attitudes
such as initiative, risk-taking and problem-solving, which
were specified in 19 of 36 education systems (European
Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2012a). Spain specified the
broadest range of entrepreneurship-related outcomes in
its secondary education curricula, including assessment
criteria. Overall, though, assessment guidance remains
limited not just in Europe but around the world despite
the variety of programmes on offer, as in the case of
Palestine (Box 13.2).
In general, there is little clarity to guide this aspect
of target 4.4 because of the wide diversity of possible
outcomes, targeted groups and modes of delivery; the
tenuous links between programmes and outcomes; and
the complexity of measuring some key outcomes.
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CHAPTER 13 | TARGET 4.4 – SKILLS FOR WORK