Impact of Entrepreneurial Traits on Entrepreneurial Intentions among Management Students.
| Author | Jain, Shakuntla |
Introduction
The concepts of entrepreneurship and entrepreneur are part of a complex economic process known as new venture creation, where the behavior (more than the characteristics of the creator of a new venture i.e., entrepreneur) is the trigger that will set the whole process into action. For economic prosperity and development of a society, entrepreneurship is very important. According to Smith (1776), entrepreneur is a proprietary capitalist who starts a business for commercial purpose and at the same time a manager is one who mediates between labor and consumer. Entrepreneur is an important agent who can be the means of social and economic changes in the world (Patel, 1990). In the view of Kirzner (1985), an entrepreneur is one who recognizes opportunities and initiates action to fill current unsatisfied needs. According to Dollinger (1995) entrepreneur establishes a new organization for the purpose of profit gain or growth under risk and uncertain situations.
An individual becomes a businessperson only if the total gratification expected from freedom, hard work, risk and profit combined for entrepreneurial activity is higher: it then becomes the best option (Shepherd & Douglas, 1997). Linan et al. (2011) terms the attitude towards entrepreneurship as one's associations about an entrepreneur. Attitudes toward entrepreneurship affects the extent to which interested persons will take the risks to establish a new venture. It is observed that entrepreneurship needs incomparable abilities, so a few people gets attracted towards it, if discredit is attached to failure, less individuals will be interested to take risks (Baumol, 1996; Wagner & Sternberg, 2004). As stated by Nybakk and Hansen (2008), there are two important parts of entrepreneurial attitudes: one, the capability to identify the opportunities and second, the ability to take calculated risks. Additionally, people with entrepreneurial attitude are more prone to start new venture.
The notion of locus of control concerns the extent to which an individual believes that what happens to him/her depends on his/her own attitude and so it can be controllable. On the contrary the events are the product of independent factors such as fate, luck or powerful others (Elliott, 1997). In the views of Rotter (1990) it is a psychological trait that is linked to the capability of people to control the life's events. Persons who have internal locus of control thinks that they are able to control and manage events of life while the ones who have external locus of control consider that life's events are the end result of external factors, like chance, fate or luck (Hay et al., 1990; Millet, 2005). Locus of control means one's belief about control over the events of life (Findley & Cooper, 1983). Hisrich and Peters (1998) believed that it is an attribute which indicates the sense of control that one has over life. Locus of control is characterized as a person's propensity to see the events that can be controlled internally or externally (Rotter, 1966). Locus of control has received significant attention among personality theories of entrepreneurship.
Rotter et al. (1972) explain that a person reacts to both internal and external stimuli in a way that is consistent with his or her unique experiences. When applied to the entrepreneurs, individuals with an external locus of control may believe that their endurance of success is determined by institutional forces and market that they cannot control. On the contrary, entrepreneurs having an internal locus of control think that success is determined by their own capabilities and efforts (Hattingh, 2007). Donckels and Miettinen (1990) stated that, to a varying degree, emphasis is placed on the entrepreneur as: the innovator; the bringer together of resources; the organizer of production and the risk--taker. Individuals having qualities that are required to innovate and start a new business accept the challenges and tolerate risks (Sugumar, 1996 cited in Sinha, 2004). Das and Teng (1977) stated that risk and risk behavior are imperative part in the literature of entrepreneurship.
According to Gurol and Atsan (2006) risk-taking propensity and entrepreneurship are historically associated, it replicating when someone decides to become an entrepreneur, it means he or she is ready to devote his or her time, effort, fund and even his or her social environment to create something new with value. According to yusof et al., (2007) risk taking propensity has noteworthy influence on entrepreneurial intention. The process of entrepreneurship begins with entrepreneurial intentions. The entrepreneurial process is one when a person think opportunity over threat (Fayolle & Linan, 2014). Recognizing opportunities is an intentional process hence, entrepreneurial intention is important for insight of entrepreneurship (Autio et al. 1997; Krueger et al., 2000). Entrepreneurial intention defined as individual willingness to perform entrepreneurial activities or to be self-employed or to establish new business (Dohse & Walter, 2010). Intention has been additionally characterized as the endeavors of an individual to carry out entrepreneurial behavior (Linan & Rodriguez, 2004).
Former researchers studied entrepreneurial characteristics and stated the entrepreneur's characteristics (Hornaday & Aboud, 1971). This investigation attempts to dissect qualities that have been contemplated by previous researchers' viz., risk taking propensity (Yusof et al., 2007; Luthje & Franke, 2003; Sexton & Bowman, 1985), internal locus of control (Othman & Ishak, 2009; Birdthistle, 2008) and attitude towards entrepreneurship (Volkmann & Tokarski, 2009; Veciana et al., 2005). In view of these differences, the present study is undertaken to find the relationship between entrepreneurial intention, attitude towards entrepreneurship, risk taking propensity and locus of control among students of management institutes of Indore district.
Review of Literature
Various studies have identified entrepreneurship as an important factor in the economic growth and development of a nation (Birley, 1989; Reynolds, 1987; Morris & Lewis, 1991; Shane et al., 1991). Resurrection (2011) suggests that entrepreneurship has been considered as one possible solution to address poverty issues by developing and underdeveloped countries. For creating wealth entrepreneurship is considered as a dynamic route, which is created by individuals who take the major risks in terms of value, time and professional obligation and also provide the value for some service or product (Hitt et al., 2001). Busenitz et al. (2000) said that entrepreneurship will always flourish in that country in which the government regulations and societal standards support fresh ventures and in which the knowledge of establishing new ventures is usually available.
The three main features of entrepreneurs and innovators are their attitudes, skills and knowledge (Garavan & O'Cinneide, 1994). Attitude is the psychosocial forces and cultural context of individual, and has the main role in influencing entrepreneurial behavior patterns (Davidsson, 1995). Past results agreed that attitude toward the behavior is an imperative variable while investigating the entrepreneurial intention (Farrukh et al., 2018). Veciana et al. (2005) measured and compared the attitude towards entrepreneurship of the university students and the enterprise formation in Puerto and Rico Catalonia, using a sample of 435 and 837 students respectively. The outcome showed a positive image about entrepreneurship and entrepreneur. Still, the perception of practicability was not very positive and only a trivial percentage have strong intention...
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