Entrepreneurial intentions amongst Master of Business students in effi ciency-driven economies: South Africa and Poland

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the relevance of the constructs of the Liñán and Chen (2009) Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire for Master of Business students in two effi ciency-driven economies, and to test the empirical validity of an entrepreneurial intention model. After the number of factors and the related items of each had been determined by exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a confi rmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to verify the factor structure and to enable testing of the hypotheses regarding the existence of relationships between observed variables and their underlying latent constructs. The CFA confi rmed the entrepreneurial intention (EI), personal attitude (PA), perceived behavioural control (PBC), entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), social valuation (SV), closer valuation (CV) and entrepreneurial Competence (EC) variables as a preliminary step for the structural equation model (SEM) analysis. The comparative fi t index and the root means square error of approximation (RMSEA) indicated that the proposed model had an acceptable fi t. The model parameters of all the components of the model were then determined to test the hypotheses relating to the model. Signifi cant relationships between personal attitude and entrepreneurial intention and perceived behavioural control and entrepreneurial intention were proven. No other signifi cant relationships between variables were identifi ed.

Key words: Entrepreneurship; entrepreneurial intention; small and medium enterprises; efficiency-driven economies; Poland; South Africa