- 2015-03-09 (x)
- AIDS (Disease)--Prevention--South Africa (x)
- Kamau-Maina, Rosemary (x)
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Show moreThe importance of entrepreneurship to economic development is widely debated and acknowledged. With rising unemployment and growing disenchantment with corporate employment, more policy makers and scholars are turning to entrepreneurship and self employment as a solution to youth unemployment. College experiences and learning have the potential to change attitudes, beliefs and focus not only in a student’s general life outcomes but also in career orientation. Colleges therefore provide a window of opportunity for creating positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship and influencing students’ entrepreneurial self efficacy making careers in entrepreneurship more feasible and desirable. The manner in which these factors inter-relate is the essence of social cognitive career theory which postulates that environmental variables can moderate, mediate or directly affect the relationship between interest and career intentions or goals as well as the relationship between intentions and action. Research in higher education has shown student engagement to be one of the processes through which college impacts on student outcomes. The extent of this involvement is in turn influenced by college characteristics. This study explores the impact of college entrepreneurial orientation on students’ entrepreneurial self efficacy and attitudes towards entrepreneurship on the one hand and their entrepreneurial intentions on the other as mediated by students’ involvement in college activities in and out of class. Student involvement or engagement is hypothesized to impact on entrepreneurial intentions through increased exposure to vicarious experience, expanded information and supportive networks. Engagement is also hypothesized to mediate the influence of prior exposure to entrepreneurship, gender and perceptions of formal learning on self efficacy and attitudes towards entrepreneurship. Keywords: College environments, engagement, self efficay, attitudes, intentions
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreKenya has a population of approximately 34 million with those aged 35 years and below making up over 75% of the population. In 2003 and 2005, when the national unemployment stood at 40%, the youth accounted for about 78% and 67% of the national unemployment in the two years respectively. This encompasses all youth including recent college and university graduates. Taking into account that these numbers include recent university and college graduates, the resulting waste of resources is enormous. It therefore makes economic sense to have more youth engage in entrepreneurship to combat unemployment and stem the resource waste. For a country that has traditionally raised college graduates to expect wage employment, this requires a concerted effort cutting across all facets of the society. The current study focuses on the role that colleges can play in enhancing entrepreneurial intentions among the youth.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreA preliminary survey among the Kenyan youth shows that a small but growing number of college graduates are choosing to venture into small-scale businesses on graduation. The researchers interviewed some youth entrepreneurs and found that their experiences in college may have positively influenced their attitudes towards entrepreneurship. This research aims at exploring the link between the experience in colleges and the intentions towards entrepreneurship among college graduates. Institutions that operate in competitive environments are more likely to be innovative and to be more risk-oriented than institutions that do not face competition. In Kenya, privately owned institutions of higher learning do not get any funding from the government, unlike public institutions, and must therefore continuously come up with innovative ways of keeping afloat and ahead of the competition. Students in such institutions may therefore unconsciously experience an entrepreneurial environment. If in addition such institutions encourage students to freely express themselves, regularly consult with students and keep them informed of any plans and projects, invite students suggestions for improvement etc, autonomy supportive environments are created. Consequently, students who study in such environments are more likely to be self-assured and this, coupled with the exposure to entrepreneurship is likely to result in an inclination to go into self-employment as opposed to choosing corporate employment. This study investigates graduates running their own businesses with a view to gaining an insight on how the environments and experiences in universities and colleges may have influenced their career choice of self-employment.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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