Self-Efficacy, Family Business Background and Technopreneurial Intentions among Non-Business Students

Abstract

Most countries including Malaysia recognize the importance of self-employment in employment creation and economic growth. As such, efforts have been intensified to create more self-employment opportunities. The inculcation of entrepreneurship values and changing the mindset as to view self-employment as a viable alternative to salaried employment are being intensified including in institutions of higher education. The idea of becoming an entrepreneur is more and more attractive to students because it is seen as a valuable way of participating in the labor market. Most of new venture opportunities exist within nearly all academic disciplines, however the majority of entrepreneurship initiatives at universities are offered by business schools and for business students. In fact, most studies that have been conducted to explore entrepreneurial intent among university students only focused on business students. Thus, this study examined the technopreneurial intent among non-business students and to test whether self-efficacy and the role of family business background may influence the non-business student intention to become a technopreneur in the future. The study will focus on engineering technology students (non-business students) whom currently taking Technopreneurship module. The result indicates that both factors, self-efficacy and the role of family business background play an important role in influencing the students’ decision to become technopreneur. The findings implicate that academics need to play a significant role in encouraging this group of students to become technopreneur by providing more awareness on the benefits of becoming technopreneurs and in turn, contributing to the growth of the country’s economies and competitiveness.