Developing attitudes and intentions among potential entrepreneurs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes and intentions of individuals towards entrepreneurship with the support of theory of planned behaivour (TPB). This research may contribute to the growing body of knowledge that has begun to explore attitudes and intentions of individuals for self-employment in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach – This is an initial part of a longitudinal study in which survey instrument has been adapted for data collection. A random sampling was applied to the students of public and private higher educational institutions of a developing country. For data analysis, Statistical Package for Social Science 20 versions for Windows were used to test the hypotheses through descriptive, Pearson’s correlations and multiple regression analysis techniques. Findings – Results of the study showed that all variables are reliable and valid. However, internal consistency among the variables has been found. By using Pearson’s correlations, entrepreneurship intention was found to be significantly and positively correlated to attitudes towards entrepreneurship. A high correlation was found between entrepreneurship intentions and attitudes towards behaviour and low correlation was between innovation and attitudes towards behaivour. However, all independent variables were found positively and significantly related to dependent variable except personal control. Research limitations/implications – This study possess limitations such as only quantitative data were obtained for educational institutions. Second limitation is collecting data from small number of samples. Third limitation is use of few variables with direct relationship approach. This study may support the management and practitioners of human resources management and organisational behaviour in assessing and evaluating employee attitudes and behaviours in the organisation. Originality/value – Based on real facts, this study provides empirical considerable evidence of individuals’ attitudes and intentions towards the entrepreneurship. Results indicate that that TPB theory factors such as attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control and personal and social attitudinal characteristic like achievement, self-esteem, and innovation are important for the development of entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions