The Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy of Nascent Entrepreneurs: The Case of Two Economies in Transition

This research is concerned with entrepreneurial intentions of two specific groups of nascent entrepreneurs - innovators and graduate students in two transition economies – Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The analysis gives further contribution to previous research on predictions of entrepreneurial events using items inventory of entrepreneurial self-efficacy previously developed within the Anglo-Saxon cultural environment and now tested in a specific environment of post communist economist economies. Results show that there are relatively more nascent entrepreneurs among innovators than among graduate students of business. When average scores on self-efficacy are involved, innovators feel comfortable when dealing with innovation and risk, while graduate students express higher self-efficacy in the business-related aspects of a new venture – marketing and finance. We found a reasonable fit to our sample of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy construct as introduced by Chen et al (1998).