Antecedents of entrepreneurial actions among business university alumni

Entrepreneurial actions (EA) contribute significantly to economic and intellectual growth. EA and its predictors have been widely studied among student populations, but only scarcely among alumni. Applying a configurational approach, this study examines the impact of individual characteristics, resources, environment and education on entrepreneurial action in a sample of alumni of an Austrian business university. The results of binary logistic regression suggest a significant and positive association with EA and traditional entrepreneurial personality traits such as risk-taking propensity, need for achievement and sufficient financial resources. Interestingly, we find a significant negative connection between internal locus of control and perceived usefulness of social capital, which we posit signal the shifts caused by the global events in entrepreneurial environment, reflecting the sample characteristics. Our study contributes to research on predicting realized entrepreneurial actions, providing new insights on entrepreneurial personality as well as entrepreneurship education, calling for more contributions on alumni samples.