What is it about?
This study examines how adolescents think about their future careers when choosing between entrepreneurship and employment. It also explores the kinds of goals they want their future work to support. Some young people are mainly motivated by individual goals such as income or work satisfaction, while others are more strongly motivated by communal goals such as creating social impact or helping restore the natural environment. Using data from 139 adolescent-parent pairs in Greece, the study investigates how adolescents’ personal traits and their parents’ characteristics and attitudes combine to shape these intentions.
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Why is it important?
Young people are entering a world of work that is changing rapidly because of economic uncertainty, automation, and artificial intelligence. Understanding what drives their career intentions is therefore important for educators, policy-makers, and families. The findings show that there is no single pathway to entrepreneurial or employment intention. High entrepreneurial intention is consistently linked to entrepreneurial self-efficacy, while employment intention is associated with different combinations of personal and parental factors. The study also shows that many adolescents want work that combines income with meaning, including social and environmental purpose. This can help schools, governments, and organizations design better support for young people’s future careers.
Perspectives
What makes this study especially interesting is that adolescents do not appear to think about careers only in traditional terms such as “secure job versus risky business”. Many of them are also asking what kind of impact their work will have on society and the environment. The findings suggest that career intentions are shaped by complex combinations of self-beliefs, gender-related traits, parental context, and values. They also suggest that many young people are looking not only for income, but also for purpose.
Dr. Xenia J. Mamakou
Athens University of Economics and Business
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Adolescents’ entrepreneurial or employment intention for individualistic and communal business purposes, Small Business Economics, August 2026, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11187-026-01267-8.
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