Model for Assessing Impact of Social Support on Entrepreneurial Intention

What is it about?

As an academician in a business school, we are often asked "why all of our business graduates do not become entrepreneurs?" "Why only few of them become entrepreneurs? Are they chosen ones?" The answer is not very simple, one must look at other external factors which are beyond academics and business education domain e.g. entrepreneurial skills and social support from ones' social network. Studies have revealed that nascent entrepreneurs look for support from their close social network e.g. father in law, spouse and other family members. Many of us might argue that entrepreneurship is an individual phenomenon or entrepreneurs are born; not made ... however, at the same time, we all have witnessed many competent people around us, who had very good award winning business ideas/plans ... but their plans never materialized, due to lack of resources and financial support from their social network. Therefore, we argue that individual competence and ones' entrepreneurial characteristics are only one piece of the puzzle like business education ... and picture is not complete without putting all the pieces of a puzzle together. As the picture begins to emerge and the puzzle is nearing completion, you begin to see that one piece is missing, and it is that piece (i.e. the Social Support), that is the one, that is the most crucial, for without it the picture is not complete and never will be ... But we will only find the last piece, the one, when all the other pieces have been put together. If you want to learn more about that missing piece of puzzle ... you should read full text of our latest paper on the role of social support in determining entrepreneurial intention in our business graduates. Click here for a Free full text https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/ET-06-2017-0092

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Why is it important?

Developing on the base of theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between perceived social support (SS) from one’s social network and entrepreneurial intention (EI). Moreover, mediating effect of other constructs of TPB, i.e., attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) is also examined in this study. It is expected that the findings of this study can help policy makers, researchers and academicians in better understanding of critical role of SS for understanding the intentions of nascent entrepreneurs.

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