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Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2015

Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention:

born or made?

Kim Hoe Looi*

School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts,
Taylor’s University,
No. 1, Jalan Taylor’s, 47650 Subang Jaya,
Selangor, Malaysia
Email: kimhoe.looi@taylors.edu.my *Corresponding
author

Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore
Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management,
Griffith Business School,
Griffith University,
170 Kessels Road, Nathan QLD 4111, Australia Email:
c.khoo-lattimore@griffith.edu.au
Abstract: Entrepreneurship is a source of innovation, job creation and economic
growth, as such it is pivotal to attract the young and the educated to become
entrepreneurs. Undergraduates are an important source of nascent entrepreneurs
in the future and consequently it is interesting to explore their intention for
opportunity entrepreneurship. However, there is intellectual disagreement
whether entrepreneurs are born or made. This is a post-positivist study, cross-
sectional and the level of analysis is individual. Hierarchical regression analysis
shows that family business background and gender explained largest and
significant incremental variance in students’ entrepreneurial intention.
Consequently, the findings from this study lend support to the notion that
entrepreneurs are more likely born. Knowledge generated from this study is
valuable in the design of entrepreneurship education, training and development
policy to promote opportunity entrepreneurship.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; background factors; entrepreneurial intention; born or

made; opportunity entrepreneurship.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Looi, K.H. and Khoo-
Lattimore, C. (2015) ‘Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention: born or
made?’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp.1–20.

Biographical notes: : Kim Hoe Looi graduated with an honours degree in

Science majoring in Statistics and obtained his MBA in Applied Finance and
Investments from National University of Malaysia (UKM). He teaches
entrepreneurship, management and marketing subjects. He is in his final stage of
PhD study in the field of international entrepreneurship in the Faculty of
Business and Accountancy in University of Malaya, Malaysia.

Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 2 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Tourism,

Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University,
Australia. Prior to Australia, she was on sabbatical as a Fulbright Scholar at the
University of Florida, USA.

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Intention for
new venture creation: an empirical study on final year undergraduates’ presented
at International Conference on Technology Management, Business and
Entrepreneurship (ICTMBE), Malacca, Malaysia, 18–19 December 2012.

1 Introduction

The entrepreneurial intention of university students consistently attracts scholarly interest.

To encourage entrepreneurship, it is essential to identify and understand the explanatory
variables in different countries and contexts (Dana, 1997, 2001, 2014). In 2014,
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business published several research
conducted in countries located in Asia and Africa. In view of the current high
entrepreneurial level, Hisrich et al. (2007) has labelled 21st century generation as
generation entrepreneur.
For an overview of historical and recent entrepreneurship development in Malaysia,
please see Dana (2001, 2014) and Isenberg (2010). In the last few years, there are regular
competitions on business plans conducted within tertiary institutions in Malaysia with
support from multi-national corporations as well as reality shows on TV, both foreign and
local, where participants compete for investments for their business ideas. In addition, The
Star, a Malaysian daily, regularly publishes success stories of micro and small
entrepreneurs who started their businesses for a variety of reasons. All these created a lot
of publicity and awareness on entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Furthermore, in Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor 2011 Global Report (Kelley et al., 2012), Malaysians surveyed
rated media attention for entrepreneurship at 73.5, entrepreneurship as a good career choice
at 51.5 and high status to successful entrepreneurs at 51.3. The extant literature suggests
that the level of legitimation or values in a society determines the level of entrepreneurship
and from the evidence mentioned above, it can be assumed that the level of legitimation
for entrepreneurship in Malaysia today is higher than before.
Entrepreneurship education is gaining momentum among business schools in Malaysia,
with increasing emphasis either as a single subject or as a programme of study. This trend
seems to reflect the prevalent values of Malaysian society and Etzioni (1987) suggests that,
ceteris paribus, the higher the level of legitimation in a society, the more the educational
system will educate and train entrepreneurs. Although the labour market continues to offer
employment opportunities to fresh graduates, entrepreneurship can be a more satisfying
and rewarding career for many fresh graduates especially with the many new venture
opportunities and support provided by various government agencies.
On the other hand, entrepreneurship is even more relevant when supply of jobs in the
labour market shrinks. Knowledge about entrepreneurship will be very useful when fresh
graduates are unable to find their ideal jobs or retrenched when the economy slows down,
forcing some fresh graduates to turn to entrepreneurship. In the entrepreneurship literature,
this is termed necessity entrepreneurship. Etzioni (1987) uses the term psychic side-effects
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
3

to describe resentment that followed if behaviour is changed due to changes in constraints

vis-à-vis if it is due to a change in preferences. In addition, he theorises that acceptance of
the risk-taking involved will be much higher if entrepreneurship is legitimated than when
it is perceived as a matter of necessity. In view of this, the Malaysian Government has
stated its intention to emphasise opportunity-based entrepreneurship and move away from
necessity-driven entrepreneurship (The Sun, 2012).
Even though past studies examined students’ entrepreneurial intention in different
countries, this study aims to add to the existing body of knowledge by empirically testing
whether students’ entrepreneurial intention is born or made. This study also provides a
useful complement to previous studies by carrying out entrepreneurship research in a
developing and less innovation-driven economy like Malaysia. It is believe that this study
will extend theory because data is collected from a different population using a different
measurement instrument as suggested by Caliendo and Kritikos (2012).
This study proceeds as follows: In the first section relevant literature is reviewed in
order to formulate research purposes and research framework. The next section describes
the research design, followed by sections on results, discussion and limitations. The study
ends with conclusions, contributions and suggestions for future research.

2 Literature review

2.1 Entrepreneurship and new venture creation

Entrepreneurship can play an important role in the economic development of a country
(Coviello and Munro, 1995; Hisrich et al., 1996; Knight and Cavusgil, 1996; Busenitz et
al., 2000; Bosma and Levie, 2010). The literature distinguished two broad types of
entrepreneurship. Opportunity entrepreneurship refers to starting a business to exploit a
perceived unexploited or under-exploited business opportunity, i.e., the voluntary nature
of participation in entrepreneurship. Necessity entrepreneurship, on the other hand, refers
to starting a business as the best option available for employment but not necessarily the
preferred option (Acs et al., 2008; Dana, 1997; Hechavarria and Reynolds, 2009).
Furthermore, new firm creation has been identified as a critical factor in driving the
economic growth of a country (Low and MacMillan, 1988) and generating employment
opportunities (Birch, 1979 cited in Davidsson, 2002; Birley, 1986 cited in Ireland and
Webb, 2007; Acs and Audretsch, 1988 cited in Brouwer, 2002).
Entrepreneurial intention refers to the intention of an individual to start a new business
(Engle et al., 2010) and it is a strong indicator of potential entrepreneurship (Kelley et al.,
2012). However, undergraduates have not yet reached the point of planning to start a
business (i.e., they are at the pre-nascent stage). Therefore, this study assesses their level
of interest or desire in entrepreneurship. In this vein, this study actually assesses students’
interest in opportunity entrepreneurship.
However, the level of entrepreneurship differs across different stages of economic
development (Acs et al., 2008). In the first stage of economic development with agricultural
and small-scale manufacturing, the level of self-employment is high. In the second stage of
manufacturing economy, rates of self-employment are decreasing because return from
employment is greater than return from self-employment. In the third stage of services
economy, entrepreneurial activities are rising due to better return from self-employment.
In other words, there is a U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurial activity and stage
of economic development (Acs et al., 2008).

Figure 1 U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurial activity and stage of economic

development (see online version for colours)
 4 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

There are two other important implications that can be derived from this theory. The first
implication is that necessity entrepreneurship is prominent in the first stage of economic
development whereas there are more opportunity entrepreneurship in the third stage of
economic development. The second implication is that the level of entrepreneurship seems
to be moderated by the stage of economic development of a country.
The level of entrepreneurial intention among younger generation could be lower due to
the increase in inter-generational mobility within business families as children of business
owners increasingly opt for a different career than their parents (Blau and Duncan, 1967
cited in Wennekers et al., 2002). Besides, the younger generations are better educated than
their parents who have no better choice but to opt for necessity entrepreneurship. Better
education will open up wider employment opportunities, provide higher return and security
from employment, as well as pursuing professional ambitions rather than engaging in
entrepreneurship.

2.2 Determinants of entrepreneurial intention

It is well-documented in the existing literature that environmental factors such as history,

region, ethnic, social, culture, economic, legal and politics can motivate entrepreneurial
behaviour such as new venture creation (Vesper, 1982; Sexton, 1982; Shapero and Sokol,
1982; Dollinger, 2003; Hechavarria and Reynolds, 2009). Minniti and Nardone (2007)
contend that firstly, there are factors that influence entrepreneurship across all countries,
i.e. universal determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour. Secondly, there are aspects of
entrepreneurship that are culture specific. A significant amount of research in various fields
has investigated what variables are universally correlated to the decision to start a business
and most scholars agreed that it is a complex decision to start a business.
As a result of the myriad of determinants of entrepreneurship, some authors have
attempted to categorise these factors using various approaches. For instance, the
Schumpeterian school argues that entrepreneurs tend to be born whereas the Kirznerian
school argues that it is possible to train entrepreneurs (Dana, 2001). Arenius and Minniti
(2005) propose four factors, which are demographic (age, gender, education and work
status), economic (household incomes), perceptual variables (opportunity perception, self-
efficacy, fear of failure and knowing other entrepreneurs) and environment (technology,
level of economic development, culture, institutions and country effects). Arenius and
Minniti’s (2005) proposition is similiar to Thompson’s (2009) personal, cognition and
environment classification. Wennekers et al. (2002) broadly classify the determinants of
entrepreneurship into macro level (technology, economic, culture and institutions) and
micro level (age, ethnicity, level of education attained, gender and previous experience in
self-employment). Naffziger et al. (1994) hypothesise that the decision to behave
entrepreneurially is the result of the interaction of:
1 personal characteristic
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
5

2 personal environment (family status, sex, entrepreneurial family background and

education)

3 business environment (societal attitudes, economic climate, availability of accessible

funds, entrepreneurship-supportive network and incubators)

4 ideas

5 personal goals

6 expectation-outcome comparison

7 implementation-outcome perception.

One approach to broaden the understanding of venture creation is to examine demographic

characteristics (Shook et al., 2003). Existing literature documented the importance of
demographic factors (also referred to as personal factors), for example, family background,
prior education, social connections, networks and gender to produce entrepreneurial
potential (Veciana et al., 2005; Licht, 2010; Kelley et al., 2012).

2.2.1 Family business background

Role models and family are conjectured to relate to the emergence of entrepreneurship
(Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986; Shapero and Sokol, 1982). However, role model and family
are not synonymous because role model is a wider concept that includes other people
besides family.
Current literature indicates that family background can be a push or pull factor for
entrepreneurship (Dyer and Handler, 1994). The push factor or negative motivation is a
result of poverty, insecurity and neglect childhood. On the other hand, the pull factor or
positive motivation comes from family business with parental role models, significant
family responsibilities at a young age or opportunities to engage in entrepreneurial
activities. As a result, these children learned and developed the skills, values, confidence
and experience for an entrepreneurial career in the future. Previous research suggests that
higher level of prior family business exposure is positively associated with entrepreneurial
intention (Begley et al., 2005; Carr and Sequeira, 2007; Matthews and Moser, 1996;
Veciana et al., 2005; Wang and Wong, 2004).
2.2.2 Gender
Many studies found that male generally have stronger entrepreneurial intention than
females (Blanchflower, 2004; Begley et al., 2005; Delmar and Davidsson, 2000; Matthews
and Moser, 1996; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Veciana et
al., 2005; Wilson et al., 2007; Wang and Wong, 2004; Xavier et al., 2012; Zhao et al.,
2005). In some studies, gender was found to be the strongest distinguishing factor for
entrepreneurial intention (Delmar and Davidsson, 2000; Matthews and Moser, 1996).
Although majority of these studies drew data from student samples, nevertheless the results
compliment the consistent findings of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that
entrepreneurship among women is lower than men (Xavier et al., 2013). Minniti and
Nardone (2007) argue that the difference in the propensity to start a business across gender
can be universally attributed primarily to perceptual factors.

2.2.3 Age
Findings across studies, time, regions and gender found that entrepreneurship rates
generally are the highest in the 25 to 34 years-old cohort (Delmar and Davidsson, 2000;
Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Wennekers et al., 2002; Xavier et al., 2012) although some
also noticed a trend towards entrepreneurship at a younger age (Wennekers et al., 2002).
This seems to be the main reason why student sample is very common in entrepreneurial
 6 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

intention research (see Begley et al., 2005; Engle et al., 2010; Krueger et al., 2000; Linan
and Chen, 2009; Linan et al., 2011; Wang and Wong, 2004) since they will face important
career decision in the near future.
Even though undergraduates have not yet reached the point of planning to start a
business (i.e., they are at the pre-nascent stage) but researchers are interested to assess
undergraduates’ level of interest in new venture creation because they are an important
source of nascent entrepreneurs in the future. Furthermore, it is likely that undergraduates
may decide to become an entrepreneur prior to actual identification of an entrepreneurial
opportunity (Engle et al., 2010).

2.2.4 Work experience

Through work experience gained from employment, potential entrepreneurs develop and
enhance their knowledge, skills and commercial awareness. In other words, a potential
entrepreneur’s past and present experience act as an incubator that exerts a central and often
pivotal influence on their capability to effectively engage in opportunity recognition and
exploitation (Cooper and Park, 2008).
Besides work experience, family background and education should also increase self-
efficacy of potential entrepreneurs. However, academic knowledge alone is insufficient and
it is the commercial experience that is pivotal in driving home the realities of the market
(Cooper and Park, 2008). Moreover, the work experience of men and women is different
(Brush, 1992).

2.2.5 Education
Unlike age and gender, there is intellectual disagreement on the impact of education on
entrepreneurship (Blanchflower, 2004; Crant, 1996; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Wang
and Wong, 2004; Wennekers et al., 2002). In addition, the effect of education on
entrepreneurship also differs in different country, for example, in Europe the relationship
is negative, while the opposite is true in the USA (Blanchflower, 2004). This anomaly is
plausible because university education is vital in the development and nurturing of
entrepreneurial capital (Cooper and Park, 2008). On the other hand, education will open up
more employment opportunities, provide higher return and security from employment, thus
reducing the intention for entrepreneurship.
Some researchers found that specialisation in business studies positively and strongly
influence entrepreneurial intentions (Fukuda, 2014; Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999).
Langowitz and Minniti (2007) found that education has no significant relationship to
women’s intentionality to start businesses, which means that even a higher level of
education attainment may not stimulate more women entrepreneurs. In contrast, Wilson et
al. (2007) suggest that providing access to entrepreneurship education is critical to promote
women entrepreneurs because education can raise their levels of self-efficacy and
ultimately their entrepreneurial intention. Delmar and Davidsson (2000) posit that most of
the gender differences in intentionality can be confounded by variables such as education
and experience. In order to investigate a pure gender effect, education level and work
experience, amongst other variables, will have to be controlled.
One study notes that although the education attainment of women entrepreneurs is
comparable to men but most often they studied liberal arts rather than business, engineering
or technical subjects (Brush, 1992). In some studies, comparison of entrepreneurial
intention between sexes was based on engineering, science and computing student sample
(e.g., Wang and Wong, 2004).
Although there are suggestions for entrepreneurship education (Isenberg, 2010) and its
inclusion in entrepreneurial intentions models (Peterman and Kennedy, 2003), however,
there is minimal research conducted on the specific effects of entrepreneurial education
(Shook et al., 2003). Therefore, instead of investigating the effect of education in general,
it is more fruitful to control the level of education and education specialisation to examine
the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention.
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
7

On the basis of prior studies and theory, the present study will delimit itself to personal
factors such as gender, education and role models (Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986; Crant,
1996; Delmar and Davidsson, 2000), particularly family under role models. The extraneous
variables controlled are age, education level, education specialisation (this study examines
business and hospitality students only) and work experience.

2.3 Research framework

Based on literature reviewed, the model to explore whether undergraduate students’

entrepreneurial intention is born or made is formulated below. In this model, family
business background and gender are proxies for entrepreneurial intention that is born while
education and entrepreneurship education are proxies for entrepreneurial intention that is
made.
Figure 2 Research framework

Family
business
background

Gender
Entrepreneurial
intention

Education

Entrepreneurship
education

2.4 Research objectives

All the theoretical underpinnings above provide support to investigate the influence of
background variables and education on students’ entrepreneurial intention. This will not
only enrich the existing research concerning entrepreneurship outside Western context
(Hisrich et al., 2007) but also has practical implications such as inform the design of
government policy and education syllabus to attain a higher level of legitimation to promote
entrepreneurship among undergraduate students.
Therefore, the first aim of this study is to investigate undergraduates’ intention for new
venture creation in the future. The second aim is to identify variable(s) (i.e., education
which is operationalised in this research as programme of study and previous
entrepreneurship education; gender and family business background) that will predict
students’ entrepreneurial intention. In other words, is students’ entrepreneurial intention
born or made?

2.5 Research design

The research design suggested by Cavana et al. (2001) guided the researchers on a series
of rational decision-making to choose the most appropriate research method for this study.
 8 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

This includes purpose, extent of interference, study setting, unit of analysis and time
horizon.
There are two purposes for conducting this study. The first purpose is to describe
undergraduate students’ intention to create new venture in the future. The second purpose
is to test cause-effect to explain the nature of relationships. The extent of researcher
interference is minimal; the study setting is non-contrived and the time horizon is cross-
sectional. The level of analysis is individual because the first element of a psychological
approach to new venture creation is focus on the person. In other words, this study is
interested in person who can conceive possibilities, is innovative and motivated to create
new venture (Shaver and Scott, 1991).
Data collection instrument is a multiple-item questionnaire consisting of two parts. Part
1 consists of four intention items indicating different aspects of intention to start business
within the next five years or so after student’s graduation (henceforth shortened to ‘in the
future’). The response scale is a 6-point Likert scale: ‘1’ means ‘extremely likely”, ‘2’
means ‘quite likely’, ‘3’ means ‘slightly likely’, ‘4’ means ‘slightly unlikely’, ‘5’ means
‘quite unlikely’ and ‘6’ means ‘extremely unlikely’. The intention items are informed by
empirical literature on intention and entrepreneurial intention, followed the suggested
procedure for developing better measures (Churchill, 1979) and positively worded. Part 2
collects student’s personal data such as programme of study, gender, whether family is
involved in business and whether student has previous entrepreneurship education. The
questionnaire is in English because the medium of instruction in this tertiary institution is
English, therefore, it is assumed that all students should be proficient in English. Pilot
testing was carried out on 31 second year students and there was no report of any difficulty
to answer all questions except for two questions in Part 2 because the sentences were
somewhat poorly structured that led to confusion. Consequently, some changes were made
in the final questionnaire to make these two questions unambiguous and easier to
understand.
In this study, sampling design is purposive, where final year undergraduate students
from the School of Business and the School of Hospitality Management are selected.
University student sample is very common in entrepreneurial intention research (see Linan
and Chen, 2009; Engle et al., 2010). The rationale for choosing these two schools is firstly,
it is presumed that these students are more likely to create new venture in the future due to
their fields of study. Secondly, final year students should have already thought about what
they want to pursue after graduation, i.e., making a career choice. Thirdly, final year
students are a good proxy for those young people who will start a firm (Linan and Chen,
2009; Kelley et al., 2012). Finally, student sample also offers the advantages of similar age
and qualifications, making it more homogeneous (Linan and Chen, 2009). Participation is
confined to Malaysian students to achieve as much homogeneity as possible.
A research assistant briefed undergraduate students on matters such as purpose of this
research; the voluntary nature of the survey; the assurance of the anonymity of their
responses; and a word of encouragement to participate. Students filled in the questionnaires
in class and returned them on-the-spot. Data analysis technique is quantitative using SPSS
software to analyse psychometric properties such as reliability, generate descriptive and
inferential statistics. For intention, the mean is calculated by averaging all the responses to
four items indexing intention. This is the most common approach to create summated scales
by averaging all the items in the scale (Hair et al., 2006).

2.6 Results
A total of 768 questionnaires were collected. A quick check was performed in class when
collecting the questionnaires from undergraduate students and questionnaires were
returned to them on-the-spot to fill in any missing response. After data cleaning, the final
sample size is 755 respondents which include 300 students who are studying Bachelor of
Business programme, 258 students who are studying Bachelor of Hospitality Management
programme, 52 students pursuing Diploma in Business programme and 142 students
pursuing Diploma in Hospitality Management programme and three students did not
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
9

indicate their programme of study. Overall, students from the School of Business made up
47% of the sample and students from the School of Hospitality Management made up 53%.
The sample consists of 45% male and 53.5% female whereas 1.5% of students did not
answer this question on gender.

Figure 3 Breakdown of respondents by programme of study (see online version for colours)

Data was checked for normality by visually examining normal probability plot (Hair et al.,
2006) for intention construct. The line representing the actual data distribution mostly
followed the diagonal line, thus indicating normality of data. The Cronbach’s alpha for
intention is 0.904 and is therefore reliable.
Table 1 shows students’ intention to start new business in the future by programme of
study. Intention is measured by 1 = ‘Extremely likely’ and 6 = ‘Extremely unlikely’,
therefore smaller numbers indicate higher levels of intention to start business in the future.
From Table 1, the overall intention to start business in the future is 2.77 and interpreted as
‘slightly likely’. For the School of Business, the minimum intention score is 2.32 for the
Diploma in Business programme and the maximum intention score is 2.86 for the Bachelor
of Business programme. For the School of Hospitality Management, students’ intentions
for both Bachelor and Diploma programmes are same as overall mean, i.e., 2.77. Between
these two schools, it seems that students from the Diploma in Business programme have
the highest intention to start business in the future while students from the Bachelor of
Business programme indicated the lowest intention level (Table 1). One-way ANOVA
reveals that the intentions to start business in the future are statistically different across
programme of study (p-value = 0.031), which means that the effect of programme of study
on intention to start business in the future is significant and the power to detect the effect
is very strong (0.999) (Table 2). Post hoc test using Tamhane revealed the differences in
intentions to start business in the future are between:
1 Diploma in Business programme and Bachelor of Hospitality
programme 2 Diploma in Business programme and Bachelor of Business
programme.
Table 1 Intentions to start business by programme of study
Programme of study Mean Remark

Overall 2.77

Bachelor of Business 2.86 Above overall mean

Diploma in Business 2.32 Below overall mean

 10 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

Bachelor of Hospitality Management 2.77 Similar to overall mean

Diploma in Hospitality Management 2.77 Similar to overall mean

Table 2 Tests of between-subjects effects

Effect F P-value Observed power

Programme of study 2.972 0.031* 0.704

Note: *Significant at 0.05 level

The intentions to start business in the future are statistically different across gender, where
male students are more likely to start new business compare with female students. Next,
the intentions to start business in the future are statistically different for different family
backgrounds with higher intention for those from family involved in business. Finally, the
intention to start business in the future for students who have previous entrepreneurship
education is statistically different from students without previous entrepreneurship
education. Students who previously studied entrepreneurship exhibit a higher level of
intention to start business in the future (Table 3).

Table 3 Intention to start business by background factors

Intention

Standard
Mean deviation t-test

Gender Male students 2.56 1.20 p-value =

Female students 2.96 1.19 0.000*

Family Family is involved in business 2.62 1.13 p-value =

background 3.07 1.33 0.000*
Family is not involved in business
Previous With previous entrepreneurship 2.59 1.12 p-value =
entrepreneurship education 1.26 0.002*
education Without previous entrepreneurship 2.87
education
Note: *Significant at 0.05 level

Figure 4 shows the relationship between percentage of students who have previous
entrepreneurship education within various programme of study and intentions to start new
business in the future. There is a positive linear relationship between these two variables.
Figure 4 Positive relationship between percentage of students who have previous
entrepreneurship education within various programme of study and intentions (see
online version for colours)
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
11

4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
% studied entrepreneurship

Analyses were performed to test the combined effect of gender and programme of study;
gender and family background; gender and previous entrepreneurship education;
programme of study and family background; programme of study and previous
entrepreneurship education; family background and previous entrepreneurship education;
programme of study, family background and previous entrepreneurship education. All
combined effects were found non-significant at 0.05 level, indicating the absence of
combined effect.
To answer the second question whether students’ entrepreneurial intention is born or
made, regression technique with dummy variables was employed. From Table 4, the three
regression models using forward inclusion are significant (p < 0.05). The coefficients for
family business background and gender are significant at 0.01 level while previous
entrepreneurship education is significant at 0.05 level. The adjusted R2 for Model 3 is
0.061. To determine the relative importance of predictors, absolute values of beta and the
order in which the predictor enter into the regression model are used (Malhotra, 2007).
Family business background has the largest coefficient (–0.174 and significant at 0.01
level). Next is gender (–0.161 and significant at 0.01 level) followed by previous
entrepreneurship education (–0.082 and significant at 0.05 level). Besides this, from the
three models in Table 4, family business background is always the first predictor and gender
is the second predictor to enter into the model. The last to enter the model is previous
entrepreneurship education. Hence, these results are interpreted to mean that family
business background and gender are stronger predictors of students’ entrepreneurial
intention. In all three models, programme of study was excluded, which means it is non-
significant. The VIFs are around 1 and the average VIF is not substantially greater than 1.
Furthermore, tolerance is above 0.2. Both tests confirmed that there is no multi-collinearity.

Table 4 Results of regression

Standardised
Adjusted R square Sig. F coefficients
Model Sig.
R square change change
Beta
1 Family business background .028 .030 .000 –.172** .000 no vs. yes
2 Family business background .056 .029 .000 –.179** .000 no vs. yes
Gender female vs. male –.169** .000
3 Family business background .061 .007 .021 –.174** .000 no vs. yes
Gender female vs. male –.161** .000
 12 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

Previous entrepreneurship –.082* .021 education no

vs. yes

Notes: Dependent variable is entrepreneurial intention *Significant

at 0.05 level. **Significant at 0.01 level.

2.7 Discussions
2.7.1 Intentions to start new business in the future
The survey results of entrepreneurial intentions are consonant with recent research by
Kelley et al. (2012). With a moderate level of intention to start business in the future among
undergraduate students, it is not surprising that the Entrepreneurial Intentions percentage
among Malaysians reported by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is low. The
Entrepreneurial Intentions in Malaysia is only 8.7, which is tenth lowest among 54
countries surveyed by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Kelley et al., 2012) and below the
54 countries’ average of 10.3 (the lowest is 2.4 and the highest is 55.8).
A plausible explanation for the moderate level of undergraduates’ intention to start new
business in the future despite the high level of legitimation is the U-shaped relationship
between entrepreneurial activity and stage of economic development (Acs et al., 2008).
Since Malaysia is classified as an efficiency-driven economy by Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor, in this stage of economic development the return from employment is higher than
self-employment, thus the level of entrepreneurial intention is low. At the same time, this
moderate level of entrepreneurial intentions may also be attributed to better educated
generation with wider employment opportunities, higher return and security from
employment, as well as pursuing professional ambitions rather than engaging in
entrepreneurship.

2.7.2 Family business background

The findings on the influence of family are consistent with previous studies (Begley et al.
2005; Carr and Sequeira, 2007; Veciana et al., 2003; Wang and Wong, 2004). The positive
influence of parental role models enables their children to ‘learn by example’ (Caliendo
and Kritikos, 2012). Since 83% of students from Diploma in Business programme came
from families who are involved in business, consequently they are more likely than other
students to create new venture in the future and therefore should be targeted to develop
their entrepreneurial potential.

2.7.3 Gender

Intention for new venture creation in the future is lower for female undergraduates and this
finding is consistent with lower entrepreneurship rate of women than men (Begley et al.,
2005; Blanchflower, 2004; Caliendo and Kritikos, 2012; Kelley et al., 2012; Langowitz
and Minniti, 2007; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Veciana et al., 2003; Wang and Wong,
2004; Wilson et al., 2007; Xavier et al., 2013). The results suggest that although female
have comparable level of education with male, they are still less incline toward a career in
entrepreneurship.
This study reasons that Malaysia, being a developing and less innovation-driven
economy, shows comparable pattern with industrialised countries in terms of lower
tendency among women toward entrepreneurship. Verheul et al. (2012) attribute this
phenomenon to both a relative lack of willingness among women and the existence of
gender-specific obstacles. From this study, these gender-specific obstacles seem to exist in
both Western and Oriental cultures and therefore merits further scholarly investigation.
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
13

2.7.4 Programme of study

As signalled by the result, the intentions to start business in the future differ significantly
across programmes of study. It appears that potential entrepreneurs are more likely to come
from some programmes of study relative to other programmes of study.
Nevertheless, this study argues that the overall intention to start business is moderate for
both schools and more needs to be done to develop a larger pool of potential entrepreneurs.

2.7.5 Previous entrepreneurship education

The results also suggest that knowledge about entrepreneurship gained from previous
entrepreneurship education can increase the likelihood of new venture creation in the
future. There is a positive linear relationship between percentage of students with previous
entrepreneurship education within various programme of study and intentions to start
business in the future. The result corroborates with Fukuda’s (2014) findings that
entrepreneurial experience positively affects entrepreneurial intention. Students who have
previous entrepreneurship education indicate higher intentions probably as a result of
higher perceptions of desirability and feasibility (Begley et al., 2005; Peterman and
Kennedy, 2003; Shapero and Sokol, 1982) or self-efficacy (Carr and Sequeira, 2007).
Therefore, there is a high possibility that by exposing students to entrepreneurship, their
intentions to start new business in the future will increase. Consequently, there will be a
larger pool of potential entrepreneurs in the future who are expected to respond more
favourably to future surveys of entrepreneurial intentions by Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor and more importantly higher entrepreneurial activity level in the future.
2.7.6 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention: born or made?

The four variables of family business background, gender, programme of study and
previous entrepreneurship education individually affect undergraduate students’
entrepreneurial intention.
The central thrust of this study is to explore whether students’ entrepreneurial intention
is born or made via the examination of the relative importance of family business
background, gender, programme of study and previous entrepreneurship education. For the
specific purpose of this study, the proxies for born entrepreneurs are family business
background and gender whereas the proxies for made entrepreneurs are programme of
study and previous entrepreneurship education.
Family business background appears to be the most important predictor of students’
entrepreneurial intention. This is very plausible because students observed what their
parents are doing almost on a daily basis over a long period of time. This is coupled with
the responsibilities and opportunities provided by their parents as part of family’s training
and learning. The regression results also compliment previous findings that gender has a
strong influence on entrepreneurship (Delmar and Davidsson, 2000; Matthews and Moser,
1996).
Programme of study is non-significant in the regression model, thus extending the
intellectual disagreement on the impact of education on entrepreneurship as well as the
differing effect of education on entrepreneurship in different country. Even though
students from these two schools are presumed to be more incline towards entrepreneurship,
the finding is contrary to expectation. This study reveals that previous entrepreneurship
education is the least significant determinant of students’ entrepreneurial intention. It is
reasonable to argue that although entrepreneurship education might raise the students’
entrepreneurial intention, however the entrepreneurship education is only over a relatively
short period of time, as such the influence exerted is intuitively not very strong compared
with family and gender.
Thus, in the context of the present study, it seems that undergraduate students’
entrepreneurial intentions are more likely born than made.
 14 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

2.8 Limitations and suggestions for future research

This finding that undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intentions are born rather than
made is suggestive rather than conclusive. Moreover, the discussion put forth in this paper
does not intend to negate the important influence of entrepreneurship education. Rather, it
is speculated that entrepreneurship education will be more effective on born entrepreneurs
than made entrepreneurs. Future research should be designed to control for students’ family
business background and gender in order to evaluate pure effect of entrepreneurship
education. Alternatively, future research can investigate the moderating effect of family
business background and gender for the relationship between entrepreneurship education
and entrepreneurship intention. After all, the time students spent in the family are much
longer compared with in the university.
The present study is limited to one country and majority of respondents are from one
ethnic group. Future research should take cognisant that different explanatory variables
may be relevant to specific ethnic groups (Dana, 1997). The other limitations are this study
only covers undergraduate students from two schools from a private university and the
results are therefore not generalisable. It is possible that results may be significantly
different if the samples included students from other schools, postgraduate level or other
universities. Although this study only investigates selected personal factors, it does not
downplay the important influence of other personal and environmental variables on
entrepreneurial intention.
Entrepreneurship is found in all professions. As such, it will be interesting for future
research to investigate students from other schools at this particular university, especially
in the pure science disciplines such as medicine, biosciences, engineering, et cetera. In this
manner, a comparison on intentions to start business in the future between students from
social sciences and pure sciences can be conducted.
It is also possible to continue this study by collecting data from public universities in
Malaysia to see whether differences exist between private and public universities
Malaysian universities (both private and public) versus foreign universities.
Last but not least, in order to encourage more female undergraduates to choose
entrepreneurship as a career, more research is needed to empirically verify the proposition
of gender-specific obstacles and identify ways to overcome them. This is important not just
for academicians but for women and public policy makers as well as to facilitate women
entrepreneurship in Malaysia.

2.9 Conclusions
Entrepreneurship is a viable, satisfying, rewarding and valued career option for graduates.
In recognition of the immense contributions of entrepreneurs, they are sometimes
colloquially referred to as the ‘movers’ and ‘shakers’ in society. If entrepreneurship is
considered a source of innovation, job creation and economic growth for a country, then it
is pivotal to attract the young and the educated to become entrepreneurs. In view of the
many opportunities for new venture creation in Malaysia, undergraduate students should
be equipped for opportunity entrepreneurship.
The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first purpose is to describe undergraduate
students’ intention to start a business in the future. The second purpose is to test whether
students’ entrepreneurial intention is born or made. Based on the sample surveyed, this
study found that undergraduates’ propensity for new venture creation in the future is only
slightly likely, suggesting that undergraduate students have a not so favourable perception
of entrepreneurship as a career option. Individually, the four demographic factors included
in this study are related to students’ entrepreneurial intention. The notion of born
entrepreneur is supported by both proxies (i.e., family business background and gender)
whereas the notion of made entrepreneur is only supported by one proxy (i.e., previous
entrepreneurship education) and the least significant factor. In the light of these findings,
therefore, this study argues that entrepreneurs are more likely to be born than made.
 Undergraduate students’ entrepreneurial intention
15

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Appendix

Part 1
Within the next five years or so Extremely Quite Slightly Slightly Quite Extremely
after my graduation… likely likely likely unlikely unlikely unlikely

1 I thought of starting my own 1 2 3 4 5 6

business

2 I intend to start my own 1 2 3 4 5 6

business

3 I plan to start my own 1 2 3 4 5 6

business

4 I am prepared to start my 1 2 3 4 5 6
own business

Part 2
Instruction: please tick (√)
5 My programme of study: in the boxes that best describe yourself
 18 K.H. Looi and C. Khoo-
Lattimore

B. Int. Tourism Mgmt (Hons.) Travel and Recreation Mgmt

B. Int. Tourism Mgmt (Hons.) (Events Mgmt)
B. Int. Hospitality Management (Hons.)
B. Culinary Arts and Foodservice Mgmt (Hons.)
Dip. Tourism and Events
Dip. Hospitality Management
Dip. Culinary Arts
Adv. Dip. Patisserie and Gastronomic Cuisine
B.B. (Hons.) Business Administration
B.B. (Hons.) Human Resource Management
B.B. (Hons.) International Business
B.B. (Hons.) International Business and Marketing
BA. (Hons.) Accounting and Finance
B. Management (Marketing)
B. Commerce
B. Applied Finance
Diploma in Business

6 My gender: Male? Female?

7 My ethnic group: Malay? Chinese? Indian? Others (please specify) ______________
8 Is your family involved in business/businesses? Yes  No 
9 Have you studied entrepreneurship subject(s) in Taylor’s University before? Yes 
No 

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