Who wants to be an entrepreneur? Young adult attitudes to entrepreneurship as a career
Roger Henderson, Martyn Robertson.
Introduction
Various UK governments have championed the concept of an enterprise culture, yet much of the growth in the 1990s has come from large companies, especially in services. The entrepreneurial spirit remains tenuous in a society which is ageing yet where the future working environment will depend heavily on the creativity and individuality of the young. In spite of efforts by bodies such as the Prince's Trust there has been limited infusion of long-term entrepreneurship ideals among young people; indeed relatively little is known about young adult views on entrepreneurship. The work that has been undertaken tends to focus on the specific factors which influence someone to start a business rather than entrepreneurship as a career choice. Yet in the new millennium the prospect of a "portfolio career" involving periods of salaried work, self-employment and unemployment is increasingly likely, in which case entrepreneurial skills will be more important.
This paper raises issues for entrepreneurial education and draws on questionnaire surveys undertaken between 1996 and 1998 among young adults, including MSc students studying entrepreneurship in Scotland, a group of new bank recruits to the Enterprise Section of a major UK clearing bank, and undergraduate business studies students in England. The results are compared with theories of entrepreneurial careers as expounded by Scott and Twomey (1988), Gibb Dyers (1994) and Curran (1996).
The future working environment --
issues for education and society?
The European Union (EU) definition of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) covers those entities with fewer than ...