Entrepreneurship Education

"The discussion around whether entrepreneurship can be taught is becoming obsolete as the number of entrepreneurship courses, specializations and degrees is rising at an unprecedented rate all over the world and the demand for entrepreneurial education teachers or instructors is constantly growing. The global community of entrepreneurial education proponents is enthusiastic about the possibility of spreading the idea of entrepreneurship, as it is believed to benefit societies and economies in addition to influencing human development on an individual level. The fervour is nurtured by public policies and the development of an enterprising culture in the public discourse. In this discourse, entrepreneurship is treated as a panacea for numerous social and economic problems. This book is a solid reference point for all who are interested in conducting research on entrepreneurial education or engaged in teaching entrepreneurship. It is a compendium of knowledge about entrepreneurial education as a research field, seen from the perspective of the last four decades, its complete contemporary history. It reviews the progress of the field from the outset to the present in terms of its socio-economic context, changes in the academic community, but also its research focus and methodological development. This uniquely comprehensive book is a resource of both knowledge on entrepreneurial education research and inspiration for future studies within the field. This timely and relevant book provides practical insights for educators when developing their teaching practice and will be of interest to entrepreneurship educators and entrepreneurship education researchers.

Entrepreneurship Education

"The discussion around whether entrepreneurship can be taught is becoming obsolete as the number of entrepreneurship courses, specializations and degrees is rising at an unprecedented rate all over the world and the demand for entrepreneurial education teachers or instructors is constantly growing. The global community of entrepreneurial education proponents is enthusiastic about the possibility of spreading the idea of entrepreneurship, as it is believed to benefit societies and economies in addition to influencing human development on an individual level. The fervour is nurtured by public policies and the development of an enterprising culture in the public discourse. In this discourse, entrepreneurship is treated as a panacea for numerous social and economic problems. This book is a solid reference point for all who are interested in conducting research on entrepreneurial education or engaged in teaching entrepreneurship. It is a compendium of knowledge about entrepreneurial education as a research field, seen from the perspective of the last four decades, its complete contemporary history. It reviews the progress of the field from the outset to the present in terms of its socio-economic context, changes in the academic community, but also its research focus and methodological development. This uniquely comprehensive book is a resource of both knowledge on entrepreneurial education research and inspiration for future studies within the field. This timely and relevant book provides practical insights for educators when developing their teaching practice and will be of interest to entrepreneurship educators and entrepreneurship education researchers.

Historia i zasady funkcjonowania Rady Biznesu Wydziału Ekonomiczno-Socjologicznego UŁ

Książka powstała dzięki dofinansowaniu z Urzędu Miasta Łodzi na realizację projektu pt. „Uniwersytet Łódzki − uczelnia bliżej praktyki” w ramach Promocji Łodzi Akademickiej

The interplay between cognitive, conative, and affective constructs along the entrepreneurial learning process

Purpose: Although the role of reflections in entrepreneurship education is undeniable, the research has focused mainly on their advantages and consequences for learning process, whereas their dynamics and interrelations with other mental processes remain unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to better understand how personality and intelligence constructs: cognition, conation, and affection evolve and change along the learning process during entrepreneurship education. Design/methodology/approach: To better understand reflective processes in entrepreneurial learning this paper adopts the tripartite constructs of personality and intelligence. By employing longitudinal explorative research approach and self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm, the authors follow students’ reflections during their two-year learning processes. First, the authors try to identify how the interplay between the cognitive, conative, and affective aspects emerges in students’ reflections. Then, the authors investigate how this interplay evolves during the individual learning process and finally, by looking for similarities in these learning pathways, the authors aim to identify patterns of students’ reflective learning process. Findings: All constructs are present during the learning process and all are prone to change. The individual constructs alone shed no light on the interplay between different constructs, but rather that the interplay between sub-constructs should be taken into consideration as well. This seems to be particularly true for cognition, as procedural and declarative knowledge have very different profiles. Procedural knowledge emerges together with emotions, motivation, and volition, whereas the profile of declarative knowledge is individual. The unique profile of declarative knowledge in students’ reflections is an important finding as declarative knowledge is regarded as the center of current pedagogic practices. Research limitations/implications The study broadens the understanding of reflective practices in the entrepreneurial learning process and the interplay between affective, cognitive, and conative sub-constructs and reflective practices in entrepreneurship education. The findings clearly indicate the need for further research on the interplay between sub-constructs and students’ reflection profiles. The authors see the study as an attempt to apply an exploratory statistical method for the problem in question. Practical implications: The results are able to advise pedagogy. Practical implications concern the need to develop reflective practises in entrepreneurial learning interventions to enhance all three meta-competencies, even though there are so far no irrefutable findings to indicate that some types of reflection may be better than others. Originality/value: The results of the analysis indicate that it is possible to study the complex and dynamic interplay between sub-constructs of cognitive, conative and affective constructs. Moreover, the research succeeded in identifying both individual variations and general reflection patterns and changes in these during the learning process. This was possible by adopting a longitudinal explorative research approach with SOM analyses.Peer reviewe

Differences in students’ understanding of opportunity process matters for their learning!

Despite different views on opportunities and opportunities identification, there seems to be consensus about the significant role of opportunities in the entrepreneurship process and for the success of the entrepreneur (Shane & Venkataraman 2000, Eckhardt & Shane 2003, Gaglio & Katz 2001). However, even though opportunities, depending on the purpose and contributor, are regarded as a core element, process or competence in entrepreneurship, it is only recently that the question of how to teach or learn these opportunity-related competences has started to attract scholars (Saks & Gaglio 2002, Corbett 2005, Lumpkin & Lichtenstein 2005). The problem is that how the nature and process of opportunities are understood has an effect on learning and teaching practices. We argue that the differences in understanding what opportunities are have effect on how to learn and teach opportunity competences. The starting point though should be the knowledge about how students understand what opportunities are and how they want to enhance their competences related to the opportunity process. Consequently, the aim of our research is to understand how students understand opportunity process. First, we identify different theoretical approaches to the opportunity process from the learning perspective. Then, we investigate (basing on 16 writings), how students understand what opportunities are in the venture creation process with respect to these different approaches and, finally, we elaborate what this means for learning and teaching practices. On the basis of the theories of Cantillon (1931), Mises (1949) and Kirzner (1963) regarding human beings as central to entrepreneurship, our study identifies three approaches through which the opportunity process could take place: search, discovery, action. Empirical analysis validates proposed division. We conclude that courses aimed at opportunity enhancement should be designed in a way that students increase their awareness of the different nature of an opportunity and its process, as well as the varying nature of human involvement in opportunity processes. Entrepreneurship education should not be to look for uniform methods and teaching tools, but to try to combine them in order to enable all students to learn and increase their competences

Peculiarity of hybrid entrepreneurs – revisiting Lazear’s theory of entrepreneurship

The aim of this study is to explore and elaborate the concept of hybrid entrepreneurship, i.e., a simultaneous mix of self-employment (entrepreneurship) and salary employment. Lazear’s theory of entrepreneurship is assessed in terms whether it can explain the phenomenon of being a hybrid entrepreneur. The hypothesis is that the probability of linking a salary job with one’s own business increases with the variety and level of education gained, the broadness of professional and management experience but also the level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The hypotheses are tested with multivariate logistic regression, using survey data gathered from 1600 entrepreneurs. In light of the results, Lazear’s theory cannot be unambiguously extended to the case of hybrid entrepreneurs. Although the probability of being a hybrid entrepreneur increases with broader professional and managerial experience, at the same time it diminishes as the level and diversity of education increase. The results suggest that hybrid entrepreneurs are an importantly discrete population and therefore need to be treated separately. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed

Opportunities in the process of becoming an entrepreneur

The role of opportunities in becoming an entrepreneur is undeniable. Gaglio and Katz (2001) argue that understanding the opportunity identification is one of the core intellectual challenges for the entrepreneurship. However, despite an extensive research on opportunity, the question what opportunities are and how to identify, develop and exploit them has no explicit answer. On the contrary, there are diverse concepts gathered around opportunities. Some authors argue that opportunities ‘exist out there’ in the form of unmet needs, unsolved problems, or inefficient processes and it is the job of the entrepreneur to uncover these opportunities (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003; Kim, Aldrich and Keister, 2003; Shane, 2003). Other approach posits that opportunities are a product of one’s mind (Shane and Venkataraman 2000; Ardichvili et al.2003; Gartner et al. 2003), thus, the opportunity does not exist prior to the point in time in which they apply their individual creativity and take individual action. To follow complex and diverse opportunity process descriptive character of opportunities identification might be already moved towards questioning their dynamics and contingency (Gaglio 2004). However, the study of process perspective is hard to proceed in context of opportunities. One of the solutions to reconstruct opportunity process is to apply backward viewpoint at opportunities. As Dimov (2011) suggests the examination of individuals who talk about their past ventures allows applying retrospective perspective that seems to be particularly valid in researching opportunity concept. Retrospective enables to uncover complex histories behind individuals and their ways of putting ideas into life. Consequently, the aim of our research is to better understand how entrepreneurs experience opportunity process by studying their different venture creation processes. We aspire to follow how opportunities evolve in the process of becoming entrepreneur, recognize different phases of that process and uncover the relations between those phases. First, we identify three different approaches to the opportunity and opportunity process drawn from previous research. Then, by adopting multiple longitudinal case study approach and documentary videography as a method, we try to catch retrospective perspective to opportunity process. We take four diverse videos obtained by using editing method and investigate how entrepreneurs understand what opportunities are in their processes of becoming entrepreneurs and how they have proceeded in their opportunity process. We follow their “specific paths in terms of a sequence of events or concrete experiences” (Dimov 2011). Finally, by implementing pattern matching logic we compare their opportunity processes to the different approaches provided by us

Development Tendencies for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in European Union Well-developed Countries

Development tendencies for small and medium-sized enterprises are difficult to predict because of their number and heterogeneity. Analysing the possible direction of changes implies the observation of economic indicators, preferable forms of financing and the processes taking place in enterprises’ environment. Despite domination of traditional way of financing it is clear that alternative way of obtaining funds (business angels, venture capital) are getting more popular. Globalisation influenced internationalisation and innovation of SMEs. Internet plays crucial role in business transactions. During last years small and medium sized enterprises experienced steady development.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 zostało dofinansowane ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę

Entrepreneurship Education. Built Upon the Concepts of Experience and Responsibility

Agnieszka Kurczewska is a researcher in the field of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. She holds a post-doctoral degree in economics (dr hab. in Polish). Currently she has a position of an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology at the University of Lodz. From September 2010 till April 2011 Agnieszka worked as an assistant professor in Entrepreneurship Unit at Aalto University School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. In 2014/2015 she received a grant from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and spent 10 months at the University of Tampa (USA) conducting the research on academic entrepreneurship education. Agnieszka Kurczewska is a member of the Board of Directors of the European Council for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (ECSB). She was also a holder of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland scholarship for young researchers and stipend holder of the Foundation of University of Lodz. The heart of this monograph is to revisit existing knowledge on experiential pedagogy and then combine it with somehow forgotten concept of responsibility in order to enhance the fundaments of entrepreneurship education. This monograph aims to contribute to the dynamically developing fields of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. This contribution is a refreshed, experience and responsibility-based, view into the learning process. Including these two concepts into theory and practice of entrepreneurship education and also investigating them from different perspectives may result in rethinking and advancing the way entrepreneurship education is executed. The monograph is an invitation to the discussion on entrepreneurship education and its foundations. It tries to provide some answers to numerous questions, but also leaves a lot of them open, thus stimulates further reflections and research, exploring different facets and nuances of experiences and responsibility and their roles in entrepreneurship education. The monograph is available online: http://scouting.uni.lodz.pl.The monograph is a result of the project “Academic Entrepreneurship Education – concept of an education as a projection of a business life within Mobility Plus” grant, financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland