Attitudes and Intentions of Business Master Students towards Sustainable Tourism and Entrepreneurship

Sustainable development has become in the last three decades an issue of high importance, both from theoretical view and from the public policies’ view. Nevertheless, sustainable development can be generated only by sustainable enterprises and businesses, which should take into consideration not only the economic aspects, but also the social and environmental ones, i.e. businesses striving to meet the ”triple bottom line”. This paper aims at investigating master students in Business Administration, i.e. future business people, are actually prepared for creating and running businesses in sustainable tourism and which is the profile of future “sustainable entrepreneur”. In order to answer this question, a surveybased research was conducted among master students in Business administration, concerning aspects such as: what is the understanding of business master students on ”sustainability” issues and which are their sustainability-related habits, attitudes and behaviour as consumers. We used factorial analysis, resulting in a four factors model, to investigate attitudes related to: importance to run a sustainable business, the use of renewable energy resources, recycling used products, employing local labour force, promoting the use of local resources etc. The paper presents the main findings in the context of previous researches in the literature, drawing conclusions and proper recommendations

MACROECONOMIC FACTORS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Entrepreneurship has been traditionally related to several economic factors, including economy growth, inflation, unemployment, interest rates. The causal relation between these variables however has been the topic of several hypothesises. Our goal is to assess these relations in the case of the European Union. While several similar studies have been pursued in the field, we aim to bring further evidence to the potential of impacting entrepreneurship through changes in economic factors at the country level Our analysis used panel regression to estimate the relation between macroeconomic factors and entrepreneurial density. Results indicate that Gross Domestic Product is positively related to entrepreneurial activity, and further more in the case of the European Union we bring evidence to the fact that the relation might be quadratic, as opposed to linear as it is generally suggested. In the case of the European Union this results in a reversed U shape of the distribution. More specifically, in the case of the investigated period only the upward half of the reversed U was observed, so on this specific interval the overall effect was positive. Regarding inflation we have observed a positive, but weak, relationship between it and entrepreneurial activity. The direction of the relation was not expected, however we provide a potential explanation in the specifics of inflation in the European Union (relative stability). Ease of starting a business, measured as the cost, time and procedures required is negatively related to entrepreneurial activity, as is the lending interest rate. Unemployment could not be significantly related to entrepreneurial density, however we believe that this is due to the fact that the lagged effect that we expected to find might either have a unit lower than 1 year, might have different values in different countries, or both. We conclude that these relations could provide a means to better understand the impact of economic changes on the entrepreneurial supply and demand

THE ROLE OF STUDENT-CENTERED EDUCATION IN STIMULATING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT OF UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

Entrepreneurship plays a major role in the economic growth and development of most modern economies. Measures are being taken by most governments in order to stimulate entrepreneurship, however even more can be done by promoting entrepreneurship in the educational context. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Global Report (2013) Romania is performing slightly under the average of similar countries when it comes to entrepreneurial activity, is above the average at necessity-driven entrepreneurship and low at innovation driven entrepreneurship. Under these circumstances, a focus on entrepreneurship in higher education is required in order to help Romania bridge the gap to the other efficiency-driven economies. Our study aims to assess the impact of the university level education on the career choices of present entrepreneurs in the Bihor county of Romania. 30 university graduates that are currently running a business have been interviewed regarding the reasons for starting their companies as well as the relationship that they had and have with the university from which they graduated. While some of the entrepreneurs claim that their education had little impact on the decision to become an entrepreneur, most of them believe that it played a big role on their performance and it prepared them somewhat for the challenges they faced once they opened their businesses. Also a large portion of them report being involved in the activity of the university. The participants offered valuable feedback regarding their experience with the university. They also provided considerable information regarding the improvement that they would like to see in the future and how a more student-centered education process could positively impact the development of entrepreneurial spirit and better prepare future graduates to start and run a business. We further discuss the means through which this could be achieved in the context of our institution and other learning institutions that have similar goals and face similar challenges