Attitudes towards infopreneurship among information science students at a higher education institution

  • Received June 10, 2021;
    Accepted October 6, 2021;
    Published January 12, 2022
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.20(1).2022.05
  • Article Info
    Volume 20 2022, Issue #1, pp. 49-57
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

This study aimed to explore the attitudes of students of a higher education institution towards infopreneurship. The study emanated from observations that the widespread use of information technologies has created a new sector in the labor market – infopreneurship. The study adopted the case study research design based on focus group discussions to establish the students’ attitudes towards infopreneurship. The participants for the focus groups were students of the Information Science department at the University of Technology, Cape Town. Data collection during the focus group discussions was based on unstructured interviews. Quantitative data analysis was applied based on data reduction from codes to categories. An enterprising attitude (26.4% code frequency) dominated the positive responses while negative attitudes were mainly reflected by a critical attitude (20.8% code frequency) towards infopreneurship. While it appeared that positive attitudes were more prevalent than negative attitudes, there were notable observations that the respondents were critical or neutral towards the essence of infopreneurship in the South African context. It was found that the belief that infopreneurship is not a viable form of employment was still prevalent. Some respondents believed that employment means working for someone. They felt that there is greater respect in being employed than engaging in infopreneurship. Some respondents, however, appear to have stronger entrepreneurial orientations and felt that infopreneurship offers the best employment opportunities. The study recommends changes in higher education curricula and the creation of a stimulating environment for infopreneurship.

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    • Figure 1. Conceptual framework
    • Figure 2. Network diagram for the attitudes of respondents towards infopreneurship
    • Table 1. Activities of infopreneurs
    • Table 2. Focus group discussion record sheet
    • Table 3. Code frequencies
    • Conceptualization
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Data curation
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Formal Analysis
      Thobekani Lose
    • Investigation
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Methodology
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Project administration
      Thobekani Lose
    • Supervision
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Visualization
      Thobekani Lose
    • Writing – original draft
      Thobekani Lose
    • Writing – review & editing
      Thobekani Lose, Sebenzile Khuzwayo
    • Resources
      Sebenzile Khuzwayo