Personal agency and entrepreneurial intentions among business students

The study investigates the entrepreneurial competencies and intentions of students. Their formation is a requirement of modern times. The question arises whether students of modern technical universities get entrepreneurial competencies and whether they transform these competencies into their entrepreneurial intentions. More than 3.6 thousand students from six technical universities from Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Lithuania were surveyed. Methods of summarizing and grouping data, analysis of the structure of the population and distributions of its elements, evaluation of relationships were used to analyze the results of the survey. It was found that studying at technical universities is not an obstacle to the existence of entrepreneurial intentions among students. The respondents positively assessed their ability to recognize market opportunities for new business (the sum of the shares of positive answers exceeded the sum of the shares of negative answers by 12.4%). A positive generalized assessment was determined when assessing the ability to persuade others to invest in their business, while negative – their ability to write a formal business plan. It is proved that students who highly value their entrepreneurial abilities are much more likely to show the intention to start their own business (р < 0.001). Students’ focus on starting their own business is partly explained by the fact that they connect employment in corporations with a low guarantee of job retention. High positive integrated assessments received the following advantages of own entrepreneurship: prestige (0.302), chance to be realized (0.362), and the ability to create jobs (0.597).

Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank Denislava Yordanova (Sofia University, Bulgaria), Tatjana Nikitina (Riga Technical University, Latvia), and Daiva Jurevičienė (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania) for helping to collect data at respective countries.

The economic turbulence in the last two decades and the Covid-19 pandemic have impaired several economies, heightened unemployment, and worsened job loss and socio-economic hardships. Promoting entrepreneurship inclusiveness has become a critical strategy to revamp the economy. Meanwhile, the global economy has been projected to grow faster with an increase in women entrepreneurs. However, there seems to be a gender gap and differential in start-ups, which draws down women’s inclusion in the business environment. This study examines the gender differential in entrepreneurial interest and practice among 12,485 university students in Nigeria. The results reveal that 88% of male and 84% of female students want to start their own businesses. Both males (66%) and females (65%) reported high entrepreneurial interest, with no statistically significant difference between both genders. The logistic regression analysis shows that entrepreneurship education, relational support, risk-taking, self-efficacy, university ecosystem, and attitudes toward behavior are the main drivers of entrepreneurial interest among male and female students. However, the university ecosystem is found to not significantly affect entrepreneurial interest among male students. Similarly, all factors except for the university ecosystem significantly influence entrepreneurial practice among male and female students. However, relational support is not statistically significant for female students. The study concludes with appropriate policy suggestions that could improve and sustain entrepreneurship interest and practice in both male and female students.

As the aging population grows, examining attitudes and intentions toward joining the aging workforce is of greater importance. This study examines factors influencing Southern Thai college students’ attitudes and intentions to join the aging workforce. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 412 undergraduate students from three universities in the region. The survey measured attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intention to be older workers based on the theory of planned behavior using a 5-point Likert scale. The data were analyzed using the path analysis technique. The findings indicated significant associations between attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions to be older workers among college students. Attitudes toward older workers positively influenced subjective norms (β = 0.71, p = 0.001), and perceived behavioral control also had a significant impact on subjective norms (β = 0.11, p = 0.05) and on the intention to be older workers (β = 0.23, p < 0.05). Subjective norms, in turn, positively influenced intentions to be older workers (β = 0.42, p < 0.001). In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control as factors in influencing college students’ intention to join the aging workforce.

Acknowledgment
This study is supported by the Research and Innovation Institute of Excellence, Walailak University, under Grant No. WU66251.