Exploring the determinants of entrepreneurship among graduates in Nigeria

PREAMBLE

In Nigeria both state and federal government are now placing much emphasis on the promotion of indigenous small scale enterprises with a view to encouraging entrepreneurship.

This study address critical issues like life aspirations, likely source of financial capital, entrepreneurial orientation, attitude towards work, intention towards becoming an entrepreneur, subjective norms underlying this intention, perceive behavioural control, behavioural beliefs, nor mature belief and control beliefs others.

Johannisson (1991) and Auto et al. (1997) scored the positive impacts of students perception of entrepreneurship as a career choice, along with the role played by the research has source the importance of the social status of entrepreneurial activities and situation.

Entrepreneurship education and influence both currents behaviour and future intentions. Kolverldmoen (1997) look at the significant differences between students who have taken entrepreneurship courses and those who have not.

2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Entrepreneurship has been described as a creative and innovative response to the environment. Meredith et al (1991) looks at and entrepreneur as an individual who has ability to see and evaluate business opportunities, gather the necessary resource to take advantage of them, and initiate appropriate action to ensure success.

This turn of events has been mirrored by a rising academic interest in entrepreneurship, understood as the creation and establishment of new independent firms in the early empirical research this interest was very much focused on the psychological characteristics of business founders, although the research was not closely to contemporary development in psychology. A trait approach was often employed, and almost endless loots of entrepreneurial trait were suggested (Hornaday 1982) it eventually turned out that this line of research was unable to give more than a small fraction of the answer to the question “what make people found new firm?â€

2.3 NEED, SCOPE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurship was been recognized as an essential ingredient of economic development. In the early 16th century in France, the term entrepreneur was used for army leaders. It was applied to their business for the first time 18th century to designate a leader who buys and sells goods at certain prices.

Entrepreneurship has never played a central role for years, the main focus of economic has been on the allocation of resources and how it is achieved by market or by government. It is only recently with the revival   of interest in the question of economic growth Schumpeter’s view have required greater silence. Empirical research on entrepreneurship in economic is surprisingly limited.

The need for autonomy (or independence) is one of the most frequently stated reasons for founding a firm or wanting to do so (Bamberger, 1986; Cromie 1988; Scot and twomey, 1988).

2.4 ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS

Noel (2001) explained specifically the importance of entrepreneurship emphasizing on the development of entrepreneurial intention and the perception of self efficiency. The students in the sample had all taken an entrepreneurship education program and were graduated in entrepreneurship, management or another discipline. Noel’s finding at least partially confirmed the assumption that entrepreneurship graduates were more likely to create new business and has a higher level of intention and more developed perception of self efficiency than students in the other two groups.

McClelland (1961) in  his work identifies need for achievement (called n- achievement) to be linked with entrepreneurial spirit necessary to taken risks to develop a country economic. He also said entrepreneurs are likely to do well if they posses the following traits.

RISK TAKING: entrepreneurs are risk takers and are very calculative when challenge occurs in a business they encourage themselves. But they don’t gamble. Entrepreneur tend not to get involve in business of low quality because there is lack of challenge and avoid high risk situation because they want to succeed. They like overcoming challenges. A risk situation occurs when you are required to make a choice between two or more alternatives, whose potential outcomes are not must be subjectively evaluated. A risk situation involves potential success and potential loll. The greater the possible loss the greater the involved.

SELF CONFIDENCE: entrepreneurs have self confidence in whatever they are doing. They believe that they need to assumed responsibility in other for them to reach their destiny. Entrepreneurs are very optimistic people’s and have a linking for independence. It is this self confidence, including previous experience, their ability to assume responsibility, and to work out for their destiny that make them to venture in to private business even when others  are staying away from it or are falling.

HARD WORK: entrepreneur is a hard working individual who is determined to achieve his objective. He put in more effort to make sure that work is done. He makes proper use of official time and private time. He persists in what ever he is doing even when the work is done and the day spent. The entrepreneur is mentally attached to the job.

GOAL SETTING: entrepreneurs have objective, based on his objective they set a goal for themselves. In the attempt to achieve the set goal some appear to be difficult and restless, until the goals in their various strategies try to achieve the set goals or objectives.

ACCOUNTABILITY: entrepreneurs love and success and work very hard to achieve success in what ever they attempt in the process of achieving success they sometime meet with failure. To the entrepreneur growth and profit will lead to stability, expansion, and development of the business. The entrepreneur work as a team, through collaborative efforts of its staff by getting feedback in other to achieve the objective of the business.  They also to have keep a careful record of their achievement as a result of which they are able to narrate and tell the stories of how they started the business in the beginning. This attitude of record-keeping helps the entrepreneur’s towards planning and high business ethics. He is not just interested in money purse, but in what he is able to achieve with his money. Others may see accountability in terms of profit and growth but he has a different measurement for himself from what others perceive. He is accountable to himself as his entire life depends on him.

VERSATILITY: Entrepreneurs tend to be very informational and very versatile, qualities require to ensure that the job gets done properly by themselves and subordinates.

2.5 ENTREPRENEURIAL TASKS

Entrepreneurship is concerned with many activities that have to do with the establishment and operation of business enterprise. These activities include identification of investment opportunities to exploit for profit, gathering the resourced needed for production and distribution of goods and services, organization and management of human and material resources.