Are business schools preparing graduates for employment? : the effect of an entrepreneurial mind and soft skills on the self-perceived employability of the business graduate

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A

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

Are business schools preparing

graduates for employment?

The effect of an entrepreneurial mind and soft skills on the

self-perceived employability of the business graduate

Jack Lee Ren Jie

10418067

Supervisor:

Sofija Pajic

Bachelor’s Thesis

Bsc in Economics and Business, Business studies

Faculty of Economics and Business

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Statement of originality

T h i s d o c u m e n t i s w r i t t e n b y S t u d e n t J a c k L e e R e n J i e w h o d e c l a r e s t o t a k e f u l l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h i s d o c u m e n t . I d e c l a r e t h a t t h e t e x t a n d t h e w o r k p r e s e n t e d i n t h i s d o c u m e n t a r e o r i g i n a l a n d t h a t n o s o u r c e s o t h e r t h a n t h o s e m e n t i o n e d i n t h e t e x t a n d i t s r e f e r e n c e s h a v e b e e n u s e d i n c r e a t i n g i t . T h e F a c u l t y o f E c o n o m i c s a n d B u s i n e s s i s r e s p o n s i b l e s o l e l y f o r t h e s u p e r v i s i o n o f c o m p l e t i o n o f t h e w o r k , n o t f o r t h e c o n t e n t s .

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Abstract

Business schools have been criticized for not preparing graduates to deal with the recent macroeconomic trends that change changed how the employability works towards business students. In order to shed light on business student employability, the entrepreneurial mindset and soft skills: teamwork and problem-solving are investigated. It is proposed that having high self-perceived employability will lead to business students being more willing to look for both jobs and seek self-employment. More specifically, it is hypothesized that a entrepreneurial business student that possess soft skills will leaded to more self-perceived employable as compared to an entrepreneurial business student that has lower soft skills. These hypotheses are tested with 95 business students from first, second, third and master years of their studies by means of a single measure survey. It was found that entrepreneurial mindset and teamwork skills have no effect on self-perceived employability, whereas problem-solving skills do. However, entrepreneurial orientation was found to be important towards self-perceived employability. This suggests that business schools need to rethink the structure of their curriculum has factors such as entrepreneurial culture and problem solving skills are important towards the employability of the business student.

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“

セ回秋

八

スタンドアップ-

Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

- Japanese Proverb

1. Introduction

In 2013, the youth unemployment rates in the EU reached an all-time high of 23.2%, which is twice as high as the adult rate unemployment rate of 9% and in countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, unemployment uncertainty of graduates have risen to 80% (Sedghi, 2013). These statistics are especially impactful on the employability of graduates, as studies have shown that 60 applications and a 6 month application period are the averages for graduates to land their first job (Sedghi, 2013). Specifically, business students, being known for their communication skills, leadership and versatility between industries have come under fire under these labor market conditions due to increasingly demanding work conditions. This is further pronounced by argumentation of the pursuit for rankings and research goals of business schools, as they have been criticized for making “shortsighted and self-serving decisions that resulted in the current financial crisis” (Podolny, 2009). Therefore, it has become increasingly important to understand and develop the skills and mindset of business students in order to better prepare them to be the future CEOs and managers of the future labor market.

This is a misfortune for the economy as a highly qualified degree from the field of business can be desirable in the labor market as it reflects the candidate’s ability to apply critical knowledege to everyday situations (Andrews & Higson, 2008). Additionally, business students can be seen as empty canvases, using interpersonal, communication skills and an entrepreneurial mind to adapt to any industry of choice, business students can be seen as the rubber cement that holds together our society (Andrews and Higson, 2008). Therefore, this study will be investing the employability of the business graduate, specifically, the self-perceived employability has it is crucial for business graduates to have the confidence for job search prior to entering the labor market.

Furthermore, the entrepreneurial spirit of the business graduate will also be investigated as a portion of graduates will become self-employed and contribute to a significant section of the

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economy. For example, with a total revenue stream of 990 billion in 2011, 75% of all businesses in the United States alone are composed of “nonemployer” businesses (Nazar, 2013), this is not only important from an academic view by finding the components of entrepreneurial mindset and educating it to business graduates but also important from an economic point of view, as graduate entrepreneurship has increasing being seen as a vital source of competitiveness and driving engine for economic growth and development (Nabi & Holden, 2008).

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact skill and entrepreneurial mindset has on the self-employability of a business school graduate. This paper will contribute to the field by exploring the role of “the entrepreneurial mind” as an influencing factor of employability, above and beyond the influencing of soft skills. Which leads to the following research question “To what extent does the soft skills and entrepreneurial spirit affect the self-perceived employability of a business student?”

2. Theoretical Framework

In order to answer the proposed research question, a thorough theoretical framework will be presented in this section which will outline the underlying concepts of independent variables: The entrepreneurial mind, teamwork skills and problem-solving skills and dependent variable: self-perceived employability.

2.1 Self-perceived employability

Definitions of employability in previous literature vary greatly from the ability to utilize person skills to educational bases such as grades from university in order to measure graduate employability with employment (Knight and Yorke, 2004). However, all cases point to the core notion that relates to the propensity of an individual obtaining a job (Harvey, 2001). From the literature, employability is further broken down into two proposed elements; actual employability and self-perceived employability (SPE). Actual Employability refers to the extent of an individual’s chances to be employed from the point of view of an employer, whereas self-perceived employability is more individually focused, as it refers to the individual’s perception of his or her possibilities of obtaining

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and maintaining employment within a job from a company (Vanhercke, Cuyper, Peeters, & De Witte, 2014), this is especially important for graduates as perceived employability before graduation could provide the confidence necessary to engage in active job-hunting. Additionally, this research will provide some insight into the individual’s self-employment tendency, which refers to the situation when the individual seeks to receive income from trade or business they operate directly.

This research will be focusing on the aspect of self-perceived employability. As mentioned in Vangerke et al. (2014), as globalization is putting a considerable strain on organizations to be flexible in order to survive, employability has shifted from a meso-scaled point of view in the 1980s of organizations selection to a more micro-scaled view of organizations having the need to increase workers individual employability within the organization. Vangerke et al. (2014) reemphasizes this concept again by comparing the goals of employees of a modern based career to the traditional career view in the early 20th century; the traditional-career view is concerned with an individual ascending the hierarchical structure of an organization via years of dedication, whereas the focus of the modern-career view of the employee is to proactivity shape his or her modern-career across organizational, departmental and functional boundaries (Sullivan and Baruch, 2009; Vangerke et al, 2014). This implies that an employee in the modern work environment has to possess flexible of skills such as teamwork and problem-solving skills in order to adapt across a multitude of cross departmental functions.

The idea of perceived employability is a vital aspect of an individual’s career, as it the critical component of an individual’s exploration, consolidation and maintenance of an individual’s employment in the labor market (Cron and Slocum, 1986; Vangerke et al, 2014). More specifically, the perceived employability of business graduates is of importance as this is the time business graduates have the access to network supports of professors to provide consultation while simultaneously having university peers to provide a “university breed” market that allows the graduate to experiment with new ideas to a market of a similar mindset (Ekstorm, 2014), this combination suggest that a business student can potentially have exponential payoffs if the right combination of market, risk and effort is achieved. This also is coherent with Rothwell and Arnold’s

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(2007) concept of a boundary less career, where given an environment no longer readily offers long-term employment, it is the goal of an individual to maintain and enhance individual’s attractiveness in the labor market by exploring and utilizing resources most available to the individual.

Additionally, this study will give insight into a business student’s self-employability, which refers to the capabilities of a business student having the career orientation and mindset towards self-employment; this will be done by investigating entrepreneurial intention (EI) of the individual. As there is a vast amount of money, effort and time being invested by business schools into the skills to prepare their graduates for the labor market (Robinson & Sexton, 1994), it is therefore important to understand how business schools can affect the transformation of a graduate and what are the determinants that can result in a student’s choice to be self-employed and potentially become leaders of companies that have an impact on the economy. Furthermore, Robinson and Sexton (1994) suggest that education and experience to be strong indicators of whether a graduate would become self-employed, as education provides an anchor in entrepreneurship while experience provides opportunity to learn through productive pursuits.

2.2 The entrepreneurial mind

The entrepreneurial mind refers to the entrepreneurial mindset of people who have the desire of running a business of their own, usually with a considerable amount of risk involved. Defined by Australian economist in the 1930’s, the entrepreneur has been constantly identified in previous literature as a main driver of economic activity (Schumpeter, 1934; Kraus, Frese, Friedrich, & Unger, 2005) and viewed constantly as the “revolutionaries in the economy” (Kraus et al., 2005). Entrepreneurs are also seen as “accelerators of the economy” as entrepreneurial activities provide technological innovation, employment opportunities and increase competiveness within firms of the economy (Turker and Selçuk, 2009). As business graduates during and near the end of their studies are prone to entrepreneurial innovation due to both the availability of professional knowledge from professors and usability of a “university breed” market from peers (Ekstorm, 2014), it is important to understand what factors influence their entrepreneurial journey. Previous literature showed that this due to their exposure to entrepreneurial programs, such as the Small Business Institute (SBI) program

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in the United States (Hatten & Ruhland, 1995) or career aspirations that lead business students to self-employ (Scott & Twomey, 1988). These factors suggest that the orientation and intention of being an entrepreneur are factors that compose the entrepreneurial mind.

In order to measure “The entrepreneurial mind”, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and entrepreneurial intention (EI) are adapted as proxy variables to provide a quantifiable measure of the entrepreneurial mind. EO refers to personality characteristics or attitudes a person possesses that might increase the propensity to engage and be successful towards entrepreneurial activities (Langkamp, Bolton, & Lane, 2012; Levenburg and Schwarz, 2008), whereas EI refers to the actual intention of the individual to be self-employed (Turker & Selçuk, 2009). Evidently, these two terms relate to different ingredients of the entrepreneurial recipe, however, they are not entirely independent as factors such as personality characteristics (risk-taking propensity, tolerance for ambiguity, internal locus of control, innovativeness, and independence) and motivational factors (love for money, desire for security, and desire for status) have the propensity to overlap between EO and EI (Ang & Hong, 2000).

Entrepreneurial orientation refers to the personality attributes that drive the strategy making process that provides the individual with the basis of entrepreneurial decisions and actions (Langkamp Bolton & Lane, 2012; Rauch, Wiklund, Lumpkin, & Frese, 2009; Kraus et al., 2005). According to previous literature, EO has been shown to be an indicator for firm performance as the innovation, proactivity and tenacity of an entrepreneur has been shown as qualities that drive firm performance. Moreover, both the studies of Langkamp, Bolton and Lane (2012) and Rauch et al. (2009) found that firms benefited from personal characteristics of entrepreneurs such as innovativeness, motivation, conscientiousness and risk-taking as they provide rend awareness, responsiveness and boldness while responding to the ever changing market. Additionally, using personality traits as a proxy, the study of Kraus et al. (2005) found that EO factors such as autonomy orientation, competitive aggressiveness, innovative orientation, achievement orientation and personal initiative to be factors influencing of South African entrepreneurs and their firms performance. Overall, entrepreneurial orientation can be

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seen as the backbone of any entrepreneurial leader and thus a strong measure for the entrepreneurial mind.

As EO refers to personality characteristics of the individual towards being an entrepreneur, EI refers to entrepreneurial intentionality as being a state of mind that drives action directing the individual’s attention, experience and action towards entrepreneurial activities or behavior (Bird, 1988; Turker & Selçuk, 2009). This can be seen in symmetry to the research of Nabi and Holden (2008), where EI is seen as attitudes towards entrepreneurship in terms of perceived desirability of entrepreneurship as a career option, perceived feasibility in starting up and willingness to act towards action. As it is this desirability and action towards entrepreneurial activities that will eventually lead to actual entrepreneurial action, thus, it can be said that a graduate’s action towards entrepreneurial activities can also be classified as intentional behavior (Bird, 1988; Turker & Selçuk, 2009).

As EI stems from feasibility and desirability of the individual and is affected by exterior factors such as cultural and social exposure. These exterior and cultural factors have been found to be composed of factors such as gender, level of education and family background, as they have been found to be contributing factors that influence the EI of the individual (Greene & Saridakis, 2007; Ertuna & Gurel, 2011). For example, females have been found to be less likely to become entrepreneurs whereas people with entrepreneurial parental backgrounds are more likely to report entrepreneurial intention (Moore, 1990).

Due to the volatile nature of job search and employability of the 21st century, there is an ever strong need to improve the quality of graduate students by preparing them for both employment and self-employment alike, as there remains a lack of training and research on EI and entrepreneurship education that promotes EO in the light of business students (Ertuna and Gurel, 2011). It is therefore important to stress the importance of the preparation and training that graduates are to succumb in becoming functioning members of the work force, this is consistent with the psychological perspective on EO mentioned in Kraus et al. (2005) that stresses the importance of a manager/worker

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of a firm being competent about a firm’s culture, vision and goals as these are the success determining factors that influence the development of a firm in both the early and later stages of growth.

Furthermore, it is expected that mastery of certain of these influencing characteristics would lead to a more well-rounded and usable employee and manager. Therefore, the score of an individual’s EO and EI could be adapted as a proxy of a graduates “entrepreneurial mind”, as EI refers to the intention of wanting to be an entrepreneur whereas a strong EO score could indicate personality characteristics that make a person want to be entrepreneurial or perhaps, if individuals who want to become entrepreneurs, their EO score maybe higher, thus, empowering the employability of the graduate as a high EO score can be a strong asset towards the company.

However, it is worth noting that this relationship between EO and firm performance does not simply lead to the implication of an entrepreneurial student being employable an employable student as employment works on a slightly different parallel to firm performance as it is subjective to environmental factors such as labor demand and supply fluctuations.

H1: Stronger entrepreneurial mind-set leads to stronger self-perceived employability: A stronger entrepreneurial mind would contribute to a more favourable perception of an individual’s employability.

2.3 Soft skills: Teamwork and Problem-solving skills

It is expected that a business graduate to undergo development for skills that would aid them in their future careers, the skills a business graduate is expected to pick up is a mixture of hard and soft skills. Hard and soft skills can be seen respectively as the tangible and intangible skills of a graduate. Specifically, this research will be focusing on soft skills, namely, the problem solving and team work skills of a business student. Using the study of teamwork effects of healthcare teams by Leonard, Graham and Bonacum (2004), teamwork has been found to reduce communication failures, improve the quality of standardized communication process and reduce overall risk of operations. Likewise, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann and Glaser (1989) found that problem-solving skills to be one of the factors

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that promote understanding between individuals and also promotes responsiveness to change. Consequently, it can be assumed that due to these factors, teamwork and problem-solving skills are to be considered influential factors that contribute to a graduate’s employability as teamwork and problem-solving skills can be seen as the crucial elements needed in order to solve day-to-day problems while working in a team in order to be successful entrepreneur or employee (Tanyel, Mitchell & McAlum, 1999; Andrews & Higson, 2008; Maellaro & Whittington, 2012).

However, according to Moore (1997), employees will learn more on the job itself as compared to what is taught in class, it is therefore important to look into thee ways soft skills influence employability, with the goal of providing practical insights regarding their importance that might be useful for planning developmental activities targeted at improving the graduates chance in the labor market. This is coherent with the idea that due to the pursuit of rankings and research, business school curriculums becoming increasingly distracted by rankings to address the real world problems managers are facing on a daily basis (Maellaro & Whittington, 2012; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002). Therefore, the need to develop soft skills before a graduate enters the workforce has become increasingly important as it is companies will demand a certain level of skills upon employment.

Furthermore, this concept is coherent with the work of Pfeffer and Fong (2002), they mentioned that “Most students simply get drunk, MBA students bond and network”, drawing from the study of O’Reilly and Chatman (1994), they found that a MBA graduate’s GPA was unrelated to (a) salary increases over 3 to 4 years after graduation, (b) average salary of job accepted, (c) the number of jobs held since graduation, (d) number of promotions since graduation, (e) the number of jobs offers after graduation. Therefore, as it is suggested that soft skills play a crucial role towards graduate employability instead of hard skills, I hypothesize that;

H2a: Stronger teamwork skills lead to higher self-perceived employability:

A stronger team worker would contribute to a more favourable perception of an individual’s employability.

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H2b: Stronger problem solving skills leads to higher self-perceived employability:

A stronger problem-solver would contribute to a more favourable perception of an individual’s employability.

Many authors mentioned a wide array of soft skills that a business student can acquire throughout the course of their education that can be useful towards success in employment and entrepreneurship. Several of these studies include; the article of Career Opportunities news (2002) found subcomponents of a person’s emotional intelligence, specifically, a graduate’s teamwork, communication and presentation skills are an important part of an individual’s contribution towards an organisation. Similar to teamwork, interpersonal skills has been described in Maellaro and Whittington’s (2012) study is a skill that was found to be valued by managers as they value the flexibility of an individual to interact effectively with people on a day to day basis. Additionally, the study of Theeke (1993) found that “the ability to communicate and get along with others to be the most important skill of graduating business students”, this suggest that teamwork to be a factor influencing employability. Also, Andrews and Higson (2008) found that employers look for graduates that possess oral communication skills, teamwork skills and innovative thinking. Overall, this body of research implies that a graduate that possess both teamwork and problem solving skills are perceived as employable.

Moreover, in order to be an entrepreneur, an individual can be said to also have the need to possess teamwork and problem solving skills. This is due to the fact that a founding entrepreneur must be able to build a team in order to deliver business vision, therefore, one of the main competences required by founding entrepreneurs is the ability to build and manage relationships (Vyakarnam & Handelberg, 1999). Additionally, aspiring entrepreneurs would require the problem solving skills to tackle the multiple risk involving decisions along their career path, it can be said that entrepreneurs are required to have problem solving skills in order to survive the transition of early years of a venture startup into a professionally managed business (Buttner & Gryskiewicz, 1993).

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Since teamwork and problem solving skills have been proven to have an effect on the employability and self-employability of business students. This study will investigate the relationship how soft skills are to moderate the entrepreneurial orientation to employability relationship of a business student as it is expected that a more entrepreneurial student would have the innate desire to form functional teams while having the problem solving capabilities to see that ideas become business reality.

Hypothesis 3: A qualified set of teamwork skills of business students moderates the entrepreneurial mind set – employability relationship.

Teamwork skills of business students positively influence the entrepreneurial to self-perceived employability relationship.

Hypothesis 4: A qualified set of problem-solving skills of business students moderates the entrepreneurial mind set – employability relationship.

Problem solving skills of business students positively influence the entrepreneurial to self-perceived employability relationship

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Figure 1.Pre-test Conceptual model

3. The Method

Having outlined the theoretical framework and proposed the hypotheses that will be tested, this section will elaborate the research design, measurements of the variables and procedures of testing.

3.1 Design

The hypotheses of this research were tested with a cross sectional study design. In order to answer the research question and analyze the different variables, surveys were undertaken in the following design; a single measure analysis was carried out via an online survey by contacting business students from social media or personal contact. There were no specific requirements to the type of business student, students of all years – first, second and third year bachelors and master students were asked to fill the survey. However, due to the circumstance of multiple researchers having to share the survey,

Self- Perceived

Employability

The

Entrepreneurial

Mind

Soft Skills:

Teamwork

Soft Skills:

Problem-solving

H1 H4 H3 H2a H2b

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the length of the survey turned out to be unusually long, prizes of 7 gift coupons worth of 10 euros where offered to participants to finish the survey. In total, 95 completed surveys where used to analyze the upcoming variables.

3.2 Measurements

This subsection will describe the methods used in order to collect data for variables: self-perceived employability, entrepreneurial mind and soft skills: teamwork and problem-solving.

3.2.1 Self-perceived Employability

Respondents were given a likert scale questionnaire adapted from Roth and Arnold (2007) that measured the perceived self-employability of the individual. Statements such as “I can easily find out about opportunities in my chosen field” were used in the questionnaire. These statements were graded by respondents by a scale of 1 to 5. Respondents that rated high on this scale were deemed as to be highly self-perceived as employable.

3.2.2 The Entrepreneurial mind

Similarly, respondents were given a Likert scale set of question that measured entrepreneurial mind. As already indicated, following the suggestions from literature (Rauch et al., 2009), entrepreneurial mind was conceptualized through two aspects: entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial orientation. Previous empirical research is in favor of the notion that early vocational interests are generally good indications of following career choices (Schmitt-Rodermund, 2004). This indicates both “being personally inclined toward entrepreneurship” and “intention to be self-employed” could influence becoming self-employed.

Entrepreneurial intention was measured by three statements adapted from Krueger and Carsrud (1993), Chen, Greene, and Crick (1998) and Davidsson (1995). As undergraduates are at an early career choice stage, this scale includes statements that assess short to long long-term entrepreneurial intent.

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Additionally, a questionnaire adapted from Kraus et al. (2005) and Seibert, Crant & Kraimer (1999) was used to measure the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation. The numbers of dimensions of EO have varied in past research, with three dimensions identified and used consistently in the literature: innovativeness, risk taking and proactiveness. These are the three aspects measured in this research, too, through fifteen question divided in these three subscales.

Statements such as “I am willing to invest a lot of time and/or money on something that might yield a high return” and “I am very interested in setting up my own business” were used in the questionnaire. All statements were graded by respondents by a scale of 1 to 5. Overall, measurements of entrepreneurial mindset where based on proactivity, potential for risk-taking and EI of the individual. Respondents that scored high on this scaled were deemed to be have a high EO and EI.

3.2.3 Soft Skills: Teamwork and Problem Solving skills

Likewise, respondents were given a likert scale questionnaire adapted from Aguado, Rico, Sánchez-Manzanares and Salas (2014) that measured teamwork via the Teamwork Competency Test (TWCT). The adapted questionnaire from (Crant and Kraimer, 1999) measured problem solving of the respondent. Statements such as “When I interact with my teammates, I ask questions to better understand what they say” and “when there is a problem, I first exactly figure out what it is” were asked in the questionnaire. These statements were graded by respondents from a scale of 1 to 5. Respondents were deemed to have higher teamwork and problem solving skills when scored high on this questionnaire.

3.3 Procedures

Data collected for this research was collected by 4 bachelor students doing their thesis from the Amsterdam Business School, respondents where approached to fill out a prepared online survey. A majority of respondents are known on a personal basis by the researchers and personal contact was established in order to ensure data quality. Respondents where both contacted in personal and by means of social media to fill out the online survey, additionally, 7 prizes worth of 10 euros each where offered as random prizes to respondents as incentive to finish the survey.

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4. Results

In this section the results of the data analysis will be presented. In the next section the sample of participants will be described. This is followed by sections describing reliabilities and correlations between the variables and the later the results of the hypothesis testing will be presented.

4.1 Sample-Participants

This study was the combination data pooled by four Amsterdam business students that reached out to student peers and friends. The sampling resulted in a total intended sample of 115 respondents. However, due to lack of completion of the survey (<5% total competition), 20 survey results were removed from the intended sample. A total of 95 respondents (66.1% female, 33.9% male) where taken in the final results. Participants composed of business students that are primarily Dutch (60.9% Dutch, 39.1% non-Dutch) and are in their (5.1% first, 13.9% second, 63.3% third, 17.7% forth) year of their studies. Participants have an average grade of 7.25 (SD= .529, range = 7-9).

4.2 Reliabilities

In order to determine the internal usability of measurements used for independent variables; entrepreneurial mind, teamwork and problem-solving skills effecting dependent variable; self-perceived employability, a reliability test is executed. On the diagonal of Table 1, the Cronbrach’s alpha of the components is shown. The Cronbach’s alpha for self-perceived employability and the entrepreneurial mind is considered good with a value of 0.82 and 0.84 respectively. However, the Cronbach’s alpha of soft skills: teamwork is acknowledge to be acceptable with a value of 0.63. However, soft skills: problem solving is considered to be good with a value of 0.74. It is worth noting that deleting components would not lead to a significant increase in either of the alphas.

4.2 Correlations

In order to have a better understanding on how the independent variables; entrepreneurial mind, teamwork and problem-solving skills correlate to dependent variable; self-perceived employability, a correlations test is executed. Table 1 displays the correlations between the four variables. It was predicted that there would be a positive correlation between self-perceived employability and

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entrepreneurial mind. Conversely, the analysis resulted in a non-significant correlation, r(95)=0.15 ns. Nonetheless, it would found that sub variable entrepreneurial orientation to be significant correlation to self-perceived employability r(95)=0.21. However, sub variable entrepreneurial intention resulted in a non-significant negative correlation r(95)=-0.15.

Moreover, it was predicted that a positive correlation exist between teamwork and problem-solving skills to self-perceived employability. Indeed, both independent variables where found to be significant with values of r(95)=0.32 and r(95)=0.63 respectively. It is worth to note that a positive significant correlation was found between independent variable soft skill: teamwork and soft skill: problem-solving with a value of r(95)=0.3. Additionally, teamwork skills was found to be positively correlated to entrepreneurial orientation r(95)=0.24.

Table1. Descriptives and correlations between the variables (Cronbach’s Alphas on diagonal)

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 Self-Perceived employability 3.44 0.55 (0.82) 2 Entrepreneurial mind 3.56 0.58 0.15 (0.84) 3 Entrepreneurial Orientation 3.71 0.48 0.21* 0.82*** (0.65) 4 Entrepreneurial Intention 2.99 1.51 -0.15 0.43*** 0.4*** (0.92) 5 Teamwork skills 3.82 0.47 0.32*** 0.07 0.24** 0.13 (0.63)

6 Problem solving skills 3.59 0.52 0.63*** 0.2 0.11 -0.17 0.3** (0.74)

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4.3 Hypothesis Testing

In order to test the proposed hypotheses, two linear regression analyses were performed. The first regression was performed to test the main effects of independent variables entrepreneurial mind, teamwork skills, problem-solving skills on dependent variable self-perceived employability. Thereafter, a second process regression was conducted to test the interaction effect of entrepreneurial mind*teamwork skills and entrepreneurial mind*problem solving skills on dependent variable self-perceived employability. Additionally, a third regression was conducted to test entrepreneurial orientation*problem solving skills on dependent variable self-perceived employability.

4.3.1 Empirical Model & Tables

The following constructed conceptual model is visualized in order analyses the following hypotheses:

H1: Stronger entrepreneurial mind-set leads to stronger self-perceived employability.

H2a: Stronger teamwork skills lead to higher self-perceived employability.

H2b: Stronger problem solving skills leads to higher self-perceived employability.

H3: A qualified set of teamwork skills of business students moderates the entrepreneurial mind set – employability relationship.

H4: A qualified set of problem-solving skills of business students moderates the entrepreneurial mind set – employability relationship.

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Table 2. Regression Results of main (Model 1) and interaction effects (Model 2) of Entrepreneurial

mind, Teamwork skills and problem solving skills on Self-perceived employability

Self-Perceived Employability (DV) Model 1 Model 2

Coefficient SE Beta Coefficient SE Beta

Constant 0.197 0.469 1.59 2.69

The entrepreneurial mind 0.113 0.071 0.124 -0.264 0.721 -0.366

Teamwork skills 0.155 0.096 0.132 -0.018 0.594 -0.03

Problem solving skills 0.628*** 0.087 0.592*** 0.428 0.62 0.691

Entrepreneurial mind*Teamwork skills 0.047 0.163 0.287 Entrepreneurial mind*Problem solving skills 0.054 0.169 0.319 R2 0.435 0.437 Note. N=95. *p <.05. **p <.01. ***p < .001

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Figure 2. Empirical Model (Model 1 & 2)

4.3.2 The influence of entrepreneurial mind-set on self-perceived

employability (H1)

In order to test the first hypothesis, the mean score of independent variable entrepreneurial mind is regressed against dependent variable self-perceived employability in order to determine the main effect of entrepreneurial mindset. However, here was no positive effect on problem-solving skills (β=0.124, p=0.1). Therefore, H1 is not supported.

Nevertheless, sub-variable entrepreneurial orientation did show a positive effect on self-perceived employability (β=.822, p<0.001) and will be presented in upcoming section 4.3.5 Additional analysis: Entrepreneurial orientation.

Self- Perceived

Employability

Entrepreneurial

Mind

Soft Skills:

Teamwork

Soft Skills:

Problem-solving

H1: β=.124 H4: β=.391 H3: β=.287 H2a: β=.132 H2b: β=.592***

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4.3.3 The direct influence of soft skills: teamwork and problem-solving on

self-perceived employability (H2a &H2b)

As seen in Model 1, which predicts the effect of teamwork and problem-solving, significantly explains 43.5% of the variances (F=23.91, p<0.001). Unexpectedly, the regression did not yield a significant effect of teamwork on self-perceived employability (β=0.132, p=0.093). However, the regression did yield a significant effect of problem-solving on self-perceived employability (β=0.592, p<0.001). Therefore, H2a is not supported but H2b is supported.

It is worth noting that while comparing individual independent variables by running isolated linear regressions to the dependent variable self-perceived employability, problem-solving skills stood out with a noticeably stronger effect (β=0.634 and R2 =0.402) as compared to entrepreneurial mind (β=0.145, R2=0.11) and teamwork skills (β=0.318, R2=0.101). This indicates that problem-solving explains self-employment the best among the variables and graduates with a high problem-solving score will be more confident towards employment.

4.3.4 The indirect influence of soft skills: teamwork and problem-solving on

self-perceived employability

Model 2 shows the results of both interaction effects of Entrepreneurial mind*Teamwork skills and Entrepreneurial mind*Problem solving skills (F=4.5, p=0.0054). The results indicate that hypotheses 3 and 4 are rejected as there is no significant interaction effect of Entrepreneurial mind*Teamwork skills (β=0.287) and Entrepreneurial mind*Problem solving skills (β=0.319) to be found towards dependent variable self-perceived employability. Moreover, the similar R2 values of model 1 (R2=0.435) and model 2 (R2=0.437) explains almost the same amount of variance. This indicates the interaction effects of model 2 do not explain more of the relationship.

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4.3.5 Additional analysis: Entrepreneurial orientation

In order to better understand the proposed model and provide a clearer picture of how entrepreneurial spirit can affect self-perceived employability while taking soft skills into consideration, dependent variables entrepreneurial orientation (H4: β=.822*** R2=.672) (a sub component of the entrepreneurial mind) and soft skills: problem-solving (as it was tested to have a significant effect on SPE) was put through a regression analysis to dependent variable SPE. Additionally, the interaction effect of EO and SPE was tested by running a process analysis by taking Entrepreneurial Orientation*Problem solving skills. The results are reported in Table 3.

Table 3. Regression Results of Entrepreneurial mind sub-variable: Entrepreneurial orientation (Model

3) and interaction effect (Model 4) of Entrepreneurial orientation* problem solving skills on Self-perceived employability

Self-Perceived Employability (DV)

Model 3 Model 4

Coefficient SE Beta Coefficient SE Beta

Constant 0.472 0.418 6.096 2.744

Entrepreneurial Orientation

0.167* 0.087 0.151* -1.293 0.71 -1.823

Problem solving skills 0.657*** 0.083 0.619*** -0.891 0.751 -1.186

Entrepreneurial Orientation*Problem solving skills 0.401* 0.193 2.07* R2 0.425 0.45 Note. N=95. *p <.05. **p <.01. ***p < .001

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Figure 3. Empirical Model (model 3 & 4)

Figure 4. Interaction plot: Entrepreneurial Orientation*Problem solving skills on Self-perceived

employability

Self- Perceived

Employability

Entrepreneurial Mind

Soft Skills:

Problem-solving

H4: β=.151* H2b: β=.691*** Entrepreneurial Orientation H4: β=.151* H4: β=.822*** R2_=.672

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In Table 3, model 3 depicts the two main adapted effects to self-perceived employability. It was found that a positive main effect exist between EO and SPE (β=0.151). Additionally, a positive main effect was also found between problem-solving skills and SPE (β=0.691). This implies that graduates that possess high EO and problem-solving skills will independently have a higher SPE.

Additionally, model 4 shows that there is significant positive interaction effect of Entrepreneurial orientation*Teamwork skills on SPE (β=2.07). As depicted in figure 3, this interaction effect implies that graduates with lower EO and problem-solving skills will score less on SPE as compared to graduates with higher EO and problem-solving skills that will report higher SPE scores given similar conditions.

5. Discussion

In the following section, the results presented summarized and discussed. The results found from the proposed hypothesis will be interpreted and discussed. Proposed model 3 and 4 will be discussed for additional analysis. This is followed by practical implications, limitations for further research and the final conclusion of this research paper.

5.1 Summary

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of business graduate’s entrepreneurial spirit and the soft skills has on self-perceived employability. The findings of this paper contribute to the restricted research on entrepreneurial mindset towards perceived employment and gives insights to what skills business schools can focus on in order to improve confidence towards employment and indirectly – employment itself. The research was set out with the intent of determining how an entrepreneurial mindset would affect self-perceived employability, and how would soft skills picked up during a graduates study affect this relationship. The proposed model states that an entrepreneurial student would be more employable and soft skills would positively influence this relationship.

5.2 Discussion points

The following sub-section consists of derived points from the results. Analysis and implications will be suggested in order make a more intuitive study. The points will be discussed are: Entrepreneurial

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orientation, the importance of problem solving skills and alternative explination: social capital -> entrepreneurial culture.

5.2.1 Entrepreneurial Orientation

Contrary to the expectation, the results of analyses the entrepreneurial mind was not found to be positively related to self-perceived employability. Particularly, intention to realize ones’ potential through self-employment (EI) did not affect the way they would evaluate their opportunities in the labor market. However, when the more personality related component (EO) of entrepreneurial mind is analyzed, it has been shown to have an effect on self-perceived employability. This could imply that within the entrepreneurial mind construct, EO plays a bigger role towards employability than EI. In other words, having only intention towards employability is never enough, unless the individual has EO personality characteristics that can drive towards employability.

Nonetheless, it can be assumed that this result could be due to participant demographics and setup of the survey. As studies have shown that females are less likely of entrepreneurial intention (Moore, 1990) and given that the majority of the collected surveys consisted of females (66.1%), this could imply that the collected sample would show a less likely intention towards entrepreneurship even though individuals should have the potential (EO) towards employment. Moreover, if entrepreneurial mindset could be determined more accurately and over a longer period, such as a situational test or a more detailed test that employs more inclusive entrepreneurial variables (“Entrepreneur Personality Profile”, 2015).

5.2.2 Importance of problem solving skills

As expect from the previous theoretical framework and (Maellaro & Whittington, 2012; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002), soft skills have been found to aid self-perceived employability. This can be seen statistically by the direct effect of soft skills: problem solving and interaction effect of entrepreneurial orientation both showed a positive effect towards self-perceived employability. This could mean that the factors that compose of problem solving skills – creativity, decision making and project

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management (Hill, 2014) – could implicitly aid the graduates by giving them the confidence towards being useful in labor market.

However, it is important to realize that being a problem solver isn’t just an ability; it’s a whole mindset, one that drives people to that shape their world around them by conquering one obstacle at a time by bringing out the best solution in any given situation. Taking revolutionary leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, and Steve Jobs, it is their drive to rather than accepting the status quo, these true problem solvers are constantly trying to proactively change their environment. Therefore, graduates need to be also proactive in tackling problems around them in order to achieve the best desired results.

5.2.3 Alternative explanations: Social capital &Entrepreneurial culture

Although it has been found that entrepreneurial orientation and problem solving skills lead to higher self-perceived employability, it cannot be proven an exclusive relationship exist between these variables. There is reason to believe that other variables, such as an individual’s “social capital” having an influence on perceived employability as well. Coined by (Bourdieu, 2011), social capital refers to links and shared values within society that enables to trust and work with one another, thus, enables individuals to mobilize group action, enriching personal working relationships and access information previously not available to the individual. Social capital can be enriched by internships, work experience or training (Berntson, 2006) and relates to both problem solving and entrepreneurship.

As entrepreneurs have been known to “mobilize the resources of others to achieve their entrepreneurial objectives” (Davis, 2002), having a high social capital could mean that the entrepreneurial individual can utilize more untapped resources around them in order to achieve their goals. For example, taking the well-known tech company – Apple Inc, co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs was only able to make the company a success when there is a combination of Wozniak’s technical skills and Job’s business foresight. Wozniak reaffirms the success story in an interview, Wozniak explained “I was just doing something I was very food at, and the thing I was

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good at turned out to be the thing that was going to change the world, Steve Jobs was much more further-thinking. When I designed good things, sometimes he’d say, “we can sell this”. And we did. He was thinking about how you build a company, maybe even then he was thinking “how do you change the world?” (Shontell, 2010). In other words, having entrepreneurial abilities might not be enough to achieve greatness, however, if an individual is exposed and connected to multiple human capital resources, the likelihood of success while starting a company would be higher.

Moreover, an individual’s social capital could also influence the likelihood of the individual being entrepreneurial. Being consistent with Mitchell’s (1990) idea that the environment playing a factor into the individual’s decision making of being an entrepreneur, Mueller (2006) suggested that individuals embedded in their local entrepreneurial environment especially at the beginning of the decision making process will be more likely to be entrepreneurial. This makes sense as individuals with the entrepreneurial intent would attach others with similar interest to engage in entrepreneurial actives, making it more available and easier to start a business. In other words, having an entrepreneurial culture – ie, having friends that want to be entrepreneurs – can promote entrepreneurial characteristics and in turn affect overall employability.

5.3 Practical Implications

The findings of this study may be applicable to the context of business students towards employability. As my results suggest, having entrepreneurial intention is found to be not enough for a graduate to be employable, instead, it is the orientation – personality skills developed throughout the years of study – that has an impact on self-perceived employability. Moreover, the notion of developing a graduate’s skills is further reemphasized with the results of finding problem-solving skills to be important towards self-perceived employability as well. These results suggest that educational intuitions should focus more on soft skill training, social capital development and breeding an entrepreneurial culture. For example, instead of only having traditional courses that promote hard skills, incorporate courses that promote soft skills: creativity, confidence, problem solving, perseverance, focus, non-verbal communication, receiving constructive feedback, collaboration, dedication, accountability. By doing so, business schools could in turn produce

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graduates that are not only have the necessary skills to capitalize opportunities in the labour market, but also the confidence – self-perceived employability – to start the search to do so.

One way of improving graduate employability is by closing the gap between graduate and company expectations. As the current education-employment system is mostly decided by graduates receiving a pre-tabulated grade decided by educational intuitions – exam results – with the addition of curriculum vitae of previous work experiences, I believe that this is insufficient as my research showed that it is the entrepreneurial personally characteristics (EO) and soft skills that play a role in determining the confidence or self-perceived employability of the individual. I therefore suggest that companies should take into consideration of additional employability measures such as qualities employed by StrenghtsQuest (http://www.strengthsquest.com) – an online service provider that matches employers to job-seekers by analysing results of a 30-minute assessment that determines a customize report that list the employee’s top five talents, along with action items and suggestions on how to use those talents to achieve academic, career or personal success. By doing so, employers and job-seekers can both benefit as employers can supplement job search by looking for specific qualities they want in a future employee, whereas job-seekers will have the benefit in knowing what are their strengths, and just like perceived-employability, the confidence given from these external sources will aid in their journey in finding the right job.

Another way of improving the situation within business institutions is by promoting a new-aged learning; this refers to incorporating new forms of education into the curriculum to develop soft skills, entrepreneurial intentions and social capital, thus, benefiting both future employees and entrepreneurs alike. One way of doing is described in the TED talk by Jane McGonigal (TED talk, 2010). She suggested that gaming, athletics and music programs are to be taught within educational programs. McGonigal (TED talk, 2010) found that gamers, athletics and musicians have four basic skills characteristics that potential that can enhance the employability and capabilities of the individual by; (1) self-motivation by adopting the “epic win” attitude in games and sports (2) the desire to work hard towards an personal interest (3) strong sense of community that is present in games and sports (4) the notion that an individual is a part of and contribute to something bigger than

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themselves. Coherent with Malcohm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour theory of success towards mastering a skill, the idea is to apply a gamer, athlete or musician’s drive towards a constructive goal by putting in hours of hard practice, while having fun doing so.

5.4 Limitations and suggestions for further research

This research has some limitations that can be addressed in future research. Firstly, the sample taken for the research is imperfect; this is due to data collection errors such as participants not filling in all required fields of the survey, which resulted in a usable N of 95 instead of the intended N of 115. Moreover, the sample of the census of business students can be said to be representative, as the collection is mostly limited to only University of Amsterdam business students, the results found could not represent business students on a global scale as business programs across the world will defer in curriculum. To achieve better data quality, it is suggested to have more thorough data collection techniques covering business students on a wider global scale while simultaneously require participants to complete test in a more consistent manner.

Furthermore, the conceptualization of the entrepreneurial mind in the start of the theoretical framework was found to be inconsistent and unclear. Entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial intentions are sometimes considered two independent determinants of entrepreneurship (dispositional and attitudinal). However, sometimes these two indicators can be considered as a part of “the entrepreneurial mind” and are considered as two integral parts of someone’s attempt to develop their career through self-employment. In this research, it is opted for the option to consider two constructs as two sides of a student’s future entrepreneurship behavior. However, the results about their diverse influence on soft skills and self-perceived employability could be an indication that the relationship between the two might be more complex and there is a need to be considered independently. Despite of growing number of studies in this field, ensuring conceptual clarity among antecedents of entrepreneurial behavior might be target of some future research. Additionally, integrating the beliefs toward ensuring employability through employment, into current conceptualizations of self-perceived employability is recommendable.

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Finally, due to time and situational restrictions, the data is collected on a single measures analysis prior to employment, this means that data is only collected at a single point of time and could be unrepresentative as graduates perception of employability will change over time. Resultantly, self-perceived employability is used as a proxy measure to determine actual employability via the confidence of the graduate to seek out employment. I suggest for future research to employ a repeated measures analysis, by performed test measuring independent variables to dependent variable employability at different times of the graduates employment timeline, specifically, perform self-perceived employability test prior to employment and reintroduce test that measures actual employability after the graduate has found a job. By doing so, the factors that more effectively affect employability could be determined and analyzed.

The factors mentioned above provide a possible basis for future research to expand on.

6. Conclusion

Due to the recent trends of the labor market, employability has become a major concern for graduates as the labor market has become ever more demanding as graduates are expected to possess more what was required for a job in the past. Specifically, business graduates having the exposure to resources

such as professor consultancy and peer-to-peer markets during their graduate year need to have the self-perceived employability in order to have the confidence to seek employment or venture into their own business. The outcome of the study has shown that entrepreneurial mindset does not lead to higher self-perceived employability. Instead, it was found that entrepreneurial intention has no effect on self-perceived employability, whereas entrepreneurial characteristics - entrepreneurial orientation, a sub variable of entrepreneurial mindset – to have found to have an effect on self-perceived employability while problem-solving skills would improve this relationship. In other words, graduates with strong entrepreneurial characteristics while having problem-solving skills to be more confident towards their employment. This makes sense as having the right skills and mindset would provide individuals with a stronger drive towards their personal and professional goals. It is concluded that

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might be other variables effecting employability of business graduates. Therefore, it would be relevant to conduct more integrative studies towards this field.

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Are business schools preparing graduates for employment? : the effect of an entrepreneurial mind and soft skills on the self-perceived employability of the business graduate