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International Journal of Business and Applied Social Scienc eEISSN: 2469-6501VOL: 5, ISSUE: 5MAY/2019DOI: 10.33642/ijbass.v5n5p2IJBASShttps://ijbassnet.com/ Center for Promoting Education and Researchwww.cpernet.orgUniversity Students’ Entrepreneurial Attitudes and Intention: The Omani ContextAdil Hassan Bakheet.Ph.D.Assistant ProfessorFaculty of BusinessSohar UniversitySultanate of OmanContact: 96899643650email: a.hassan@soharuni.edu.omOmanThresiamma Varghese.Ph.D.Assistant ProfessorFaculty of BusinessSohar University, OmanContact: 968 26720101 Ext. 104Email: tvarghese@soharuni.edu.omOmanKarima Al-QartoopiLecturerFaculty of BusinessSohar University, OmanContact: 968 26720101 Ext. 579Email: KQartoopi@soharuni.edu.omOmanFahad Al-HamdiMinistry of AgricultureSohar, OmanContact: 99899681, 95887638Email: fahads5115@hotmail.comOmanAbstractThis study is trying to shed some lights on the ways that entrepreneurship intentions are developed. Dependingon the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) the study tries to trace the effect of Omani Higher Education Institutions(HEIs) student’s attitudes towards entrepreneurial intentions to start-up. Practical analysis has been carried out ona sample of (2123) HEIs’ students of Oman. Through self-administered questionnaire, the data was collected andanalysed using appropriate statistics tools. Hypothesis was tested and correlation matrices were developed to testthe correlations between these two variables. The results show that the entrepreneurial attitudes of HEIs’ studentsin Oman positively related to their entrepreneurial intentions. This relationship between attitudes and intention wasmeasured and it was found that the amount of variation in students’ intentions that is accounted for attitudes is 55percent. The F ratio is found large 2550.7, which reflects the greater variation in intention that is explained byattitudes.Keywords: HEIs students, entrepreneurial attitudes, intentions, start-upIntroductionYoung entrepreneurs have drawn moreresearchers and policy makers’ attention as manystudies and policies have already explored the need andbenefit of young entrepreneurial activity for growingeconomies. These efforts suggest that a typical ageoften to start businesses is 25 and sometimes it is over40. Therefore, entrepreneurship might open windows toeducated young people, such as university students andgraduates, in different areas and industries. As9

International Journal of Business and Applied Social Scienc eIJBASSEISSN: 2469-6501VOL: 5, ISSUE: 5MAY/2019DOI: 10.33642/ijbass.v5n5p2https://ijbassnet.com/ Center for Promoting Education and Researchentrepreneurship is recognized as the main solution tothe unemployment problem, the policy makers need toremove barriers exited in the way towardsentrepreneurship for young people. Barriers as lack ofpositive attitudes, capital, skills, market networks andinstitutional support, were mentioned in various studies.The literature about young entrepreneursindicates that entrepreneurial characteristics are more inyoung people than adults are, so they have potentialitiestowards entrepreneurial activity. Still because of limitedresources, life and work experience, they face morechallenges and difficulties than their older age counterpartsdo. Moreover, some writers suggest that self-employedpeople have higher level of self-satisfaction than youthin the same age group. They added that propensity tostart business is more in men than in women, ( Schoof,2006; Blanchflower and Oswald, 1999). Recently, studiesadded some potential entrepreneurs as corporatecastoffs, corporate dropouts, and voluntary babyboomer’s retirees (Scarborough, and Cornwall, 2016).From a policy point of view, youthentrepreneurship has its own specific merits compared togeneral entrepreneurship. They are more likely to hireother youths, be more receptive to new economicopportunities and trends; more computer perceptive;more present in high growth sectors. In addition, youngpeople with entrepreneurial skills are better employees.A study based on UK young graduates (Tackey andPerryman, 1999) found that, those young people whostarted their own businesses are interested more toachieve independence rather than either job security orrichness. As a motive, achieving independence createspositive entrepreneurial attitudes.Many programmes in Oman, both ingovernment and private sector, initiated to enrich theentrepreneurial culture. Now, it would be fruitful toknow how Oman is developing an entrepreneurialculture and whether the entrepreneurial activity isdeveloping appropriate entrepreneurial attitudes amongyouth or not. If authorities have accurate picture aboutOman’s younger generations’ perceptions and attitudestowards entrepreneurship, it could be helpful formaking some enterprise policies, which could help toimprove entrepreneurial activity and sprits. Thisresearch paper will be an attempt to study theentrepreneurial attitudes and intentions of youth inOman to provide the right and accurate understandingand to help in formulating the right policies to promoteentrepreneurship culture.www.cpernet.orgPROBLEM STATEMENTMany researchers have investigated the reasonsfor starting-up small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs). Similarly, much research has been done on theentrepreneurial characteristics of those who havepotential or are responsible for establishing new SMEs.With respect to university students and graduates, animportant question is why some decide to pursueentrepreneurial activities while others search foremployment. Many researchers have investigated thepossible reasons behind this entrepreneurial behaviorfrom the perspective of the individual themselves aswell as economic and other factors in their businessesenvironments (Hofstede, 2001; Audretsch and Keilbach,2004). Others have found that the graduates’ interest inpublic and private sectors’ employment opportunities isthe cause of their decision to avoid a career inentrepreneurship. For them starting-up, therefore, isviewed as a second choice (Norasmah and Salma, 2009).What is not clear however is how the students perceiveentrepreneurship and see themselves in terms of beingcapable to start-up their own businesses.It is obvious that HEIs’ students throughout theworld comprise diverse cultural and social viewsinfluencing their entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions.Moreover, each country has its own norms and valuesthat define distinct outlooks toward entrepreneurship.People in varying environments have a large range ofexpectations, demands, and outlooks for diverse andcomplex values in many areas including entrepreneurship.Entrepreneurship would help the new graduates developtheir own career and ease the issue of unemployment.This can be achieved by working as job providersinstead of waiting for employment, when starting-uptheir SMEs (Norasmah and Salma, 2009). Given thesebenefits, some authors argue that students at HEIs areapparently search for business education that can equipthem with the necessary entrepreneurial knowledge andskills to succeed in running businesses or to create a jobfrom seizing existing entrepreneurial opportunities(Brown, 1990; Henry 2004).While entrepreneurship in general has enjoyedfull range of researches, youth entrepreneurship,specifically the higher education students, is still notcovered by genuine researches especially in developingcountries. However, few studies available as ( Llisterri etal, 2006) who has studied the extent of youthentrepreneurship and how young entrepreneurs whochose to become entrepreneurs create dynamic and high10

International Journal of Business and Applied Social Scienc eIJBASSEISSN: 2469-6501VOL: 5, ISSUE: 5MAY/2019DOI: 10.33642/ijbass.v5n5p2https://ijbassnet.com/ Center for Promoting Education and Researchgrowth enterprises that create employment for others.(World Bank, 2009), argued that young Entrepreneurshipis an important part of the national economy which cancreate and increase employment opportunities andenhance economic growth. Enterprises need employeesto grow and to compete and clearly, it would not bedesirable for everybody to become self-employed butsome will make a difference and contribute in providingthe required job opportunities. (Bakheet and Varghese,2012) investigated the factors influencing students’entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions in five Omaniuniversities, where risk, access to credit, fear of failure,personal entrepreneurial exposure, were covered.RESEARCH OBJECTIVE, QUESTION ANDHYPOTHESISThe main objective of this paper is to measurethe impact of students’ entrepreneurial attitudes on theirintentions to startup businesses. Attitudes will beaffected by different factors as explained in theliterature. These factors include culture, family support,personal entrepreneurial exposure, perception ofbarriers and motives (Bakheet, 2016).The associated question will be how students’entrepreneurial attitudes influence their intention tostart up, while the relevant hypothesis will be: there isno significant statistical relationship between the ntrepreneurial attitudes.Literature reviewThere is a growing body of literature arguingthat entrepreneurial attitudes play a very relevant role inthe decision to start a new business or toenterprise. There are many theories of Entrepreneurshipattempt to explain the origin of entrepreneurship and itscontributions over time ( Varghese and Al-Hamdi, 2013).They also attempt to answer the question of why somepeople or even some communities are more entrepreneurialthan others do. These entrepreneurship theories revolvearound the roles of inherited and acquired traits inproviding answers to the question. The Traits Theories asone set of these theories hold that entrepreneurs are born notmade. Entrepreneurial Events Theory (EET), as anothertheory, assumes that disinterest guides human behavioruntil something interrupts or displaces that disinterest(Shapero, 1982). On the other hand, the Theory of PlannedBehavior (TPB) considered actions are preceded byconscious decisions to act in a certain way (Ajzen,1991).11www.cpernet.orgThis study has taken theoretical support fromthe theory of planned behavior which proposed by(Ajzen, 1991). According to this theory, attitude towardthe act refers to the degree to which a person has afavourable or unfavourable evaluation or appraisal ofthe behavior in question. Social norms, on the otherhand, refer to the perceived social pressure to performor not to perform the behavior. The theory of plannedbehavior, in its intent to explain human behavior dealsalso with the antecedents of attitudes toward thebehavior and subjective norms. The theory of plannedbehavior postulates that behavior is a functionof relevant beliefs. It is these salient beliefs that areconsidered the prevailing determinants of a person’sattitudes, which influence intentions and behavior i.e.action, start-up.According to the Antecedents-BehaviorConsequences(A-B-C’s) model of behavior modification(Kazdin, 2013), behavioral beliefs are assumed toinfluence attitudes toward the behavior. Each belieflinks the behavior to a certain outcome, which isalready valued positively or negatively. Therefore,people automatically acquire an attitude toward thebehavior. In this way, people form favorable attitudestoward behaviors believed to have desirableconsequences and negative attitudes toward behaviorsassociated with undesirable consequences.According to the TPB, the relative importanceof attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioralcontrol in the prediction of intention is expected to varyacross behaviors and situations (Ajzen, 1991). In thesame way, Shapero states that in the new venturecreation process, no single variable or factor canaccount for the outcome of the process. Therefore, anumber of outcomes are necessary but no one issufficient. However, (Krueger, 1996) presents evidencethat perceived credibility, perceived desirability andpropensity to act explain well “over half” of thevariance of the intentions toward entrepreneurship, withfeasibility perceptions explaining the most. Therefore,(Krueger and Brazeal, 1994), state as their mostimportant conclusion the primacy of perceivedfeasibility and the need to research what factorscontribute the most to perceptions of feasibility.The decision to start-up has been argued to berelated to the utility derived from self-employment(Eisenhauer, 1995) with individuals’ with more positiveentrepreneurial attitudes and stronger entrepreneurialabilities being more likely to attain higher levels of

International Journal of Business and Applied Social Scienc eIJBASSEISSN: 2469-6501VOL: 5, ISSUE: 5MAY/2019DOI: 10.33642/ijbass.v5n5p2https://ijbassnet.com/ Center for Promoting Education and Researchwww.cpernet.orgutility in self-employment than in employment (Douglasand Shepherd, 2002). Previous research has identified therole of risk tolerance, income and independence asbeing significant in the decision to be self-employed(ibid). (Fitzsimmons, and Douglas, 2005) argued thatindividuals with more tolerance for risk and strongerpositive attitudes toward income and independency aremore likely to want to pursue an entrepreneurialendeavors. While individual attitudes to income,independence, risk, work effort and net perquisites mayvary, we would expect that individuals indicatinghigher expected utility (or lower disutility) from thesefactors would be more likely to have greaterentrepreneurial intentions.and car repair (49,436 units), then construction sectorwith (15,633).(David, 2004), argued that the current system ofhigher education fools rather than build the requiredcharacteristics and attributes needed to create futureentrepreneurs, and proposed that if new entrepreneursare to be encouraged, considerable changes are requiredin both the content and process of learning. (Maalu, etal, 2010), found that the goals in entrepreneurial abilityare influenced by factors such as maximum utilizationof own skills and talents; full control of own future;achievement of what one values personally; being “myown boss”; the freedom/opportunity to make own decisions;Sultanate of Oman has put in place thenecessary types of support that expected to help domesticbeside other factors. (Roozikhah, 2010) argued that studentswho are interested in learning more about markets,corporations, industries, and business regulations, seemmore motivated than others within the entrepreneurialclimate.(Khan and Almoharby, 2007), highlighted theimportance of entrepreneurial activity for the futuregrowth and development of the economies of oilproducing countries of the GCC. While ( Panikar &Washington, 2011) argued that, many Omani studentspossess entrepreneurial skills and characteristics. Theyalso found that the attitude and level of interest towardentrepreneurship is high.Entrepreneurship in OmanRecent data indicated that in Oman, 40% ofemployment created by SMEs and they are contributingin GDP by 15 to 20 percent. (Purcary et al, 2013)reported that statistics of Small & Medium Enterprisesof Oman achieving strong contribution for theeconomy, they accounted for 17 percent of GDP. Thenumber of SME in Oman according to the PublicAuthority of SMEs, are approximately (117,914) in2013. The high representation goes to wholesale, retailAt both government and private sector levels,currently there are different programs in Oman topromote SMEs to enhance their competitiveness andperformance. Directorate General for Development ofSMEs established by the Royal Decree No. 19/2007 inMinistry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) representsthe serious effort of government of Oman to improvethis sector. In 2013 the government has established thePublic Authority for Small to Medium Enterprise(SMEs) by Royal Decree No. 36/2013, for planning andcoordinating the efforts to spread SMEs up and enablethem to get finance and other relevant services.entrepreneurs with a number of highly successful initiatives.These initiatives can be shown in different programs,which have been created to support the Small andMedium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The governmenthas created some of these programs while others wereinitiated by the private sector.Entrepreneurship in Oman has received recentlya remarkable care and emphasis. Many studiesinvestigated Omani entrepreneurship from differentangles. The following section reviews few of thedifferent Omani studies on entrepreneurship. (Magdaand McCoya, 2014) argued that encouraging andfacilitating new business start-ups in Oman, whilelooking at the different factors that motivate entrepreneurs,will be a mean to support the diversification policy of theeconomy. (Shachmurove, 2007) argued that therelatively stable government, low taxes and attractiveforeign direct investment policies make Oman a desirablelocation for entrepreneurial ventures especially in tourismsector. (Al-Kharusi,2003) argued that small andmedium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are nowrecognized as being of major importance to the strategicagendas of many countries around the world since theycan lower unemployment and increase economicgrowth. This is particularly significant for a smallcountry like Oman, which is seeking to diversify itsproduction base. He recommends for facilitating thefinancing of these enterprises to meet its targets.(Matriano and Suguku, 2015) researched toidentify how incorporating entrepreneurship intoeducational curriculum will contribute to the futuregrowth of entrepreneurship in the country while12

International Journal of Business and Applied Social Scienc eEISSN: 2469-6501VOL: 5, ISSUE: 5MAY/2019DOI: 10.33642/ijbass.v5n5p2IJBASShttps://ijbassnet.com/ Center for Promoting Education and Researchenhancing the entrepreneurship agenda to include noneducational constituencies, actors and community atlarge. (Varghese and Al-Hamadi, 2013) tried to studyfour entrepreneurial characteristics among universitystudents in Sohar University namely the need forachievement, autonomy, risk-taking, and self-confidence.They found that three of the four perceptionalcomponents were significant: achievement need, risktaking, and autonomy while self-confident is nonsignificant in determine the student’s intention to start abusiness.(Segumpan and Abu Zahari, 2012) studied theattitude towards entrepreneurship among Omani collegestudents trained in business. Their research workattempted to determine any significant differences inthe respondents’ attitude when grouped by (a) gender,(b) sibling size, (c) sibling order, (d) mother’seducation, (e) father’s education, and (f) businessexposure. Findings showed that the respondents had a“positive” attitude towards entrepreneurship. Therewere no statistically significant differences in theattitude towards entrepreneurship when the respondentswere grouped according to demographic variables.(Kalyani, Kumar and Al Maqbali, 2015) focused on theemergence of SMEs in Ports of Oman as employmentopportunities providers to the growing educatedyoungsters and their main challenges. From a strategicperspective, (Al Barwani, Al Jahwari Al Saidi, AlMahrouqi, 2014) studied the growing and dynamic Smalland Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) sector as criticalfor the development and sustainability of any economy,particularly given their flexibility to adapt to changingeconomic dynamics.Research methodsGiven the importance of entrepreneurship andyoung entrepreneurs to every economy, the main aim ofthis study is to investigate Omani university students’attitudes towards entrepreneurship in Oman and how itaffects their intentions. The study surveyed students atOmani HEIs and interviewed some stakeholdersincluding Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry(OCCI), HEIs, and relevant Government bodies. Theresearch developed and tested the research instrumentsin both Arabic and English. Statistical analysis wasconducted using descriptive analysis, regression, andcorrelations to test the relations

hand, refer to the perceived social pressure to perform or not to perform the behavior. The theory of planned behavior, in its intent to explain human behavior deals also with the antecedents of attitudes toward the behavior and subjective norms. The theory of planned behavior postulates that behavior is a function of relevant beliefs.

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