Title: The entrepreneurial mind-set of university students: a cross-cultural comparison between Namibia and Germany

Authors: Heiko Haase, Arndt Lautenschlager, Ravinder Rena

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, University of Applied Sciences Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Promenade 2, 07745 Jena, Germany. ' Department of Business Administration, University of Applied Sciences Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Promenade 2, 07745 Jena, Germany. ' Harold Pupkewitz Graduate School of Business, Polytechnic of Namibia, P.O. Box 13388, Windhoek, Namibia

Abstract: The objective of this article is to set a cornerstone to compare and understand the phenomenon of graduate entrepreneurship in developing and developed countries. Our central research questions are: Are there differences in the entrepreneurial intentions of university students? What are the factors that might explain potential differences in their entrepreneurial mind-set? In response to these questions, we performed a cross-sectional study exploring the prospective career paths of 2,353 university students from Namibia as well as from Eastern and Western Germany. We found that Namibian students have a higher entrepreneurial intention compared to their German counterparts. We detected several differences between both countries and revealed explanatory factors. However, they are not sufficient to explain the |regional dimension| of the higher entrepreneurial intentions in Namibia. Several implications are presented.

Keywords: graduate entrepreneurship; universities; university students; entrepreneurial intentions; Namibia; Germany; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEED.2011.040406

International Journal of Education Economics and Development, 2011 Vol.2 No.2, pp.113 - 129

Published online: 11 Oct 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article