Abstract

GONZALEZ CANOVAS, Alejandro; FERNANDEZ MILLAN, Juan Manuel  and  PEREZ DEL CERRO, Francisco. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy measurement in university students and higher degrees students in Melilla. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2022, vol.39, n.2, pp.7-22.  Epub Jan 25, 2022. ISSN 1668-7027.  http://dx.doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.2.1.

The crises and the quick technological progress are changing the job market at high speeds. The mobility (search of employment in other countries), the reductions of staff to be competitive or the adaptation at new technologies are always making businesses improve.

One of these changes is the necessary increase of small business owners. Morales, Giménez and Morales (2018) say that they are who create their own business; for Alda-Varas, Villardón-Gallego and Elexpuru-Albizuri (2012) entrepreneurship is vital to create new ideas and improve the economy of the society. This explains the importance of introducing actions to develop the entrepreneur. However, nobody starts a job if they don’t feel prepared to do it; and in the case of the entrepreneur this is called “entrepreneurial self-efficacy”.

Morales et al. (2018) define entrepreneurial self-efficacy as the abilities and the aptitude, both cognitive and behavioral, and the beliefs, influenced by many factors (the experience and the emotions), which will determinate the success or not in the creation of a new business.

Reynolds, Hay and Camp (1999) explain the meaning of entrepreneurship as the efforts to create businesses or new societies, like self-employment, the foundation of business organisms, or the extension of business already created, directed by one person, a team or an establishment. Enterprising is not a static quality, but a process (Alda-Varas et al., 2012) in constant change. The small business owner passes through a series of periods in which he or she develops his qualities. Summarized, this process has four periods (Alda-Varas et al., 2012) start, institutionalization, decentralization and conglomerate or social cohesion, each involving different functions and tasks.

There is a series of characteristics (competences) associated with the self-employment which can forge success in the future: being a persistent person, having passion, determination, farsightedness, flexibility and good communication skills. Besides the abilities and the attitudes quoted that can be denominated “interior factors”, there is another set of factors that influence in the success of the small business owner: these are the economic, cultural and social circumstances.

It is worth asking at this stage if the current education system helps mould and create this entrepreneurial attitude, this perception of self-employment that motivates the students to consider creating their own business when they finish their studies. Since the education system presents two ways for the students to eventually join the work force (university and professional training), this begs the question if both of these ways are equally effective in developing entrepreneurial skills in the students.

This article pretends to describe the perception of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy for the students of the university degree (U.D.) and the superior grade (S.G.) of professional training of the Autonomous City of Melilla, with the purpose to compare all the data with the rest of the autonomous communities of Spain and test two hypotheses:

First hypothesis: students who have finalized S.G. will have a better perception of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy than students who have finished U.D. mainly due to the characteristics of the curriculum design.

Second hypothesis: students in the 2nd course of S.G. (who have already taken the subject of Training and Vocational Guidance) will present a greater perception of entrepreneurial self-efficacy than those in the 1st course.

A total of 177 subjects participated, belonging to both S.G. and .U.D., both sexes, and ages between 18 and 50 years old, who answered the scale Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE; De Noble, Jung y Ehrlich, 1999), in the adapted version by Moriano et al. (2012). Results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the entrepreneurial self-efficacy perceived in the sample studied and other peninsular students. On the other hand, no difference was found between U.D. and S.G. students.

Keywords : entrepreneurial self-efficacy; entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship factors; students of the superior grade; students of the university degree.

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