College graduates' unemployment problems have gradually become a social problem. This paper aims to find out whether entrepreneurship education can promote employment and improve…
Abstract
Purpose
College graduates' unemployment problems have gradually become a social problem. This paper aims to find out whether entrepreneurship education can promote employment and improve job satisfaction by finding the impact of entrepreneurship education on increasing employment performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper surveys the undergraduates who graduated by 2010 from Jilin University and attained their entrepreneurship and employment performance value. The paper draws a conclusion by making correlation analysis.
Findings
The results showed that entrepreneurship has a positive impact effect on the employment performance. It is confirmed entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on employment.
Originality/value
The paper made a link between the entrepreneurship research and the employment study, and provided a theoretical underpinning to the concept of “Encouraging entrepreneurship to drive employment”. This also provided the rationality and necessity of entrepreneurship education.
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Zongling Xu, Jiali Lin and Danming Lin
This paper aims to investigate structural characteristics of a business network comprising small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and to explore the relationships between such…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate structural characteristics of a business network comprising small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and to explore the relationships between such network characteristics and innovative capabilities of the participating firms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a survey approach and conducts empirical analysis by drawing data from 92 firms operating in the packaging and printing industry in Shantou City, Guangdong Province.
Findings
In relation to the participating firms' innovative capabilities, density, reciprocity and multiplicity of the business network are figured out as factors with positive association, while hypotheses concerning intensity, non‐redundancy and betweenness of the network are not supported.
Research limitations/implications
The authors only conducted a survey in a single industry in one location. Thus the extent to which the results of this study can be generalized remains to be further investigated.
Practical implications
Small and medium‐sized enterprises can enhance their innovative capability by understanding and leveraging the structure of the business network in which they participate.
Originality/value
This paper sheds additional insights to the relationship between a business network and firms' innovative capabilities in a Chinese context.
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Entrepreneurship in most cases can provide new products and services to the market and play an active role in an industry. Nowadays, colleges entrepreneurship education is…
Abstract
Purpose
Entrepreneurship in most cases can provide new products and services to the market and play an active role in an industry. Nowadays, colleges entrepreneurship education is becoming more of a “business incubator” for future entrepreneurship. This paper reviews the relative literature with entrepreneurship education in China and USA's colleges, aims to identify Chinese colleges' issues, then develops suggestions of Chinese colleges' entrepreneurship education and illustrated its future trends.
Design/methodology/approach
It revealed the theoretical framework of American main entrepreneurship education modes, analyzing three representative entrepreneurship modes in American colleges, its spirit, capability of innovation, entrepreneurship ability contribute to the basic frame of entrepreneurship education in American colleges, then by comparative research between American and Chinese colleges.
Findings
This paper is based on discussing the differences between US and Chinese colleges with entrepreneurship education as well as the enlightenment. Meanwhile, it was pointed out the disadvantages relating to our colleges' entrepreneurship education and its future trends.
Originality/value
By introducing the entrepreneurship modes of US colleges and analyzing the modes together with Chinese colleges entrepreneurship education, it draws out the conclusion to carry out practical activities and establish a good entrepreneurship environment, to strengthen teacher training in entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial consultant team building and to deploy entrepreneurship research.
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Fan‐qi Zeng, Xiang‐zhi Bu and Li Su
The purpose of this paper is to find the characteristic of entrepreneurial process for the student in free enterprise (SIFE) team in China, and to provide theoretical guidance for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to find the characteristic of entrepreneurial process for the student in free enterprise (SIFE) team in China, and to provide theoretical guidance for the entrepreneurial process of SIFE student team through a new Timmons model.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking an entrepreneurial project of Shantou University SIFE team as example, a Timmons model was proposed describing the SIFE student team entrepreneurial process based on the famous entrepreneurial process model established by Jeffry A. Timmons. The application value of the new Timmons model was proved by case analysis.
Findings
The paper summarized the main characteristics of the entrepreneurial model for the SIFE student team as: the nature of creation free enterprises, the excellent entrepreneurship networks, and the spirit of social entrepreneurship orientation. By case study, the paper proved the practical value of the new Timmons model by analysis of the key factors such as business opportunities, resources and entrepreneurial team, and their dynamic balance process.
Practical implications
The new model proposed in the paper will have theoretical value to provide a direction for student entrepreneurial practice, the analysis of the characteristics of the new model will also enrich the research on entrepreneurship theory.
Originality/value
This paper is the first research on SIFE student entrepreneurial process in China. In the past two years, the authors observed dozens of successful worldwide SIFE students' practical projects, but few of them appeared in the literature. It is hoped that this paper can offer some constructive advice to the entrepreneurial process of the SIFE student team and enrich the theory of general entrepreneurial education.
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The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature and conceptual developments to explore how and why universities should teach entrepreneurship.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature and conceptual developments to explore how and why universities should teach entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a theoretical paper which draws on the rich seam of existing literature to develop theory about enterprise education purpose and pedagogy.
Findings
Universities are uniquely able to provide the right sort of education that will produce “better” entrepreneurs. In turn, these better entrepreneurs are better enabled to produce and successfully implement the innovation that drives economic growth.
Practical implications
These are twofold. The paper raises awareness of the importance of the university's role for developing the right sort of entrepreneurship. It also highlights important pedagogic points that will realise the full potential of a university entrepreneurial education.
Originality/value
The paper largely synthesises existing work, but conceptualises and presents the material in a new way.
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The purpose of this paper is to find out the causes of Chinese graduate entrepreneurship dilemma (both the Chinese graduate entrepreneurship rate and the Chinese graduates'…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to find out the causes of Chinese graduate entrepreneurship dilemma (both the Chinese graduate entrepreneurship rate and the Chinese graduates' entrepreneurship low success rate) and then to propose some suggestions to the dilemma.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is conducted on the basis of 20 graduate entrepreneurship cases to summarize the necessary qualifications for graduates to start new businesses and then uses Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) theory of entrepreneurial climate to analyze the entrepreneurial climate faced by Chinese graduates.
Findings
This paper points out the internal and external causes of Chinese graduate entrepreneurship dilemma: the internal one is that most graduates do not have the qualifications for entrepreneurship; the external one is that the present entrepreneurial climate in China is poor, resulting in difficulties for Chinese graduates to start new ventures.
Practical implications
The paper proposes the following countermeasures to help Chinese graduates get out of the entrepreneurship dilemma: undergraduates actively participating in social practice activities, establishing and improving the entrepreneurship education system, perfecting government policies and creating a strong entrepreneurial culture, respectively.
Originality/value
Nowadays, there is much research into the causes of the Chinese graduate entrepreneurship dilemma from various viewpoints. However, an analysis of the causes using GEMs theory of entrepreneurial climate is rare. This paper analyzes the problem from this aspect.
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College students' employment is a significant problem in the process of China's economic development. Owing to the comprehensive effect, entrepreneurship has become the important…
Abstract
Purpose
College students' employment is a significant problem in the process of China's economic development. Owing to the comprehensive effect, entrepreneurship has become the important way to solve the problem of university students' employment. The purpose of this paper is to analyze systematically the main difficulties of university students' entrepreneurship in China and present corresponding policy recommendations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper takes the conceptual analysis approach. Referring to the Nyawali and Fogel model of 1994, the paper constructs the key‐determinant model of China's university students' entrepreneurship and analyzes and explains the situation by adopting existing statistics and survey data about China's university students' entrepreneurship.
Findings
After the global financial crisis, encouraging university graduates' entrepreneurship to create more employment opportunities has become the key strategy to deal with employment problems for China's government. This paper finds that, although the university students have some advantages, there are still several difficulties for university graduates' entrepreneurship. Effective countermeasures must be taken to strengthen the entrepreneurship capacity by enhancing entrepreneurship education, increasing entrepreneurship opportunities by improving the entrepreneurship environment and raising the entrepreneurship desire by perfecting financing system and then encouraging university graduates to start up businesses actively, so that more college students could become entrepreneurs.
Originality/value
This paper systematically constructs the key‐determinant model of China's university students' entrepreneurship. The policy recommendations for college students' entrepreneurship presented in this paper might be referred to by government to make decisions to improve university students' entrepreneurship support policy and enhance university students' entrepreneurship ability.