2 Investigating the Motivation for Enterprise Education : A CaRBS based Exposition

Please note: Changes made as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing, formatting and page numbers may not be reflected in this version. For the definitive version of this publication, please refer to the published source. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite this paper. Purpose This study investigates student motivations for undertaking an EU funded entrepreneurship education programme in the Objective One areas of Wales and the relationships between motivation characteristics and their ultimate employment and self-employment aspirations. For both statistical and explanatory reasons a novel data mining technique (CaRBS) is used to undertake the equivalent of classification analysis. The study considers what relationships certain motivation characteristics have to students' aspirations, specifically in terms of their intention to be self-employed or employed. Design/methodology/approach The study examined enrolment data of 720 students on an entrepreneurial education programme called E-College Wales, and have known aspirations to either employment or self-employment. The Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex (CaRBS) technique is employed in the classification analyses undertaken, which offers an uncertain reasoning based visual approach to the exposition of findings, and which has particular relevance when the data is non-parametric and the considered potential relationships are non-linear. Findings The classification findings demonstrate the level of " contribution " of the different motivation characteristics to the discernment of students between self-employed and employed aspirations. The most strongly contributing characteristics were, motivations to undertake a business start-up, interest in the subject matter and intent to achieve the qualification. For these characteristics, further understanding is provided with respect to the student demographics of gender and student age (in terms of the association with aspirations towards being self-employed or employed). For example, with respect to start-up, the older the student, the increasing association with employment rather than self-employment career aspirations. Research limitations/implications The study identifies candidate motivation characteristics and the demographic profile for student's undertaking an entrepreneurial education programme. Knowing applicant aspirations should inform course design, pedagogy and its inherent flexibility, and recognise the specific needs of certain student types. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature examining the motivations for undertaking entrepreneurship education and categorising motivating factors. These findings will be of value to both education providers and researchers. The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector plays a key role in contributing to innovation and wealth creation, employment and economic growth in all industrialised and developing countries (Robson and …