Personal agency and entrepreneurial intentions among business students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship literature refers to entrepreneurial activity as an agency and has established intention as the most critical antecedent of entrepreneurial behavior. The study investigates the relationship between personal agency and entrepreneurial intention using a sample of students considering their entry into employment. The study draws on an agency theory that incorporates actors’ temporal orientations. Since intention can be regarded as a possible manifestation of one’s agentic perceptions, introducing the notion of time in the study of intention would provide additional insight into the entrepreneurial intention process. A moderated mediation model was applied, and survey data of 537 business students attending a Greek public university were used. The findings indicated that students’ perceptions of agentic capacities stimulate their entrepreneurial intention. Specifically, emancipation, defined as one’s present judgment of having the capacity to construct courses of action in relation to career matters, explains further the development of self-reported intentions by affecting perceived behavioral control and individual attitudes; this variable has a more significant influence. The findings also indicated that future orientation, defined as one’s perceptions of having the capacity for long-term planning, influences the effect of emancipation on entrepreneurial intention by making positive attitudes toward entrepreneurship more salient. Acknowledgment This paper was financially supported by the Special Account for Research Grants, University of West Attica.