The moderating effect of seminar learning experience on entrepreneurial intention among Malaysian nascent entrepreneurs / Fauziah Pawan.

Literature has established that the creation of new entrepreneurial ventures is a planned behavior fundamentally driven by entrepreneurial intention of the nascent individual. As such, change in entreprenerial intention has been identified as a key reason that not all nascent intentions and efforts culminate into the birth of a new firm. In spite of this, not much has been done in terms of understanding this change phenomenon. At the same time, given the centrality of new venture creation in entrepreneurship as well as the economic importance of new firm births to economic vitality, the success of nascent entrepreneurs are of considerable interest to policy makers and academic researchers alike. In the interest of encouraging and maintaining a consistent supply of new enterprises entering the economy, government has installed several strategies and efforts to aid the nascent process. One key effort is the short duration entrepreneurship seminars. This study is focused on how the learning experience of the nascent individuals participating in the short duration entrepreneurship seminar impacts on their intentions to create a new venture. Specifically, the study examines how the seminar learning experience moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and the predictors of intention to affect change in the said intention. For this purpose, a research framework derived from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was utilized.A total of 166 nascent individuals participating in a series of 4-day entrepreneurship seminars across the country were survey between April and August 2009. A pre-seminar and post seminar data collection method was employed and multivariate regression analysis was conducted to test the research hypothesis. The study's results show that entrepreneurial intention is relatively unstable and lends itself to change easily even in a brief period of time. Specifically, the results confirm that nascent intention to create a new venture can significantly change in the context of the short duration entrepreneurship seminars. The study also finds that the participants' seminar learning experience do not have a significant impact on entrepreneurial intention change in spite of the positive learning experience and elevated levels of new knowledge and information among the participants. Of the six research hypotheses, one is fully accepted while two are only partially and another three are rejected. This study highlights the importance of not losing sight of the nascent individual and his entrepreneurial cognition in any effort to understand, to support or to harness the economic potential of new venture creation.