Original scientific paper
Determinants of entrepreneurial alertness: the effect of demographic and metacognitive variables
Sara Delač
orcid.org/0000-0001-6599-9466
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Marina Stanić
orcid.org/0000-0002-3835-6358
; Faculty of Economics in Osijek, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Tihana Koprivnjak
orcid.org/0000-0001-9881-6419
; Faculty of Economics in Osijek, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
Entrepreneurial alertness is a concept that merges two separate fields of research – cognition theory and the theory of entrepreneurial opportunity creation and discovery. Initially, entrepreneurial alertness was defined as an individual's ability to identify opportunities and recognize gaps with limited clues. The seminal work in entrepreneurial alertness was expanded later on with the notion of action and proactive stance as fundamental components of entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, researchers were able to parcel it into three distinct elements of alertness: scanning and search, association and connection, and evaluation and judgment. This study builds upon previous research by identifying determinants of entrepreneurial alertness. The purpose of the study is to explore the role of demographic variables (gender, education level, education focus, prior work experience, and having parents as entrepreneurial role models), as well as metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experience as most frequently used measures of entrepreneurial metacognition. To observe these relations, a sample of 84 business students majoring in 6 different areas (marketing, finance, management, entrepreneurship, trade and logistics, and business informatics) was analyzed using linear regression as the primary method of empirical analysis. The results demonstrate a strong positive relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and metacognitive knowledge and experience. Furthermore, prior work experience, year of the study program, and academic major play an important role in determining entrepreneurial alertness. Overall, the model explains 38.6% of the variance in the response variable.
Keywords
entrepreneurial opportunity; metacognitive knowledge; metacognitive experience
Hrčak ID:
213867
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2018.
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