Abstract

The offering of entrepreneurial spirit and skills is geared towards the development of initiatives towards work opportunity development and job creation. The avoidance of secularization and cultural heritage adherence of peoples in the countryside towards cultural pluralism in entrepreneurship is paramount to revitalizing the world’s entrepreneurial education. This study is designed to determine the essential enterprising skills of hospitality management students. Employing the descriptive-comparative research design to 155 hospitality management students, the following were known: the concordances of the hospitality management students to essential enterprising skills are not optimized. Moreover, comparable results on the respondents’ general enterprising skills were known when grouped by their sex, residence, and curriculum year. It was concluded that essential enterprising skills were seeded among the respondents but needed to be cultivated and developed to optimize their participation on job development and creation.

1. Introduction

Entrepreneurial skills and initiative had been one of the major concerns of higher education as graduates from the business cluster flourish all over the world. This mandate is prepared in order to facilitate employability of graduates along this discipline ¹. This initiative had become the major concern of higher education as Business Entrepreneurial graduates who will be increasingly called upon to be not only job seekers but also to become job creators are mushrooming since 1990. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) should give the opportunity among students to fully develop their own abilities with a sense of social responsibility and promoters of change that will foster equity and justice by educating them to become full participants in a democratic society ². In the Philippines, a mandatory general education course (Entrepreneurial Mind) is offered across all disciplines that is aimed at developing an entrepreneurial mind among students particularly on business and allied discipline cluster.

The offering of the Entrepreneurial Mind is ultimately aimed at developing entrepreneurial skills among prospective graduates across all programs. It is considered an avenue to increase the supply of future entrepreneurs in the country with the hindsight to alleviate poverty, reduce unemployment, establish new enterprises and reduce the possible failure rate of existing businesses. It is argued that tertiary institutions are seen as environments that prepare students by providing the necessary knowledge and skills to become entrepreneurs; thereby, fostering entrepreneurial intentions which is cultivated through time. Moreover, entrepreneurial education influences the development and sustainability of an individual’s confidence in or identification to being an entrepreneur ^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7}.

The crux is: the introduction of essential enterprising skills particularly in the business cluster is paramount to the act of cultivating an enterprising spirit among students in the discipline. This act should elope from all the wiles of ingenuity of the secularization including the cultural biases towards entrepreneurship. The determinant of the concordances of the students in the business cluster is at the core of providing educational paradigm that would pole-vault the spirit of every student in the discipline to come across learning to become entrepreneurs. Henceforth, this study is conducted to determine the concordances of the hospitality management students along their essential enterprising skills. This will help the faculty of the College of Hospitality and Industry Management in devising developmental plans and courses of actions in developing further the students’ entrepreneurial spirits and intent vis-à-vis the mandatory offering of the Entrepreneurial Mind as a general education course in the program.

2. Methodology

The Descriptive-comparative research design was employed in this study. Descriptive design is necessary when the purpose is to gather information on the thesis of the study from the respondents during the time of the study. The Comparative design was used to delineate significant differences between and among grouping variables to further analyze this phenomenon - the enterprising skills of hospitality management students.

This study was conducted in a state university located in the countryside of the Philippines. The number of respondents was determined through G-power. A total of 155 samples were known and divided into four strata. Employing the stratified random sampling technique, the researchers determined the number of samples per curriculum year: First year, 60 samples; Second year, 49 samples; Third year, 30 samples; and Fourth year, 16 samples. From there, the respondents’ profile as to sex and residence was known: as to sex, 95 males and 60 females, and as to residence, 85 from rural areas and 70 from urban areas.

The research instrument was adapted from the study of Saleh and Manjunath ⁸. The instrument covers the determinant of the essential enterprising skills of the youth in the least developed countries. It is composed of 15 questions yielding their enterprising skills. In the current study, the reliability of the instrument is set at .915 through Cronbach’s alpha. This means that the instrument used in the study is reliable.

The gathered data were treated with frequency counts, mean, t-test, and ANOVA. Post hoc analysis was carried out through Scheffe test. All tests were set at .05 level of significance.

3. Results and Discussion

Presented in the foregoing table are the agreement of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills. It can be noted that the nature of the course of the respondents (Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management) requires an ability to manage their own business enterprise and in turn, they must become creators of work opportunities.

As it is shown in the table, all indicators of the essential enterprising skills are vouched with a perception interpreted as agree. In general, it is shown that the bulk of the vouched perceptions are concentrated between 2 and 3 scales such that 4 or strongly agree has 19 (12.26%), 3 or agree has 106 (68.39%), and 2 or moderately agree has 30 (19.35%). It can be noted that in general no perception is recorded under scale 1 or disagree. The foregoing results imply that the respondents are seeded with essential enterprising skills. Albeit under optimized during the time of this study, it can be said that these seeded skills may be optimized in the latter days of their curricular stay in the university spurring their potentials to become entrepreneurs one day. It is further construed that these soon-to-be-graduates are expected to not only depend on the available employment opportunities in their own locality but to create job opportunities because of the seeded spirit among them.

Seeding such skills among prospective graduates of business education and related courses is paramount to developing attitude and intent to become entrepreneurs through participative education ⁹. Moreover, it is also claimed that attitude and intent to become entrepreneurs are linked with the need for achievement, family business background, and subjective influence ^{10, 11, 12}. Henceforth, a careful analysis on the background of the entering student in the business cluster is highly wanting.

Presented in the foregoing table are the comparative analyses on the perceptions of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills when they are grouped by sex and residence. It can be noted that the general concordances of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills to both grouping variables posted insignificant results. This means that there are comparable affordances of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills when grouped by sex and residence. Furthermore, it can be said that the data set in this study failed to reject the null hypothesis.

Albeit the general concordances of the respondents posted comparable results, it can be gleaned that indicator 6 (I regularly engage in training courses in business, leadership, and entrepreneurship) posted significant results by t-test, t-value of 2.418 and p-value of .017, with the male respondents on the edge over their female counterparts. On the other hand, indicator 8 (I possess a satisfying background on computers and operating system and applications) posted significant results by t-test, t-value of 2.497 and p-value of .017, with the respondents from the urban areas on the edge over their counterparts from the rural areas.

The concordances of the male respondents could be attributed to their known characteristics to be more risk takers. The secularization of men in the business industry together with the historical legacies of males may be attributed in the foregoing results along indicator 6. Let it be noted that the locale of the current study is in the countryside with the secularities that is monopolized by men. This phenomenon is similar to the studies of reference ^{13, 14}. In their studies, it was claimed that secularities are observed in the countryside. The enterprising groups in their studies are monopolized by men. Aptly, the concordances of the female respondents’ construe with the findings of reference ¹⁵. They claimed that women are bounded with the secularities in their own locality which impede their empowerment in the enterprising world. It was concluded in their study that women remain to become secular and eloping from every act of rationalizing individual emancipative participation towards economic and human development.

On the other hand, concordances of the respondents who live in the urban areas may be attributed to the modernization principles of entrepreneurship. It was claimed that peoples living in the rural areas are more naïve and would be restricted to become less aggressive along their intentions ¹⁶. Reference ² argued that peoples living in the urban areas are more into exploring possible tendencies to become entrepreneurs.

Presented in the foregoing table are the comparative analyses on the perceptions of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills when grouped by curriculum year. It can be noted that the general concordances of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills posted insignificant results. This means that there are comparable affordances of the respondents on their essential enterprising skills when grouped by curriculum year. Furthermore, it can be said that the data set in this study failed to reject the null hypothesis.

Emphasis is supplied to items 8, 12, and 13 as they yielded significant results leading the study to reject the null hypothesis on these specific indicators. Indicator 8 (I possess a satisfying background on computers and operating system and applications) yielded to be afforded by the respondents from the third-year level better than the first-year level while comparable to the rest of the respondents. On the other hand, indicator 12 (I can make decisions based on my own justifications) yielded to be afforded by the respondents from the fourth-year level better than the first-year level while comparable to the rest of the respondents. Moreover, indicator 13 (I can lead and control a team and its works) is afforded by the fourth-year level students incomparably with the rest of the respondents.

The affordances of the respondents along indicator 13 is a manifestation on the effects of education on the propagation of entrepreneuriability among the respondents. The foregoing results are supportive to the claims of some of the cited literature. It was claimed that education, including its curricular training and background, plays a vital role in the development of entrepreneurial spirit and intent among business students. Education, in this sense, includes all the learning modalities; be it formal or informal. When learning is exuded, known elements shape students’ intention, skills, capabilities and other know-how such as entrepreneurial knowledge, desirability of the entrepreneurial activity and its feasibility ¹⁷. Purportedly, the clout and the upbringing that they get from the culture where they are raised also played a key factor in this development ^{2, 17, 18, 19}.

Apparently, entrepreneurial education is regarded as a key to the stimulation of both entrepreneurial spirit and intent among students and graduates from the business cluster to become creators of wealth, not only seekers of employment. The development of this business culture is a shared attribute among all factors in their environment: family, social environment and most especially education ².

Owing to the posits of the Theory of Planned Behavior, it is explained that behavioral intentions are influenced by the attitude about the likelihood of a behavior to have an expected outcome and the subjective evaluation of the risks and benefits of that outcome. Furthermore, it is envisaged that one’s behavior is a function of beliefs purported not only to be relevant but related to behavior. This theory posits that an individual generally forms a favorable attitude towards those behaviors purported to have desirable outcomes and is negatively inclined towards unfavorable consequences. Attitude and behavior in this sense may be intertwined with their disposition as affected or influenced by their academic endowment. To this end, it is argued that while one’s decision to become an entrepreneur is assumed to be premeditated having been preceded by an intention to do so, in other scenarios, this intention is conceived only shortly before the actual decision ²⁰. On the other hand, it is also argued that the entrepreneurial intention may never translate into actual behavior. However, on the whole, it is assumed that entrepreneurial intentions largely influence, although unwholesomely, an individual decision to establish an enterprise ²¹. Furthermore, it was said that motivations for business start-ups among potential entrepreneurs are driven mostly by self-achievement desire, need for more money, and desire for a higher social and professional status. In the case of the current study, it is construed that the respondents cultivate an attitude and behavior that is intertwined with their education as attributed by the results in indicators 8, 12, and 13.

4. Conclusion

Owing to the scope and findings of the study, it is concluded that the hospitality student-respondents were seeded with growing enterprising skills which can be propagated as they continue their education in their field of studies. Evidently, no significant differences were recorded on the data set along their enterprising skills when grouped by profile. However, individual analyses on the indicators set forth in the study showed that varying concordances exist on indicators I regularly engage in training courses in business, leadership, and entrepreneurship, I possess a satisfying background on computers and operating system and applications, I can make decisions based on my own justifications, and I can lead and control a team and its works.

References