Assessing the relationship of personality and intention to start technology ventures: a comparison between business and engineering students

Abstract

During the last decade strengthening of the students’ entrepreneurial intention to start technology businesses has been a relevant objective for both business schools and engineering schools in Latin America. This research compares the entrepreneurial intention of business administration and engineering and technology students to start emerging technology businesses after the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluating whether students’ personality traits are related to their entrepreneurial intention toward these businesses. A comparison of central tendency, Spearman correlations and the Sidak test were conducted to analyzing the responses of 383 business administration and 161 engineering and technology students enrolled in universities of Chile and Ecuador, to an online self-reporting questionnaire. The results have supported a higher entrepreneurial intention of business administration students toward businesses related to e-commerce services, in contrast, engineering and technology students have showed a higher intention to start businesses associated with IT and telecommunications, health technologies and distance education. The findings also suggest that correlations between personality traits and the intention to create these technology ventures vary by area of study, being higher in entrepreneurial topics less close or known by students according to the themes seen in class. The evidence obtained in this study are relevant to improving the formation of technological entrepreneurs in Latin American universities because suggest that it is necessary to consider careers journeys and personality differences to design entrepreneurial training programs.