Entrepreneurial competencies and employment status of business graduates: the role of experiential entrepreneurship pedagogy

Abstract

This study examines the relationship among experiential entrepreneurship pedagogy, entrepreneurial competencies and employment status of business graduates in two European countries. A proposed model relies on the adapted Bloom’s taxonomy, human capital theory, and experiential learning theory. The model examines knowledge, skills, and attitudes as competencies, and relates them to the two forms of employment status: nascent intrapreneurship and early-stage entrepreneurial activity. These inter-relationships are tested closely considering a dominant pedagogical approach to teaching entrepreneurship–traditional or experiential. The study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 454 graduates from Bachelor-level business programmes delivered at eight higher education institutions (four in each country); and on 16 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurship educators, who taught the surveyed graduates. The findings highlight that experiential pedagogy can be indeed more effective for developing all three entrepreneurial competencies, while traditional pedagogy might still be suitable for theoretical knowledge about entrepreneurship. Furthermore, experiential pedagogy moderates the relationship between different competencies and the employment status of graduates. This contingency on the pedagogy type is crucial implying a combination of traditional and experiential teaching methods to balance the effects of entrepreneurship education.