Fear of Entrepreneurship among University Graduates: A Psychological Analysis

Abstract

Despite entrepreneurship being an attractive alternative to youth unemployment, university many university graduates are reluctant to embark on it as a career, even when the opportunity exists. This may be because of psychological factors that inhibit or even prevent entrepreneurship being considered as a desirable or even a viable career option. The present study examines the role of psychological factors, especially fear of failure as an entrepreneur, among university graduates, in this case in Nigeria, A specially-developed questionnaire was completed by 1100 university graduates (729 males and 371 females) with a mean age of 32 years. Findings confirmed core self-evaluation as influencing fear of entrepreneurship. Also, pre-entrepreneurial intention, attitude, and capacity significantly predicted fear of entrepreneurship. The fact that these psychological variables affect the intention to become an entrepreneur, suggests that they need to be considered in the selection, placement, and training of university graduates for entrepreneurship, It is also because these variables play an important role in innovation, creativity, and adjustment to changes which are as inevitable in management as they are in entrepreneurship. Future studies need to cover more psychological variables and different samples. Introduction Graduate unemployment in sub-saharan Africa, especially Nigerian has reached a crisis level. This is further aggravated by the global economic meltdown, which has strained Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Africa, thereby forcing a significant number of enterprises to either close down or operate at minimal level. In 2008 alone, Nigeria produced well over 300,000 graduates from its 104 universities. A good percentage of them remain unemployed and would not go into entrepreneurship, a process of setting up small or medium scale income generating venture. Some might accept jobs that are less than satisfactory. Probst and Ekore (20 1 0) reported the unemployment of Nigeria to be above 40%. The continued uncertainty about the economy, downsizing by corporate and government organizations, and a declining number of organizations hiring in the education system have continually foster the appeal for self-employment through personal establishment of income generating activities (Moore, 2002; Klapper and Leger- Jarniou, 2006). This made the focus on entrepreneurship an inevitable strategy to address the resultant social problem of high unemployment. Career in entrepreneurship provides opportunity for financial independence, job creation and innovation, and economic growth. As rewarding as it might seem, not many people including university graduates have been known to consider career in entrepreneurship, even when the financial support is available. This shows that availability of resources to start an income generating activity and the potential benefits are not sufficient to get an individual into entrepreneurship. Omololu (1990) identified entrepreneurial bids as often accompanied by fear. In this study, four fear dimensions of failure, success, criticism, and change are considered to make up fear that inhibits entrepreneurship. The fear of failure concerns the feeling that leaves a person discouraged and afraid that he or she will not succeed even before making an attempt. The fear of success can aptly be seen as the flip-side of fear of failure. Many people are ultimately afraid of unleashing their full potential, not only because they fear they will fail, but because they fear about their power and ability to succeed. On the other hand, fear of criticism concern a situation when an individual's behavior is largely determined by what others will say or expect. The individual is afraid to leave his or her comfort zone because of what others will think or say. Finally, the fear of change in entrepreneurship comes about when an individual is worried about change from regular way of life to something new. …