THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION

The twenty first century provided vast opportunities for the entrepreneurs. Start-ups and technopreneurship are highly valued and encouraged by public organizations and private funds. Moreover, the entrepreneurial career orientation of the engineers became much more important in all over the world. Recent studies have already tried to discover the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention among potential technopreneurs. Entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial personality characteristics which were popular at the beginning of this century are still hot topics in the literature due to the fact that repeated analyses resulted in surprisingly mixed results. This paper investigates the predictors of the entrepreneurial intention of engineers and engineering students focusing on their psychological characteristics of innovativeness, need for achievement, need for independence and risk-taking propensity. A survey conducted on 607 respondents revealed that all these traits were correlated positively to their entrepreneurial intention. Multiple regression analysis indicated that all the traits except need for achievement are significant predictors of entrepreneurial intention. Managerial and further research implications are forwarded. (C) 2017 Published by Future Academy www. FutureAcademy.org.UK