Do entrepreneurial skills affect entrepreneurship attitudes in accounting education?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the evidence of accounting undergraduates' attitude toward entrepreneurship, in particular, whether entrepreneurial skills developed in accounting education engender cognition of skills and intentions of starting a business. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a chi(2) test statistic used to evaluate a logistic regression to gauge the effect of delivering six entrepreneurial skills (risk taking, critical thinking, problem solving, innovation, autonomy and need for achievement) on entrepreneurship attitudes (cognition of skills and intentions). Data consist of questionnaire responses obtained from 668 undergraduates attending Egyptian and Bahraini universities. Findings The results reveal that accounting students perceive the following four entrepreneurial skills as a key for starting their own business: risk taking, critical thinking, problem solving and innovation. In addition, Egyptian students incline toward cognition, whereas Bahraini students head toward intentions. Originality/value This paper offers a new contribution as it focuses on the challenges and the considerations in the Arab World Universities.