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Illuminating enterprise and entrepreneurship education
Edited by Professor Harry Matlay
Introduction
Over the last decades, entrepreneurship has established its position as the most potent economic force ([28] Kuratko, 2005) and the engine of development across the globe. Consequently many countries have started to introduce policy frameworks to support entrepreneurship education and training (EET) in order to promote entrepreneurial activity ([43] Pittaway and Cope, 2007; [10] Cheung, 2008). EET embraces a range of forms including awareness programs like career options and sources of funding, informal inspirational programs like interview with entrepreneurs and field trips, active experimentation like consulting with entrepreneurs and computer simulation, and skill building courses and theoretical courses offered formally by universities ([16] Gorman et al. , 1997; [47] Solomon et al. , 2002). As well as the progress in pedagogical quality, the number of entrepreneurship education programs has also increased dramatically in the past years in most parts of the world ([28] Kuratko, 2005; [8] Brockhaus et al. , 2001, pp. 55-77).
The rapid increase in the number of EET programs and interest of governments and universities in these programs calls for further conceptual and theoretical development regarding EET. The popularity of a program does not justify its effectiveness therefore more precise exploration of the impacts of EET on individual-level variables is necessary.
EET programs are seen as a means to stimulate increased levels of economic activity. Although the link between EET and entrepreneurial attitudes, intention to start a business is proposed by a number of researchers ([48] Souitaris et al. , 2007) and conventional wisdom also implicitly confirms that entrepreneurship education increases the intention to start a business ([48] Souitaris et al. , 2007). But relatively little direct evidence exists concerning mechanisms through which EET encourage individual entrepreneurs to show entrepreneurial intention and behavior. Although we believe that entrepreneurship is like any discipline can be learned but the mechanism and the complexities inherent in the entrepreneurial process is less known ([36] Matlay, 2006). [33] Martin et al. (2012) in their meta-analysis reported positive association of EET and entrepreneurship outcome but the outcome was considered as a combined variable of attitudes and behaviors including nascent behavior such as writing business plans, start-up and entrepreneurship performance. The entrepreneurship literature lacks a theoretical framework...