<Institutional and Policy Aspects of Promoting Entrepreneurship as A Career Goal among Youth

Abstract

Many countries around the world both developed and developing are trying to promote entrepreneurship in order to boost rural economy. However, there has been no systematic attempt to look at it from a youth angle as their career goal. The main objective of this study was to examine the entrepreneurship development policy and institutional support dimensions towards the entrepreneurial expectations for choose entrepreneurship as their career goal referring to youth segment. For this study, 70 registered youth entrepreneurs from 10 different sectors of the VIDATHA program of Ministry of Technology and Research (MTR) during the year 2012 were identified. The primary data was collected directly from a youth through questionnaire. Regression model was utilized for predicting the level of youth entrepreneurs’ expectation as a dependent Variable and the independent variables categorized using entrepreneurship policy criteria (policy relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability) and Institutional support criteria (entrepreneurial culture, education, business development support and access to finance). The results of the study advocated that promotion of entrepreneurial culture and business development support services were the significant contributors for the youth entrepreneurs’ expectations towards Institutional Support and the efficiency of the policy is the significant unique contributor to the prediction of youth entrepreneurs’ expectation towards entrepreneurship policy. The major challenge faced by youth entrepreneurs is to transform their enterprises into commercially viable, competitive business. Also entrepreneurship development projects have different goals and objectives, in terms of target group, political agenda and types of interventions. Further, there is no single policy model for encouragement and promotion of entrepreneurial activity among youth. Therefore, it is recommend establishing single institutional framework for promotion of entrepreneurial activity among youth and suggesting for formulating single policy model for encouragement and promotion of entrepreneurial activity among youth and key promoting agency with the combination of all sectors