FACTORS DETERMINING INDIVIDUAL ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MANAGEMENT UNDERGRADUATES FROM SRI LANKAN STATE UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

Becoming an entrepreneur is one crucial thing, which has become a necessity for the survival of the livelihood and the country presently. However, still there is a riddle about which factors determine the entrepreneurial orientation of undergraduates in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to find out the effect of educational support, relational support and structural support on the entrepreneurial orientation of management undergraduates from Sri Lankan state universities through the lens of social exchange theory. The deductive approach was utilized in this study. In this approach, educational support, relational support and structural support were used as the independent variables to predict the impact on individual entrepreneurial orientation. It was examined in a sample of 391 management undergraduates from state universities, with the help of the online questionnaire through the convenient sampling method. Research findings concluded that all three factors such as educational support, relational support and structural support have a significant impact on the individual entrepreneurial orientation of management graduates. However, structural support has an uppermost impact level on individual entrepreneurial orientation than others. It is revealed that the more structural support, the more orientation the undergraduates would have. This study would shed new light on the entrepreneurial orientation of young graduates from Sri Lanka.