UNDERSTANDING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN RELATIONAL SUPPORT, SELF-EFFICACY, UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENT AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTEREST AMONG MBA STUDENTS IN DAMMAM, SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is well documented as one of the ways of reducing unemployment and creating wealth in an economy. Entrepreneurial interest is seen as the best channel to determine and shape the behavior of people towards entrepreneurship.
This paper investigated the link between relational support, self-efficacy, university environment and entrepreneurial interest among 86 students who enrolled for the MBA program at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU), Dammam, Saudi Arabia in the last quarter of 2017. The results from a logistic regression analysis reveal that self-efficacy, university environment and relational support had a great likelihood of influencing the entrepreneurial interest of the MBA students. Furthermore, self-efficacy and the university environment were significantly associated with students’ entrepreneurial interest whereas relational
support was not. Therefore, it is recommended that the university should create an enabling environment for the students to start their own businesses as this would improve students’ self-confidence and self-efficacy. Also, government and the private sector should sensitize the general populace on the need for households to support entrepreneurial students as a primary source of social capital.