Entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurship’s potential in East Timor

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a critical factor in promoting innovation, productivity, creating employment opportunities and economic development of a country. Entrepreneurship is defined as the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the financial risks, psychological and social correspondents, and the consequences of getting satisfaction and independence (Hisrich et al, 2009). In the current environment it is important for a young country like East Timor to promote entrepreneurship as a key opportunity, in order to increase the number of individuals with individual initiative, i.e. entrepreneurs who take responsibility for economic development and job creation for the working population. But, since this is a new social and political challenge, are the East Timorese really sensitive and receptive to the idea of become entrepreneurs? The present study aims to understand the attitudes and values of the East Timorese students in relation to entrepreneurship. Taking as a starting point a survey set to study the potential of entrepreneurship among university students in East Timor, the paper presents and discusses the results obtained on various issues such as entrepreneurial intention, predisposition, risk disposition, and personality traits and skills. Our sample involves 140 students from National University of Timor Lorosa’e with no experience in entrepreneurial courses, divided into engineering students and economics students. East Timorese students report good entrepreneurial intentions but when asked to choose one investment option they hesitate between invest in an own business or invest in an investment fund. The risk disposition of students was measured through an index of entrepreneur risk disposition and results indicated good levels of risk disposition. East Timorese students present high levels of self-efficacy, endurance and autonomy. They also report good perceived levels of technical skills but admitted lower perceived financial skills. During the analysis, several differences were identified concerning students’ gender, course or having self-employed parents. The study indicated a high entrepreneur potential among East Timorese university students and the results give an important contribution to the theme of Entrepreneurship in East Timor. The results presented are preliminary and require more careful analysis.