Entrepreneurial ventures are the only way through which unemployment can be handled effectively. Emerging economies such as India knows their strength, but its searching ways to effectively cash it out. The present helps in finding the mediating effect of entrepreneurial attitude (i.e., achievement, innovation, personal control, and self-esteem) in the link between entrepreneurial characteristics and self-employment intention among technical undergraduates of different government and private technical institutions of Chhattisgarh. Stratified random sampling was used to collect 1000 responses from technical undergraduates. Regression and confirmatory factor analysis were applied to analyse the data. The findings explained that entrepreneurial attitude dimensions were found partially mediated between entrepreneurial characteristics and self-employment intention among engineering undergraduates.
Top1. Introduction
Unemployment is one of the most difficult issues that every economy has to cope with. Unemployment is not only among uneducated people, but also the educated with high degree are searching for employment in the job market. India, being a young country, has a large proportion of its people who are under the age of 30, and in order for them to reach their full potential, it becomes imperative to provide the appropriate combination of skills and opportunities to students. According to Pandey (2019), based on the State of India's Environment (SoE) 2019 figures, India's unemployment rate has climbed almost 1.9 times to 7.6 percent in April 2019, the highest in the last two years. Rural unemployment has also hit an all-time high of 7.61 percent. The report also shows a 15% rise in the young unemployment rate (20-24 years) during the last two years.
Western nations have been able to leverage the potential of human creativity in science and technology to establish a pool between business and academics, but India has fallen far behind in this area. For years, India has followed the current scenario by ignoring the need of partnership between business and academics in addressing India's most pressing challenges.
The influence of the entrepreneurial factor and its significance in current engineering school programmes or determining career pathways for latent entrepreneurs is mostly unknown. However, more engineering students are becoming acquainted with entrepreneurial programmes, and relatively few research are being undertaken to discover entrepreneurial attitudes, affect their learning, or assess professional competency. It is not surprising that the integration of entrepreneurship in the engineering discipline is a relatively recent endeavour by concentrating on becoming entrepreneurs inside their engineering curriculum (Standish-Kuon and Rice, 2002).
According to Bhagchandani (2017), the young and skilled youth and graduates are the ever-growing challenges since they are always looking for work rather than beginning a new firm. The need to provide assistance and mentoring to young and mature entrepreneurs continues unacknowledged, and self-financing is highly fragmented, concentrated in a few locations, and notably low in quantity throughout the country. However, according to Rodrigues et al. (2021), individuals with a strong entrepreneurial mindset and intention are required for development, expansion, and innovation in the business sector. These activities may inspire pupils to become future entrepreneurs, so boosting company success and overall economic progress.
Former President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has firm belief that science and technology has the capability to pave the country towards growth and development. Also, in order to address the unemployment issue effectively, inclination of technical students towards entrepreneurship must be assessed. Thus, the present study examines the mediating effect of entrepreneurial attitude dimensions (i.e., achievement, innovation, personal control, and self-esteem) in the link between entrepreneurial characteristics and self-employment intention among technical undergraduates of different government and private engineering institutions of Chhattisgarh state.