Examining the relationship between social capital and entrepreneurial spirit (Case of study: students of Ferdowsi and Medical Sciences Universities of Mashhad)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• maryam sadat afkhami mostafavi
• masoud imanian Ardebili
• mahnaz amirpour

Department of Social Sciences, Quchan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Quchan, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/erd.2023.78464.1144

Abstract

 
1- INTRODUCTION
           Currently, our country, on the one hand, encounters an unprecedented increase in the unemployment rate of university graduates, and on the other hand, the inability of the government to employ them. Hence, our society requires individuals who can be effective entrepreneurs in creating job opportunities and self-employment through establishing new businesses. There are many factors involved in being an entrepreneur, and the social capital of an individual is one of these factors. The research conducted in the field of entrepreneurship shows that social networks influence identifying opportunities, entrepreneurial orientation, and professional decision-making to become an effective entrepreneur. Thus, the presence of an entrepreneur in the heart of society and the continuous identification of individuals' requirements and efforts to meet them have become an inevitable necessity. In addition to being active in society and identifying appropriate opportunities, having efficient knowledge and updated information as capital is another undeniable principle of success for entrepreneurs. This capital, as the experts and researchers have classified it, includes human, cultural, social, economic, etc. capitals, all of which in the form of an interwoven system are trying to make value-creation in addition to creating knowledge and information as a competitive advantage by operationalizing it to meet the needs of other people. For this reason, there is a multi-faceted relationship between entrepreneurship and the aforementioned capitals, in the meantime, the relationship between entrepreneurship and social capital has special importance, which is discussed in the present research.
 
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The recognition of appropriate opportunity is known as one of the most important abilities of successful entrepreneurs. Gaglio and Katz believe that understanding the process of opportunity recognition is one of the fundamental questions in the field of entrepreneurship. This has led to considerable interest in why, when, and how some people are able to recognize opportunities while others are not.  Because opportunity recognition is the starting point of entrepreneurship, hence, to identify these opportunities, entrepreneurs can access this importance more than other people by using different factors and methods, one of these factors can be social capital and its dimensions which entrepreneurs can act by combining them in daily relationships to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities in business environments. Many other researchers paid attention to the importance of social networks in identifying opportunities and showed that entrepreneurs with larger social networks identify more opportunities. In general, individuals’ social capital can be searched in terms of the origin of its realization in fields such as the network of friendships, family relations, neighborhood, and finally their institutional affiliations. The spirit of entrepreneurship also shows itself in various aspects such as acceptance of uncertainty, risk-taking, creativity, seeking independence, seeking success, and internal control. Since, according to the reviewed sources, social capital is mostly exogenous and entrepreneurial spirit is endogenous, it can be expected that, in a theoretical analytical model, social capital along with economic capital and cultural capital as independent variables explain a significant amount of the entrepreneurial spirit scores variance of social agents under study.
 
3- METHODOLOGY
The current research is considered to be an applied problem in terms of the field implementation model in the form of a survey and terms of the approach. The technique used to collect information is the survey. The statistical population includes the students of Ferdowsi and Medical Sciences Universities of Mashhad in all levels of education in 1400. The tool of data collection is a researcher-made questionnaire, which was used to measure the entrepreneurial spirit from the questionnaire of Paul Barrow, Robert Brown, and Asadullah Kurdanaij. In this questionnaire, variables of social capital and its types, cultural capital, economic capital, and entrepreneurial spirit have been measured. The collected data has been analyzed using SPSS and Amos statistical software. Cronbach's alpha statistic was used to check the reliability of the research tool. As well as, in order to ensure the validity of the data collection tool, in addition to relying on the maximum use of validated items, the opinions of judges have been used.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The descriptive findings of the research showed that the students’ social and cultural capitals are medium, while their economic capital is low, and they have a relatively entrepreneurial spirit. In relation to the types of social capital, the descriptive results show that; the amount of family social capital of students is higher than in other dimensions.
The results of the Pearson correlation coefficient test in examining the relationship between various social, economic, and cultural capitals with the entrepreneurial spirit of students showed that; among the types of individual capital of students, only economic capital has a significant positive relationship with their entrepreneurial spirit, while the relationship between cultural capital of students and their entrepreneurial spirit is negative, and there is no significant relationship between social capital and entrepreneurial spirit of students. Among the types of social capital, three types of social capital, i.e., friendship social capital, family social capital, and institutional social capital have a significant relationship with students' entrepreneurial spirit.
 
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
The entrepreneurial spirit of students of Ferdowsi University of Medical Sciences is medium, which indicates that the social environment of students is not completely supportive in the field of entrepreneurship. Their social interactions are mainly with family, friends, other students, and lecturers, not with entrepreneurs, although the optimal conditions for entrepreneurship described in previous studies (which showed that the formation of the intention to start a new job increases in the case of support from close individual, the existence of an attitude of appreciation from the community and the confidence of working individual in the field of work) does not match.
It is necessary that participants in professional education develop an educational model that involves working people in the discussion of education in the university, which may include the use of guest speakers who are successful in the field of entrepreneurship. This form of the program brings benefits to students in the form of a unique experience. So that it involves them in the issues and challenges experienced by entrepreneurs in real-life situations.

Keywords

• Social capital
• Cultural capital
• Economic capital
• Entrepreneurial spirit

References

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