Resources can be defined as “financial, physical, human, and organisational assets used by a firm to develop, manufacture, and deliver products or services to its customers” (Barney, 1995). A resource is a source or supply from which benefit (output) is produced. Entrepreneurial resources on the other hand are defined as “the propensity of an individual to behave creatively, act with foresight, use intuition, and be alert to new opportunities” (Mosakowski, 1998). Entrepreneurial resources are the tangible and intangible assets firms use to exploit competitive imperfections in markets (Alvarez & Barney, 2014). Entrepreneur resources include an entrepreneur's own resources and abilities (Wu, 2007). Past studies pointed out the importance of resources towards entrepreneurial readiness. Mansor and Zahari (2007) revealed that there is significant correlation between students’ willingness to become entrepreneurs and resources. Another study confirmed the positive correlation between student readiness and resources and went further to show that entrepreneurship training does influence the effect of resources towards entrepreneurial readiness using hierarchical regression model (Mansor et al., 2008; Seun & Kalsom, 2015b).

There are various components of resources that are pointed out by previous studies. The problem of getting physical resources (technology) in relation to new business start-up has greater influence on entrepreneurial readiness (Department of Industry/Shell UK, 1982). Ease of access to physical resources such as communication, utilities, transportation and land or space, at a suitable price has positive and significant relationship with entrepreneurial readiness towards new business start-up (GEM, 2012). Access to property right, licences are key variables in promoting entrepreneurial activities (Ellis & Williams, 2011). Although these legal facilities are common among existing business because the new business may not have the required resources to acquired them. Therefore, new firms should also be encouraged to have these property rights with lessen conditions in order for the business to be recognised both locally and internationally. In addition, one of the most cited resource challenges towards entrepreneurial readiness is access to finance. Previous studies recognise that young entrepreneurs may probably face challenges in securing start-up finance due lack of collateral security, inexperience and ability to acquire credit facility (European Commission, 2005; World Bank, 2008).

In the world today there is need to know how to manage few resources effectively (Bygrave & Timmons, 1992). Putting too much resources at the forefront before viable idea will be a great mistake for entrepreneurial readiness. The question to ask is why does most business fail? Do most business fail because there are shortage of trained or quality entrepreneurs and viable idea as such too much resources chase too few deals? These are questions that have gained the attentions of researchers. On the basis of these discussions, the following hypothesis is developed:Hypothesis 3

There is positive and significant relationship between resources and entrepreneurial readiness of youth towards new business start-up (+).

Entrepreneurial ability can be defined as the ability to sense, select, shape and synchronize internal and external conditions for the exploration (recognition, discovery and creation) and exploitation of opportunities (Zahra, 2011). Using hierarchical regression model, Seun and Kalsom (2015b) revealed that entrepreneurship training does moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial ability and readiness towards new venture creation. Entrepreneurship programmes have increased the overall entrepreneurial ability of students towards entrepreneurial readiness (Souitaris et al., 2007).

There are various components of entrepreneurial ability that are examined by previous studies. Entrepreneurial ability is required to ensure perfection of administration in creation of new firm. Managerial and administrative abilities are very important for every student aiming to create venture in the future. Also, most of the new businesses fail at inception because of lack of effective business plan (Barringer & Ireland, 2015). This shows importance of business plan to new venture creation. Entrepreneurship training can help the students on how to write effective business plan in order to be part of the few successful individuals that will be consider when the new business is sourcing for funds. Another component of ability is marketing function. Gruber (2004) revealed that marketing function typically emerges together with the firm and only gradually grow as the firm progress in professionalism. Most new venture creation needs to be aware of the importance of marketing their business. Financial task also contributes to basic component of ability. Diochon et al. (2008) stated that with financial knowledge measured at the outset and outcomes measured over time, it is clear that higher levels of financial knowledge did not result to venture formation.

Finally, another factor contributing to level of students’ entrepreneurial ability is team building task. The findings of previous studies show that what is missing among new firms is ability to build a great team (James, 2007; Macke & Markley, 2003). Doerr (1997) concluded the resources are available but the team that can utilised it are short in supply. Management teams are very important for the new venture creation and the growth of business. In the process of building management team, new venture should concentrate on what each of them can offer and not their personality. On the basis of these discussions, the following hypothesis is developed:Hypothesis 4

There is positive and significant relationship between entrepreneurial ability and entrepreneurial readiness of youth towards new business start-up (+).

Entrepreneurship training has been used as one of the driving force to improve entrepreneurial capabilities (Zahra, 2011). Training is a kind of orientation enhancement on knowledge, attitude and skills (Seun & Kalsom, 2015b). The Ministry of Education Malaysia has specific agenda for graduate entrepreneurship programmes. Every public university is given budget for establishing a Centre of Entrepreneurship Development. Trainings are continuously run by the Centre either in the campus or outside. The cooperation between industries and university is utilised as training providers and consultants. USIM developed a module called, Entrepreneurship Training Programme as a platform to develop young entrepreneurs. Therefore, it is very important for the students that will invest on new venture to engage in such specific skills such as ability to write effective business plan, having knowledge of managerial roles of new firms, understanding basic principles of financial accounting, being responsive to both social and business ethics and being conversant with marketing techniques. Every individual has entrepreneurial characteristics that are not fully developed. The entrepreneurial orientation can be used to fully developed individuals innate characteristics after the individuals have fully engaged in enterprise training (Miller, 2011). This will improve the risk taking ability, innovativeness and proactiveness of such individuals. The original question raised by Miller is “How does entrepreneurship differ in different individuals?” – may bring about promising insights for economic development through youth involvement in entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurship training plays an important role in venture creation, career decisions and economic growth and development.

The various factors of entrepreneurial readiness mentioned earlier (such as self-sufficiency, lifestyle and so on) are common reasons among individuals who aim to set-up new businesses. Therefore, can all these factors be influenced by entrepreneurship training? Some researchers have argued that entrepreneurs are born while others argued that entrepreneurs can be developed. This has led towards on-going debate on entrepreneurial development. One of the famous management thinker stated that entrepreneurs can be developed because entrepreneurship is like any other disciplines and not magic (Drucker, 1985). Another study argued that while encouraging independent thought, creativity and initiative, the training should demonstrates the benefits of collaborative work by treating selected topics as group activities (UNESCO, 2006). The collaborative work among the students creates a network that will promote economic self-reliance and play a constructive role in the economy after establishing such venture. The training is an avenue to foster human capacity building which is a key element of sustainable development. Maryam and Thomas (2015) on the other hand, revealed that education and entrepreneurship training are very essential in developing young individuals’ entrepreneurial competencies and during career phases – i.e. intending to start a business, starting a business, and running a business. This study further argued that early gap in human capital may lead to continuous environment disadvantage that may repeatedly widen readiness towards entrepreneurial careers but fortunately this gap may be reduced as young individuals gain greater benefit from training. This argument is further analysed through hierarchical model of 417 data which revealed that entrepreneurial readiness of students that participated in entrepreneurship courses are higher towards new business set up (Keat et al., 2011). This has led to the reason why this research is conducted using empirical analysis to test the entrepreneurial readiness of students. On the basis of these discussions, the following hypotheses are developed:Hypothesis 5

Entrepreneurship training moderates the relationship between motivation and entrepreneurial readiness of the participant group (a) or non-participant group (b) (strengthens or weakens).

The test of moderating effect of start-up components and entrepreneurial readiness was analysed through AMOS 21 software package (Arbuckle, 2012). According to Zainudin (2014, chap. 7), it is very complicated to run the model with latent content through interactions terms because it could result to distortion of standard error or cause problems with model convergence. Multi-group CFA has been suggested as an appropriate alternatives where the data are divided into two based on the objectives of the study and the path of interest is constraint to 1 (Zainudin, 2014, chap. 7). The divided data are run separately. The result of the constraint and unconstraint model are compared to test whether moderation occur.

These procedures were analysed using maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) path analysis by evaluating the direct effect, the unconstrained effect and the moderating effect. The moderator effect was analysed by dividing the data into “participant group” and “non-participant group” (Zainudin, 2014, chap. 7). The participant group is 418, while non-participant group is 72. In order to avoid biasness, the study uses bias corrected 95% bootstrap to draw inferences about the indirect effects using 10,000 bootstrap samples (Zainudin, 2014, chap. 7). Before engaging into detail analysis, the study tests whether the data are free from multicollinearity problem. Menard (1995) stated that VIF values greater than 10 and tolerance value less than 0.1 indicates a serious collinearity problem. The result of multicollinearity of the independent constructs revealed that the variance inflation factor (VIF) ranging from 1.145 to 1.368 and tolerance value ranges from 0.731 to 0.873.

Fig. 3 and Table 4 show the unstandardized regression results of the independent constructs (motivation, opportunity identification, resources and ability) on the dependent construct (entrepreneurial readiness) before the introduction of training. Considering the direct effects, the results from Table 4 revealed that motivation, opportunity identification, resources are determinant factor of start-up component of new business and can influence entrepreneurial readiness without engaging in training. In Table 4, the result revealed that entrepreneurial readiness of students can be influenced when they have motivation (β=0.153, P<0.05), when they can identify opportunity (β=0.751, P<0.001) and when resources are available (β=0.180, P<0.01). However, before the training, no significant effect was found for the construct “ability” (β=−0.063, P<0.05). The χ2=267.163 at degrees of freedom=141 and probability level=0.001. The R2 of the four constructs explain 52% of the variance of entrepreneurial readiness. These results are used to answer Hypotheses H1–H4. The results thus confirm positive and significant level of hypotheses H1–H3 while H4 is negative and not significantly supported.

Fig. 3.

Regression result (direct effect).

(0.43MB).

The purpose of the study is to assess the determinant factors (opportunity seeking, motivation, resources and ability) that influence students’ entrepreneurial readiness. The start-up success factor is achieved with the following four constructs. This paper provides empirical support for start-up components. This study addressed the question on whether training moderates the start-up success components and entrepreneurial readiness. This paper represents one of the few empirical analyses of the on-going debate on whether entrepreneurs can be developed. This study affirmed the fact that opportunity identification, motivation, resources and ability are components of start-up process of new business venture. The findings of this study confirmed that all these four components can influence new business start-up after participating in entrepreneurship programmes.

By support, the results of this study confirmed that entrepreneurship training is a factor that can influence the relationship between ability and entrepreneurial readiness. For both participant and non-participant in entrepreneurship programmes, this study shows that the moderator is very important. This shows them on how to prepare effective business plan, market and manage their product and also know how to keep proper records of their business activities.

The importance of motivation on entrepreneurial readiness has been evaluated in this study. This study represents part of the few empirical analysis on motivation towards entrepreneurial readiness. The result of the study shows that students that participated in entrepreneurship training are highly motivated and are more pronounced to set up new business. This paper confirmed that students who did not participate in entrepreneurship training have low motivation. This study supported previous study of that students who have higher motivation are likely to be ready (Choo & Wong, 2006; McClelland, 1961; Pihie & Sanni, 2009).

The significant positive moderating effects of entrepreneurship training on opportunity identification and entrepreneurial readiness revealed the important reasons why youth engage in entrepreneurial activities. Every individual has a certain level of opportunity identification and this can be improved through training. This study shows that ways of identifying opportunity can be mastered if the students show their readiness towards entrepreneurship training. This will help the students on how to exploit the market opportunities. This result of opportunity identification confirmed the previous study on the moderating effect of entrepreneurship training on opportunity identification and new venture creation (Janice & Dmitriy, 2013; Seun & Kalsom, 2015a).

In the case of influence of resources on entrepreneurial readiness, this study highlighted that the non-participant in entrepreneurship can be influenced by resources. The non-participants are more likely to put too much resources at the forefront of engaging in their business activities (Bygrave & Timmons, 1992). In the world today, where scarcity of resources are very high, ability to manage few resources should be of utmost importance. Therefore, this study shows that those that participated in entrepreneurship training are influenced more by viable ideas than resources. Using resources as component of new business start-up represents one of the few empirical analysis on resources.

This study has contributed to start-up success components theory as discussions of this theory on entrepreneurial readiness with opportunity identification, motivation; resources and ability are relatively rare in the literature. Most of the previous studies usually concentrated on the intention of individual but the behavioural part are rarely significantly tested. This study also contributed to theoretical framework with the inclusion of training as a moderator. Even though entrepreneurship training has been used for various purposes, training as a moderator will pave new way for academic body of knowledge.

Previous research has explored several aspects of motivations and resources on new venture start-up. However, motivation and resources have suffered from significant methodological problems that are addressed in this study, making prior findings suggestive rather than conclusive. This study has also brought richer insights models to the academic body of knowledge through structural equation model used in this study. Most studies have been using ordinary least square (OLS) through regression approach. Therefore, this study has paved way for academic research on how entrepreneurship training as a moderator can be measured using structured model.

This paper has contributed on how jobs can be created in the economy so that the pressure on public sectors will be reduced. Acquiring entrepreneurial knowledge will increase the number of managers that can develop new business initiatives. This study justifies the process of creating new business. If more businesses are set-up the unemployment rate in the economy will be reduced. Government should use every university to provide more training programmes and provide field trip to various successful company in relation to the business the students intend to set up before graduating. The training should be more practical than theoretical. Theories are fundamental but somehow it makes the students feel bored. Business should be fun as it involves money, tactics and success. The training should expose the youth more on new and surrounding issues rather than only referring to text books. The entrepreneurship programmes should be more of real world activities, i.e. both inside and outside situations. Youth can generate more knowledge and gain from success entrepreneurs’ experiences if the training is more extensive. The programme should always involve ways of starting and sustaining business in the midst of challenges. Many new businesses have failed in the global market due to inability to solve various challenges faced by the firms at their early stage.

More facilities need to be provided for prospective entrepreneurs. This will prompt students’ readiness towards creating the firms. The management should allow the students to practicalise and create business from university as part of entrepreneurship project. This may be done by allowing the students to do innovative business as practical. This will give them an outlook on how the outside world perform business activities. More activities should be added in order to improve their business style. Funds should be given to youth who have outstanding business prospects, in turn management should continue to monitor the students’ growth processes before the students graduate. Any business created by the students can serve as way of generating revenue to the university. The training need to be highly focused on what students intends to create in future.

In the process of developing entrepreneurial policy it is very important for the government to consider the following recommendation. The policy of government on entrepreneurship programme should focus more on the prospective young graduate to initiate new business ideas into the market niche rather than limiting the training programme on the existing firms because these firms already possess on-going business activities. The support and incentives given by the government to prospective entrepreneurs that intend to create new firms should be diversified in order to involve all the sectors in the economy. Too much attention should not be given to the same business ideas in the same sector in order not to saturate the market. Since the world is at a global age, therefore government should try possible best to provide the new prospective firms access to information technology so that these firms will be able to compete both locally and internationally.

Better still government can create a new sector known as entrepreneurship sector to meet immediate need of prospective business starter. The introduction of entrepreneurship sector will pave more ways to the youth. This will cater and concentrate more on how business can be created in the face of economic challenges.

In terms of finance to the prospective entrepreneurs, government and institutions should avoid giving access to credit facilities where the opportunities in the market are limited. Since the prospective entrepreneur are new in the market, institution should assess the viability and risk propensity of the business ideas in order not to put the young entrepreneur in unserviceable debt that should have been avoided. Banks and other institutions should give grant to young entrepreneurs as a way of supporting the sustainability of the new firms in the market place. The lending institutions should encourage the young entrepreneurs by introducing group based lending such as cooperative society group, clubs or credit and thrift group as an alternative for collateral security in absence of the formal credit security or assets that can be used for loan collaterals. Government should partner with the banks and other lending institutions to provide a programme that will be based on assessing the credit capabilities of the new entrepreneur. Government can help in terms of providing subsidy to the youth who cannot compete with the existing firms. In order to develop the rural part of the country, government should give more incentives for prospective entrepreneurs that want to create new firms in the community as a form of encouragement in order to entice more entrepreneurs to such location hence there will be economic growth in the economy.

The training programmes should assess the entrepreneurial capacity; discover the inner skills of the prospective entrepreneurs before the young entrepreneurs join the global market. This will help the entrepreneur in creating a venture that will lead to enterprise development. Also, apart from entrepreneurship training and education acquired from the university, government should invest in regular training of the would-be entrepreneurs after graduation in order for them to have more knowledge of entrepreneurial activity and financial activities such as knowledge of how to prepare cashbook for day to day activities, cash flow statement and balance sheet at the end of the year. Having these ideas will make them to discover how to manage limited resources and keep sales record up to date because this will be useful for business planning from time to time. The prospective entrepreneurs should be encouraged to form social networking contact since the existing firms already have formal developmental policies that will aid the continuity of their organisation.

In addition, the programme should be based on flexible curriculum and be based on the business ideas the graduates intend to set up in order to make the programme more realistic. Government should proffer solution to the risk propensity involve in setting up business in any location in the community either rural or urban. This will encourage the risk averse graduate to be encouraged to get going because there are facilities in place. Students should be trained about the “real business” each intends to carry out in future. Such learning can be fulfilling for graduates that are new in the market place, and can motivate the students to serve as instruments of change towards economic growth. Also, students should be kept informed and get involved with a larger picture of what each of them intends to achieve is all about and how the achievements can be attained at the university. Seeing how the students’ role can serve the greater mission by increasing the feeling of connectivity at creating new venture. In addition, Career counselling, a culture of open communication and Mentoring are required from the university to the students (Fernández-Péreza et al., 2015). This will not only influence students’ career choice towards entrepreneurial readiness but will also pave way for economic development.

The main contribution of this research is the development of new model for measuring entrepreneurial readiness towards starting up new business. Their career choice is a major concern for the government due to the fact that there are shortage of job in the economy. Young graduates are current hope of the economy and if they are not properly managed, it may result to brain drain. Since the students are still young in the market the knowledge acquired is very important for the growth of the economy so that it will result to success side of the coin. This study still calls for more research as every economy aims towards economic growth.

The limitation of this paper is due to inability to use longitudinal study. This study uses quantitative approach to evaluate the qualitative work of Gibb and Ritchie (1982). Future research should concentrate on triangulation method where quantitative and qualitative can be examined together in order to get richer insight for the academic body of knowledge. Other university students should be considered in future research in order to improve the generalisation of the study. It is also recommended for the future researchers to evaluate already graduated students in order to test the actual number of students that later established their businesses and their success rate. In addition, with the global economic situation in the world today, other youths that are currently employed need to be trained and retrained on future business creation since there is high rate of job insecurity. Non-educated students should be trained on how they can become self-reliant based on their capacity. Future research should look into how youth can effectively add towards economic growth through business creation or self-employment.

For the future training, management should conduct a seminar/workshop on how business can be set-up. This can be achieved by inviting successful entrepreneurs to share entrepreneurial knowledge. The best way to success is to have more sharing session with successful entrepreneurs especially alumni because with their knowledge sharing and challenges, this will pave way and give much ideas on when, what and how to overcome challenges.