Thesis
How entrepreneurship education shapes entrepreneurial mindset toward entrepreneurship competence development for sustainability
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2026
- Thesis identifier
- T18060
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202193659
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Entrepreneurship Education in Universities is becoming a busy research space. It offers an avenue for education that encourages new and innovative ideas to ameliorate the problems the planet is now facing. Arguably, these problems result largely from the human drive for profit without thought to the cost to future generations. My research explored how Entrepreneurship Education (EE) can foster an Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) that explores innovative ideas but has an environmental, social or economic conscience that informs the approach to profit-making. My research focused on a particular example of EE, which was one class called the Social Challenge class run by the Entrepreneurship Department. Changes that occurred were analysed in the journeys of students in that class. The focus of the changes was because of the combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviour raised by the topics discussed in the context of the educational setting of the class and the experiences participants gained. The findings are based on an interpretivist, qualitative research methodology. Data is collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews a year after the entrepreneurship education Social Challenge class has taken place. The data collection process involved 30 interviews with students. Interviews were recorded, and then the transcription was cleansed and coded. The transcription was manually coded and recoded to try to uncover common themes using a Gioia methodology. The novelty of the findings reveals how an EE programme can be used as an effective tool to foster an EM that brings about indicative behavioural change, indicating that sustainability was being considered. A model was developed of the findings, which fostered changes in an EM to indicate that behaviour feeds back into thoughts and feelings so that the whole process is circular. These findings advance entrepreneurship education as a place to shape an EM for societal good, which can stir graduates to make changes for the benefit of society in a deep and meaningful way. The rigour of these findings is that each student, a year later, had made changes to their individual journeys, which is already benefiting society in their actions and plans. These findings could contribute to future EE programmes in the UK and more widely.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Mawson, Suzanne
- Casulli, Lucrezia
- Resource Type
- DOI
Relations
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PDF of thesis T18060 | 2026-09-18 | Public | Download |