Determinants of Entrepreneurial Intentions in ICT Industry: Gender and country of origin perspective

Mirjana Pejić Bach; Marjana Merkač Skok; Dalia Suša

Mirjana Pejić Bach
Marjana Merkač Skok
Dalia Suša

Keywords: entrepreneurship, gender, innovation, cross-country, entrepreneurial intentions, ICT, Croatia, Slovenia

Abstract

Although many researchers agree that environmental and personal characteristics are important for becoming an entrepreneur, it is still not clear if their influence is equally significant. Numerous authors have pointed out unresolved matters regarding the relationship among innovativeness, gender, and entrepreneurial intensions. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of gender and country of origin in relation to entrepreneurial intentions and innovative cognitive style. Research was conducted using a sample of students majoring in information and communication technologies from Croatia and Slovenia. The results revealed the influence of gender, country, attitudes toward entrepreneurship, and innovative cognitive style on entrepreneurial intentions.

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Author Biographies

Mirjana Pejić Bach

Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Zagreb, Croatia
E-mail: mpejic@efzg.hr

Mirjana Pejić Bach, Ph.D., is a full professor of system dynamics, managerial simulation games, and data mining at the Department of Informatics in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Zagreb. Her current research areas are simulation modelling, data mining, and web content research. She is the (co)author of a number of articles in international and national journals. She is actively engaged in a number of scientific projects and collaborates in several applied projects in the field of data mining, simulation modelling, and informatization.

Marjana Merkač Skok

Faculty of Entrepreneurship, Gea College, Ljubljana, Slovenia
E-mail: marjana.merkac@gea-college.si

Marjana Merkač Skok earned her Ph.D. in 1997 in management and organization sciences from the University of Maribor. Currently, she is a vice dean at the Faculty of Entrepreneurship at Gea College, Ljubljana, Slovenia. She also works as an independent expert for quality assurance in higher education in the EU. Before that, she worked as developer and expert in human resources and organizational development in industry and as a business consultant for management. She is involved in research about quality, system science, career management, and lifelong learning and training.

Dalia Suša

Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Zagreb, Croatia
E-mail: dsusa@efzg.hr

Dalia Suša is currently employed as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, where she is also enrolled in a postgraduate doctoral study program. She graduated with a degree in managerial informatics from the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb, where she wrote her master’s thesis on unified communications, which earned the Dean's Award for Excellence. Her main research interests are digital literacy, unified communications, Web services, Web 2.0 technologies, and e-learning.

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