Abstract:

The aim of this study is to compare the achievement of students’ entrepreneurial competences when developing a business plan depending on gender of students.

In order to analyse these effects we present an empirical study to know the relationship between gender and business plans in achieving entrepreneurial competences. We will conduct the analysis from the point of view of the perception of student’s achievement of competences and from the point of view of the real achievement of these skills. In this sense, we use data obtained from assessment rubrics and questionnaires distributed among 254 students of the Bachelor in Business Administration at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). The questionnaires measure the students’ perception of competences achievement, while the assessment rubrics measure the students’ real competences achievement according to their grades.

With the reforms involved in the Bologna Process, studies on entrepreneurial skills and their relationship with the teaching/learning process have risen considerably. Thus, we have seen that there are many experiences in the scientific literature addressed to the study of competences or entrepreneurial competences, in general, and their relationship to education. However, to our knowledge, there are not studies that analyse the achievement of entrepreneurial competences by students when developing a business plan, and more specifically, the potential influence of gender.

Our main aim is to analyse whether or not there are differences in how students involved in the development of a business plan perceive and achieve entrepreneurial skills, comparing male and female students.

The results show that, the female’s perception on their acquisition of entrepreneurial skills is higher for most of these competences. However, we haven’t found significant differences in the mean values of the majority of perceived competences, except for the ones related to manage time. From these results we can conclude that the implementation of the business plan allows females to develop these kind of entrepreneurial skills. This result highlights that these competences are closely related to female skills.

Regarding the real achievement of entrepreneurial competences, we obtained similar results. So, in the same way of perceived skills, the achievement of entrepreneurial skills was higher for female students, except for the competences "identify and work with sources of relevant financial information", "search, identify, organize and make adequate use of information", "undertake entrepreneurial ventures and innovate" and “focus on results” which were higher valued by male students. Therefore, we can conclude that usually female students involves a higher achievement of entrepreneurial competences, as was the case with the perceived competences. In this case, when comparing female and male students we obtain significant differences in the mean values of two achieved competences: "improve a company's competitive position" and "develop strategies".

To sum up, we can point out that female students involves a greater perception and a greater achievement of entrepreneurial skills when they are developed through a business plan. We must therefore encourage female students as they generate positive results in terms of entrepreneurial skills.

Keywords:

Business plan, entrepreneurship, competences, gender.