Abstract:

The promotion of entrepreneurship education has been a key policy objective for the EU and national governments for many years. The most widespread entrepreneurship project in Europe is mini-companies, in which students develop a real economic activity or simulate the operations of firms. Mini-companies combine practical and theoretical learning, and the Junior Achievement Company Program (CP) was the most participated mini-company scheme in secondary schools in Europe. Working as a team, students created their own business, taking an idea from conception to reality in approximately 25 weeks, culminating the school year by participating in regional, national, and international competitions. Annually more than 300,000 students from 39 European countries participated in the CP.

This paper examines connections between participation in the CP at upper secondary school and entrepreneurial skills. A large variety of skills have been identified as being important in order to perform entrepreneurial activities, and this study focuses on students` self-reported creative ability, planning ability and ability for teamwork. Several studies have found that creative ability is important in order to identify and discover business opportunities. Other studies have shown that the ability to plan and structure tasks is important for entrepreneurs. The ability to work in teams is recognized to be of importance since most entrepreneurial ventures are performed by teams. Three composite measures on planning (3 items), teamwork (4 items) and creativity (4 items) were developed and validated.

The study was done in 25 schools in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Italy and Latvia, and about 5000 students (16-19 years of age) participated. The study compared the level of entrepreneurial skills among students with high CP activity (100 hours or more), low CP activity (25-99 hours), and no CP activity. The investigation used a pre-test post-test design. In addition to control for pre-test results for entrepreneurial skills, the analyses also controlled for other variables that could influence the level of entrepreneurial skills. These variables were gender (girls vs. boys), parents’ education (high educated parents vs. low educated parents), education (vocational programs vs academic programs), and the final control variable was country.

The results for connections between CP and creativity, planning and teamwork were analysed by means of ANCOVA and Cohen’s d. Students with high CP activity had significantly higher scores on planning and teamwork compared to non-participants and those with low CP activity, whereas the CP seemed to influence creativity to a lesser degree. The correlations between CP and entrepreneurial skills differed among the countries. In conclusion, when students are allowed enough time to work on their company, the CP seemed to be a well-adapted working method for promoting planning abilities and teamwork abilities.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, mini-companies, the Company Programme, entrepreneurial skills, creativity, planning, teamwork, secondary schools, students.