The Impact of Spirituality on Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation: An Empirical Study of Pakistani University Students

Abstract

With the varying research directions on exploring the factors influencing the entrepreneurial orientation, this research attempts to investigate the impact of individual’s spiritual orientation on individual’s entrepreneurial orientation. In theory, spirituality provides a sense of purpose, meaningful life, interconnectedness and community consciousness; all these attributes contribute in the development of an entrepreneur who has a positive attitude and strong motivation to be innovative, take calculated risk and be able to proactively foresee the possible hurdles. The Spiritual Orientation construct is used as a latent variable in this study and is measured by self-efficacy and life scheme, whereas the Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation construct is measured by three variables i.e. innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness. Data has been collected from 246 university level students, belonging to various degree programs, representing seven major cities of Pakistan. Structural equation modeling is used to test the impact of spiritual orientation on individual entrepreneurial orientation. Through exploratory and confirmatory modeling we find that the individual entrepreneurial orientation does vary with the level of spiritual orientation. This positive relation between the two constructs shows a new dimension which can be utilized in entrepreneurship pedagogy. The entrepreneurship development programs can thus use spiritual orientation as an antecedent to promoting individual entrepreneurial orientation.