Perception Towards Factors that Affect the Effectiveness of an Entrepreneurship Training Program

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is an important element of economic development because it does not only produce physical products and provides services but it also generates employment at the same time. Entrepreneurs develop new ideas through creativity and innovativeness and harness available resources to reap profit from their business endeavors. Realizing the importance of entrepreneurship that spurs economic growth, the government of Malaysia encourages future entrepreneurs to participate in entrepreneurship training programs to ensure they increase entrepreneurship capabilities and achieve sustainability in their ventures. In order to do so, training programs should cater to the important requirements of effective training in order to deliver the expected objectives. Thus, this paper aims to explore the determinants of the effectiveness of an entrepreneurship- training program using UMK?s students as the sample. Entrepreneurship students? perception on this is vital as they might be the entrepreneurs who will be involved in an entrepreneurship training program once they graduate from the university. This study adopted the purposive sampling method, where 50 students from the Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business were selected to answer the structured questionnaires. The results of the study revealed that the trainees? readiness and learning approach were determinants of the effectiveness of the training program. On the other hand, the other two variables, entrepreneur?s orientation and trainer skills, did not have a significant relationship with the effectiveness of the training program. The findings should be treated with caution due to the small number of students involved in the study.