Antecedents to Entrepreneurship: Differences Between Korean and US Students Towards Entrepreneurship Start-Up Practices

Abstract

According to past entrepreneurship research, there are few factors which influence entrepreneurial behavior. And today, there are many theories which compared psychological traits of East people and Western. Also, there are few corresponding theories in these two areas: Individualism vs collectivism, self-esteem and risk & uncertainty decisions. This thesis includes comparative analysis of how these three theories can be changed and applied for today's college students, from Eastern and Western students who represented from South Korea and Oklahoma State University of America. Risk and uncertainty items were not measurable because of low confidence after our test. In the case of individualism versus collectivism, unlike previous studies, American students showed stronger tendency than South Korean students in both the individualism and collectivism criteria. On the contrary, the theory of self-esteem showed high scores for American students and low scores for Korean students. This paper suggests that theories of international business in the past may not be fully applicable to college students who preparing for entrepreneurship today.