In an era filled with tremendous technology advancement as well as increased levels of uncertainty, entrepreneurs as a cohort of aspiring thinkers and doers are trained as problem solvers for the modern challenges. Many universities and entrepreneur education centers have invested tremendous resources in terms of mentors, organization support, capitals and more. Building a well-functional mentoring program has always been difficult to most such educational centers. The objective of this quantitative research study is to update a survey that measures perceived mentoring effectiveness for entrepreneurs and hopefully provide entrepreneur educational centers with a scientific tool to measure the quality of mentoring in relation to the development of entrepreneurs. This study strives to answer five research questions: (1) What is the internal consistency reliability of the updated survey? (2) To what degree is one factor distinct from but related to other factors in Mentor Relation Scale and Entrepreneur Self-Efficacy Scale? (3) What is the statistical association between the mentoring factors and entrepreneur self-efficacy factors? (4) Is there any significant mean difference among various demographics? (5) What are the statistical association between mentor net promoter scores (NPS) and mentoring factors and entrepreneur self-efficacy? To answer them, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), Pearson Correlations, multiple regressions, T-test and ANOVA were performed. Results showed four new mentoring factors with strong statistical significance. They were “Trust (TRU),” “Clarity (CLA),” “Communality (COM),” and “Business Growth (GRW).” Similarly, results also showed four new self-efficacy factors with strong statistical significance. They are “Design (DES),” “financials (FIN),” “Business plan (BUS),” and “operations (OPE)”. Second, regression results showed that mentoring factors GRW positively and significantly predict three self-efficacy factors DES, FIN, and BUS; in addition, GRW positively and significantly predict the average of all self-efficacy factors. Furthermore, mentoring factors COM and GRW both positively and significantly predict self-efficacy factor OPE. In other words, entrepreneurs who received more support and encouragement toward business growth were likely to rate themselves higher in self-efficacy scores. Finally, and most importantly, mentoring factor “communality (COM)” and “clarity (CLA)” as well as self-efficacy factor “financials (FIN)” were found to positively predict mentoring NPS. In other words, if a mentor helps entrepreneurs to facilitate a sense of mutual exchange and support, gain clear understandings about the strengths and weaknesses in themselves and their ideas, and offer strong support in financial planning and management, entrepreneurs are more likely to recommend this mentor to others. Other findings were further discussed and implications offered.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/32680 |
| Date | 23 October 2018 |
| Creators | Wu, Jiani |
| Contributors | Harbaugh, Allen G. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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