Entrepreneurship Learning in Cross-cultural Educational Environment: The Dynamics and Critical Factors

Abstract

The establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 has brought more challenges and important roles for entrepreneurs in the South East Asia region. One of the main cooperation programmes in AEC is the capacity building and professional development that have an emphasis on building good and successful entrepreneurs being resilient in highly competitive economic region. This paper presents our research on how to develop entrepreneurship competences in cross cultural university by exemplifying the development of students’ business creation and challenges as well as identifying their critical failure and success factors. In multi-cultural educational environment, a cultural difference can be a challenge for students to learn entrepreneurship. Some of the challenges may rise from the differences in languages, lifestyles, interactions, traditions and values of life. On the other hand, this cross-cultural environment could deliver a positive impact on improving the students’ entrepreneurship competences. Good entrepreneurship learning should be able to generate entrepreneurial skills and knowledge, such as entrepreneurial character, leadership and business management. !e implementation of entrepreneurship learning in a cross-cultural educational environment was explored in the scope of business creation issues and challenges experienced by students of the International Business Management Program at University of Ciputra. The criteria for sample were groups of students running business projects, consists of students with different cultural backgrounds. Triangulation methods and sources were used to obtain validity and reliability. The results showed that students experienced a dynamic learning process and faced challenges caused by cultural differences. Based on this study, entrepreneurial characters and support accepted by students was identified as the most important success factors. Students who are successful in their business projects tend to be more open and confident in creating business with cross-cultural team members.