WorldSkills competitors and entrepreneurship Maia Chankseliani 11 September

WorldSkills competitors and entrepreneurship: Research context, aims, and questions The main research question: How does WorldSkills experience facilitate the discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities to create future goods and services? Three sub-questions: How does WorldSkills competitors' propensity to become entrepreneurial relate to various motivators, industry-specific factors, and geographical contexts? How, if at all, did WorldSkills influence competitors' motivation to become entrepreneurial? How do WorldSkills competitors' psychological capital, social capital, and human capital facilitate the discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities to create future goods and services? How is the development of these three forms of capital linked with competitors' WorldSkills experience? How do entrepreneurial competitors view their core business challenges? How can WorldSkills support entrepreneurial competitors?

Methodological overview Method Instruments Sample Limitations

Data analysis Qualitative data analysis Quantitative data analysis

Psychological capital: average scores for different groups

Psychological capital Self-efficacy/confidence - Tell me about your most important experience that developed your confidence to take on challenging tasks, complete them and reach goals [SELF-EFFICACY] Hope/willpower – Tell me about your experience that developed your willpower to attain goals and ability to see the pathways to these goals, redirecting paths to goals in order to succeed. Are you more determined to achieve your goals and is it difficult to distract you from your targets than it used to be prior to that experience? Can you give an example? [HOPE] Optimism - Tell me about your experience that was the strongest influence on developing your optimism, i.e. expectation of positive and desirable events in the future. Since that event, are you more likely to attribute positive events to personal, permanent and pervasive causes and interpret negative events in terms of external, temporary and situation- specific factors now than you used to before that experience? Can you give an example? [OPTIMISM] Resiliency - Tell me about your experience that was most influential in developing your resilience, i.e. the ability to recover from unfavourable events or stressors. When beset by problems and adversity, are you more likely to continue working hard towards achieving your goals than you used to before that experience? Can you give an example? [RESILIENCY]

The proportions of participants who recognised WorldSkills as the most important influence for the development of these psychological characteristics (n=40)

Entrepreneurship category of those who recognised WorldSkills as the most important influence on developing these psychological characteristics

Social capital very few occasions when you achieve something completely on your own. You rely on other people, whether it’s your partner making you dinner when you get home, or whether it’s a supplier who has to send something on time. The relationships you build up really matter (I1, 1999).

Five key networks

[WorldSkills] gives you the right tools to go and network, you can ask questions and you feel confident asking the questions. It puts you where high profile [professionals] would be, like designers to go and work with them, you would never get that anywhere. You go and you use what you can to make the most of that opportunity so it’s not wasted and you keep in touch with those people just through meeting them. Not always but they get in touch with you back. (E9, 2011)

Human capital education and training (E&T) attainment technical skills business interaction skills work experience exposure to entrepreneurship within the family

Chankseliani, M., James Relly, S., & Mayhew, K. (2015). WorldSkills competitors and entrepreneurship. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford ations/reports/

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