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Graduate career-making and business start-up: a literature review

Ghulam Nabi, Rick Holden and Andreas Walmsley
Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this article is to provide a selective review of literature on the career-related decision-making processes in terms of the transition from student to business start-up, and the nature and inuence of support and guidance. Design/methodology/approach Primarily, a critical review of a range of recently published literature (1995-2005) addressing the theoretical and practical aspects of the journey from student to start-up. The literature is divided into sections: the graduate labour market: a state of ux; Conceptual and denitional issues; Career choice and decision-making; and Start-up training and support. Findings The paper nds that despite an increasing body of theoretical and empirical literature on career choice in general and on the career choice to start-up a business in the form of intention models, there remains a lack of in-depth research on the stories, circumstances, contexts and complexities of graduates on their journey from student to business start-up. A transition from entrepreneurial intentions to actual start-up is often assumed but under-researched in terms of career development and decision making processes. The nexus between training, support, intent and actual career choice to start-up a business remains under-investigated. Research limitations/implications Given that careers are made in a changing and complex context, simple relationships should not be expected. Hence, rather than focusing solely on certain aspects of the start-up process, research is needed that takes a more holistic approach. Practical implications The study highlights the need for research that does justice to the complexities of the decisions made in the process from student to start-up and by implication public policy and practice in relation to formal intervention within this aspect of the graduate labour market. Originality/value The paper lays the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the journey from student to start-up of value to both researchers and policy makers. Keywords Graduates, Career development, Self employed workers, Entrepreneurialism, United Kingdom Paper type Literature review

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Introduction The UK Government has recognised that enterprise is a vital contributor to the health of the economy. It has expressed a commitment to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business as a key component of its drive towards an enterprise culture (DTI, 1998; SBS, 2002, 2003). At the same time the graduate labour market is in a state of ux. No longer is higher education a sheltered pathway to a job within a large corporation with a clear career path. A recent survey of 3,500 students across four West Yorkshire universities revealed that nearly 50 per cent intended to enter self-employment within ve years of graduation (Robertson et al., 2004).
This article is based on a larger report funded by the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship.

Education Training Vol. 48 No. 5, 2006 pp. 373-385 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0040-0912 DOI 10.1108/00400910610677072

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A win-win scenario begins to emerge. The UK is producing more graduates; more graduates appear to aspire to a career in self/small business employment and both of these observations sit comfortably with Government expectations and aspirations for economic growth and prosperity. Yet, such a picture masks both untested assumptions and considerable complexity. Critically, the career-related learning and decision-making processes undertaken by students and graduates in respect of starting their own business are under-researched. Despite burgeoning quantitative data on graduate start-up intent, research is required that goes beyond this intent stage. This article seeks to provide an informed literature review of the eld of work relating to the career-related decision-making processes of graduates starting their own business, and the transition from student to start-up. We draw upon a range of published sources, including: . research studies and informed opinion reported within UK and international journals; . seminal books in the eld of career-related choice and decision-making process; . reports, conference proceedings and scholarly work related to bodies working with small businesses and graduate business start-ups; and . grey literature. The literature base is somewhat fragmented across the elds of psychology, sociology, entrepreneurship, education, small to medium-sized enterprises and wider labour market issues. In order to provide a useful context for the primary research undertaken, we have sought to organise material into four main themes. First, we endeavour to assess critically the theme of graduate start-up within a changing graduate labour market. Second, we address conceptual issues regarding graduate entrepreneurship. Third, we discuss career choice and decision-making and focus in particular upon graduate career choice and decision-making in the context of business start-up. Finally, we address start-up training and support. Attention was paid primarily to material from the last ten years. However, references of relevance prior to that were also obtained and reviewed. The graduate labour market: a state of ux In 1965, approximately 30,000 graduates entered the labour market. Some 40 years later, this is closer to 300,000. This pool of graduate labour is also more diverse in character (Perryman, 2003). The UK governments target of 50 per cent of young people to participate in higher education (HE) by 2010 indicates that the number of graduates entering the labour market is set to continue. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the relationship between HE and employment has become increasingly complex in the context of this scenario. Demand from a relatively small number of large employers who have dominated the graduate labour market has continued to grow but as a proportion of the total number of employers moving into the market each year their share is declining (Holden and Jameson, 2002). Research suggests an increasing proportion of graduates nd employment in what might be called non-traditional graduate jobs (see, for example, Elias and Purcell, 2003). Against this background, there is an emergent assumption that the small

business sector will absorb increasing numbers of graduates. Such a development sits comfortably with current Government thinking. The engine of growth within the UK economy is perceived to be small and medium-sized enterprises (SBS, 2002). In terms of specic policy initiatives, while enterprise in higher education has been a feature since the late 1980s, it is only in more recent years that initiatives have sought, overtly, to encourage more graduates to consider the option of a career within the small business sector or through starting their own business (see, for example, Holden et al., 2002; ISBA Consortium, 2004). However, although there may now be a sharper focus upon small business and start-up, the sorts of initiatives introduced throughout the last two decades have been characterised by two features. They are supply, rather than demand side oriented and secondly, they are underpinned by a discourse of skills. Transferable skills, key skills, core skills, generic skills, personal skills and employability skills are all terms which been used along with capabilities and personal competencies. A number of the recently announced Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, for example, aim to equip students with enterprising skills and entrepreneurial skills (see, for example, www.leedsmet.ac.uk/enterprise/centres.htm). Despite evidence of public policy showing an increasing interest in how graduate recruitment may provide an opportunity to build capability within the small rm sector, this has not been matched by initiatives to develop labour market intelligence which can guide and monitor such developments (Holden et al., 2002). Until recently, Government statistics have failed to provide information on the size of rm in terms of a graduates rst destination employment. It is difcult, therefore, to gauge the growth of graduate employment in small rms. A somewhat clearer picture is evident in relation to self-employment. Labour Force Survey gures indicate a steady increase to in excess of 12 per cent (for both rst degree and postgraduate degree students) (ONS, 2005), although there are clearly denitional problems in equating self-employment with specically business start-up. No gures exist in relation to Government aspirations to grow the proportion of graduates who subsequently start up their own business. However, the statement by Government that Britain becomes the best place to start and grow a business (SBS, 2002) and the establishment in 2005 of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) (whose mission is to increase the number and sustainability of graduate start-ups) are both powerful indications of a commitment to graduate entrepreneurship and continuing efforts to encourage a greater proportion of graduates to consider such a career option. Conceptual and denitional issues Although research in the eld of entrepreneurship has been ongoing since the 1960s, there is still no universally accepted denition of this term. There is a tendency for the term entrepreneur to be equated with small business (Gibb, 1996). However, Kirby (2004) argues powerfully that this is to over-simplify. Not all owner-managers are entrepreneurs, nor are all small businesses entrepreneurial and, not all large businesses un-enterprising (Kirby, 2004, p. 511). Certain denitions exclude any specic reference to a small business context. For example, that from Timmons (1989, p. 1) denes entrepreneurship as the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. It is initiating, doing, achieving, and building an enterprise or organisation rather than just watching analysing or describing one. It is the knack for sensing an opportunity where others see chaos contradiction and confusion. Elsewhere, though,

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albeit with variations of emphasis, denitions do tend to evolve around the notion that starting up or attempting to start up a business as representing an aspect of entrepreneurship (European Commission, 2003; Henry et al., 2003; Reynolds et al., 2004). Henry et al. (2003, p. 30), for example, dene an entrepreneur as someone who sets up ands runs his/ her own business and an aspiring entrepreneur as someone who hopes to do likewise. There is a further debate around types of entrepreneurship, with several competing typologies. For example, Reynolds et al. (2004) distinguish between opportunity entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship. The former incorporates individuals who respond to pull factors, for example, a pull from a start-up opportunity and then exploit that opportunity. The latter incorporates individuals who respond to push factors, for example, they pursue the self-employment route because they consider they have a lack of alternative options. There are also a range of other similar typologies drawing on the pull-push framework, but the key issue is that whilst they can provide useful academic distinctions, they do raise the question as to the extent to which graduate entrepreneurs can be simply categorised into one group or another. The complexity of factors driving graduate career decision making to pursue the self-employment route may well mean that a relatively unique set of pull and push factors are involved. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the lack of a uniform standardised denition of entrepreneurship, enterprise education and training is characterised by similar conceptual ambiguity and uncertainty. Different types of entrepreneurship programmes are evident. For example, programmes which focus on awareness and understanding of entrepreneurship, programmes designed to develop competences that lead to self-employment and programmes that focus upon small business survival and growth. A consistent theme in the critical literature is the need to distinguish between entrepreneurship, enterprise and small business management education and to differentiate each of these from traditional approaches to management education (Gibb, 1993, 1996; Gorman et al., 1997; Holden and Rodgers, 2005; Kirby, 2004). Specically in relation to higher education, Kirby (2004), for example, asks are programmes seeking to develop enterprising graduates or entrepreneurial graduates? Holden and Rodgers (2005) develop this distinction and suggest that programmes seeking to develop enterprising graduates need to move beyond the tools and capabilities for start-up which characterise many of the initial HE-initiated enterprise programmes. Career choice and decision making The aim of this section is to provide an overview of generic career choice and development theories that are relevant to graduate entrepreneurship, together with literature focusing specically on graduate entrepreneurship pertaining to career-making processes and support interventions. Generic career theories A broad range of theories of career choice and development exist, primarily in the wider careers and psychological literature (see, for example, Arnold, 1997; Brown and Brooks, 2002; Greenhaus et al., 2000), yet these are often overlooked in the entrepreneurship literature. Recent reviews of the literature (Henry et al., 2003, for

example) fail to draw upon this literature. A synthesis of the wider careers literature, however, suggests at least two schools of thought that add value to the mainstream entrepreneurship literature by focusing on career-related learning and decision-making processes. The rst focuses on general development of careers over time and emphasises not only the individual but also society as a variable in career choice. Thus, as Vondracek (1990, p. 38) puts it, to study career development . . . means to study a moving target (the developing individual) within a changing and complex context. That is, career choice is part of a bigger picture in which the individual develops a vocational self-concept in the context of different life roles (e.g. worker, homemaker, leisurite) and arenas (e.g. school, work, community) (Brown and Brooks, 1996). Two major recent developmental theories are Savickass Career Construction Theory (Savickas, 2002) and Gottfredsons (2002) Theory of Circumscription, Compromise and Self Creation. Savickass (2002) theory is an extension of Supers work in 1953, on career choice and development. As such it places signicant emphasis on the self-concept and ve career stages, each with their own goals as indicated by their names: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance or management, and decline. Three development tasks confront the individual at the exploration stage: crystallization, specication and actualization. Crystallization should develop the attitudes, beliefs and competencies needed to clarify a vocational self-concept. Specication involves specifying an occupational choice that requires that individuals explore deeply, sifting through tentative preferences in preparation for declaring an occupational choice. The third and nal task of the exploration stage actualizing an occupational choice requires that the individual realises a choice by converting it into actions that make it a fact. The exploration stage is considered critical in this theory because it focuses on how individuals, particularly students, grow in readiness to make vocational choices. The impetus for this so-called career maturity is psychosocial in nature in the form of expectations in the curriculum, from signicant others, and the shift to work. Thus, the theory focuses on career adaptation from education to work. Similarly, Gottfredson (2002) describes the process of career choice as beginning with circumscription. That is, rejection of unacceptable alternatives. When this process is complete, it leads to adjusting aspirations to accommodate an external reality, i.e. abandoning alternatives because of mismatch between, for example ability and job requirements. This school of thought, and particularly the theories mentioned above, appears to be directly related to graduate entrepreneurship in terms of developmental processes. Furthermore, the notions of career maturity and readiness are relevant to graduates in the process of making decisions about the self-employment route. The second school of thought is behaviourist-based. An example of this is Krumboltz et al. (1976) social learning theory. The key issue here is that career-related decisions are based on social learning, and that choosing a particular career is inuenced by positive and consistent reinforcement from observing signicant occupational role models (e.g. family), and being exposed to images related to a specic career (see Millward, 2005). Again it can be argued that this perspective is relevant to graduate career decision-making processes in terms of social learning during higher education and from signicant others who are likely to play an important role in contributing to their readiness to making vocational decisions.

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The developmental and behaviourist perspectives appear to be the most relevant to a research goal of enhancing our understanding of graduate career making, rather than the provision of vocational guidance to individuals per se. However, it is clear from the literature that career choices involve highly complex, diverse and individualised processes that entail elements of various theoretical perspectives and that no universally accepted general theory exists[1]. Graduate career choice in the context of self-employment and start-up Starting up or attempting to start up a business represents an aspect of entrepreneurship (European Commission, 2003; Henry et al., 2003; Reynolds et al., 2004) and represents a distinctive graduate career choice. Indeed, Krueger et al. (2000) argue that career-related decisions reect a cognitive process in which beliefs, attitudes and intentions evolve as knowledge and experiences are processed. Research has suggested that entrepreneurial careers t this pattern (Davidsson, 1991; Katz, 1992). As with the wider careers literature (see above), however, there are many theories related to the career-making processes of entrepreneurs. The traditional literature in this eld tends to emphasise the importance of personality traits (e.g. risk-taking propensity, innovativeness, need for independence, condence and self-efcacy), demographics (e.g. family background and childhood experiences, family involvement in business start-up activities, work experience), and behaviour (e.g. skills and competencies in screening for opportunities, analysing ideas, problem-solving) (see Henry et al., 2003 for a more detailed review). More recently, research emphasises the intentional, expectancy-driven nature of the entrepreneurial/start-up decision processes rather than the more deterministic view of traditional trait and demographic approaches. Further, empirically, entrepreneurial/start-up activity is only weakly predicted by traits or demographics (Autio et al., 2001; Krueger et al., 2000; Tkachev and Kolvereid, 1999). The theme of this emerging research is that it is important to understand the notion of entrepreneurial intent[2] and that starting up a business is a career choice that is clearly planned in nature involving decision-making processes (Krueger et al., 2000). This also appears to be useful in further increasing our understanding of the career-making processes from university student to business start-up, shedding light not only on the processes driving intentions and start-up, but also the role of careers support interventions. Regarding start-up intentions, Hynes (1996) highlights the outcomes of six studies that indicate a signicant interest in new venture creation among students from a range of backgrounds. Carter and Collinson (1999) as part of a study into entrepreneurship education conclude that a substantial proportion of alumni would like to start their own rms at some point in the future. More recently, the result of a regional study suggests that 46 per cent of students either denitely or probably intended to become self-employed (Robertson et al., 2004). Importantly, also, other studies suggest the entrepreneurship, and hence start-up activity, can be culturally and experientially acquired, and therefore inuenced by training and support (see Gibb, 1987; Henry et al., 2003; Hynes, 1996). Two intentions models used in entrepreneurship research are Ajzens (1987, 1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and eros (1982) model of the Entrepreneurial Event (SEE). Ajzens model suggests that intentions depend on three conceptually independent attitudes: attitudes towards the behaviour (i.e. perceptions of personal

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attractiveness of the proposed behaviour and subsumes likely intrinsic and extrinsic personal outcomes); subjective norms (i.e. perceived social expectations and pressures from signicant others (e.g. family, friends, colleagues) on the decision maker to perform that behaviour); and perceived behavioural control (i.e. perceived ability and feasibility to execute a target behaviour and is based on self-efcacy, past experiences and future barriers) (see Henry et al., 2003). The TPB model has also been used to analyze factors related to entrepreneurial intent among university students from Finland, Sweden and the USA (Autio et al., 2001) and all components of the model were found to be predictors of entrepreneurial intent, with perceived behavioural control the strongest predictor. In other words, the underlying elements of behavioural control perceptions, for example, perceived ability, self-condence and self-efcacy, were strongly and positively related to career-related intentions to start up a business among university students. Shaperos (1982, see Krueger et al., 2000) model is similar to that of Ajzen. Shaperos model incorporates three components that inuence entrepreneurial intentions. These are perceived desirability (perceived attractiveness of starting up a business), perceived feasibility (perception of personally capability in starting up a business) and a propensity to act (willingness to act on decisions). This latter component is the main difference between the SEE model and the TPB model. Shaperos model suggests a state of inertia guides human behaviour until an event displaces that inertia. This may be either negative (e.g. job loss, frustration or dissatisfaction) or positive (e.g. a business opportunity, entrepreneurial inuence in the workplace), and this leads to a change in behaviour and the decision maker searchers for the best available opportunity[3]. The career choices here then depend on the credibility of alternative ` behaviours (vis-a-vis desirability and feasibility) and the propensity to act (otherwise the individual will not take any action). Thus, Shapero sees start-up as requiring the individual to have both the potential to start up a business (in terms of credibility and propensity) before the displacement occurs, and the disposition to act afterwards. Krueger (1993) tested Shaperos (1982) model on 126 university business students approaching career decisions. The results conrmed the importance of the three above-mentioned components of Shaperos model. Another recent study using Shaperos model (Peterman and Kennedy, 2003, p. 141) to evaluate the impact of an enterprise education programme concludes that the research provides empirical evidence to support the inclusion of an additional exogenous variable in intention models, namely exposure to entrepreneurship or enterprise education i.e. the programme had signicant impact on perceived feasibility and desirability. Propensity to act was not tested. Krueger et al. (2000) compared both TPB and SEE models in a study, using university business students who were facing imminent career decisions. The comparison was via regression analysis. The study, although indicating a slightly higher explanatory value for the SEE model and also showing signicant relationships between all components of the model and entrepreneurial intent, as opposed to TPB, nonetheless highlighted the usefulness of both models in understanding entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, meta-analyses (Kim and Hunter, 1993; Krueger et al., 2000) suggest that intentions predict behaviour and attitudes predict intentions across a wide range of behaviours and the intentions to engage in those behaviours. It is thus extrapolated that this applies across all behaviours. On this basis, it is often suggested that entrepreneurial intentions

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will translate to entrepreneurial behaviour and more specically to a career choice to start up a business (Henry et al., 2003). Recent researchers studying university students (Autio et al., 2001; Henry et al., 2003) have developed more integrated models, merging Ajzens and Shaperos models together, and extending them to include other factors. This, for example, includes personal background variables like age, gender, experience, perceived image of entrepreneurship, perceived benets, entrepreneurial conviction (merging Shaperos and Ajzens conceptualisations), perceived university support and entrepreneurial/ start-up intent. Such integrated models may be more benecial than single models in yielding insight into the complex range of factors inuencing start-up intentions and start-ups amongst graduates. There are, however, known and well-recognised barriers to a graduate pursuing a career in self-employment. These may be related to any of the components of entrepreneurial intent models like: perceived desirability (for example, poor image or lack of personal desire): perceived feasibility (for example, lack of nance, skills or self-efcacy); or propensity to act on decisions (for example, a lack of self-efcacy to follow through and start up a business) (see Henry et al., 2003; ISBA Consortium, 2004). Thus, a wide and complex range of factors inuence graduate start-up intentions and career decision processes. Although intention models are useful in understanding graduate start-up and career-making processes in terms of theoretical and practical implications, they do not come without limitations. The rst limitation is the use of single-item or limited-item measures of key constructs (Autio et al., 2001; Krueger et al., 2000; Peterman and Kennedy, 2003). This is likely to be tied into the methodology of many of these studies, that is, the reliance on questionnaire measures. Although such studies provide some insights, they tend to lack sophistication in assessing the career-making and start-up processes of the decision maker in terms of the individual story, circumstances, contexts and complexities. Second, Krueger et al. (2000) and Autio et al. (2001) both had difculty establishing signicant relationships between subjective norms and university student start-up intentions, although life histories and social expectations from family and signicant others often play a fundamental role in career decisions in both intention models (e.g. subjective norms in Ajzens model and perceived desirability in Shaperos model) and other models (Katz, 1992; Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). Again, the reliance on simple questionnaire measures may have proved unsatisfactory in assessing the role of signicant others in highly individualised career-making processes. Third, there is the question of the extent to which analysing start-up intentions actually translates to a career choice to start up a business. Importantly, there is an assumption that university student start-up intentions actually translate to graduate start-up. There is a lack of qualitative research addressing in-depth life stories and the associated complexities, issues and processes involved in the transition for graduates that actually start up a business. Galloway and Brown (2002), for example, acknowledge that the results of their intent study are limited, precisely because of their reliance on what students said they were likely to do in the future. They point to the importance of seeking to evaluate the impact of enterprise education and training on the quality of subsequent start-up; a potentially much more valuable eld of enquiry.

Start-up training and support From a practical perspective, intention models suggest that it is important to address desirability, feasibility and propensity to act so as to inuence career-related intentions to start up a business and to carry this intention through to action. The conclusion from Autio et al. (1997) is that start-up intent amongst university students is related to the image of entrepreneurship as a career choice alternative, the perceived level of university training and support, and the use of successful entrepreneurial role models. This research combined with other research on social learning (e.g. role models) and demographics (e.g. family involvement in start-up), suggests a range of support and resources are likely to inuence graduate start-up decision processes by virtue of their inuence on entrepreneurial intentions in terms of perceived attractiveness, perceived feasibility and self-efcacy, and propensity to act. Specically in terms of graduate start-up support, the NCGE report few useful studies within a UK context which explicitly compare and contrast the types of support used by graduates engaging with entrepreneurial activities (ISBA Consortium, 2004, p. 54). There is a lack, they suggest, of comparative studies relating to advice and consultancy, business support, and nancial support, for graduate entrepreneurs. An exception is Tackey and Perryman (1999) who suggest, for their research, that graduates rely on a variety of sources for support and business, both within and outside the university and that they value the informal more than the formal. A somewhat similar picture is evident in relation to the wider issue of enterprise education and training. Hannon et al. (2005, p. 12), argue that current supply reveals confusion about the purposes and impact of entrepreneurship education, whilst the NCGE acknowledge that entrepreneurship education and training is characterised by ambiguity and uncertainty about what and how enterprise should be taught. Again, exceptions do exist. Henry et al. (2003), on the basis of a rigorous study tracking the progress, post-programme, of 35 aspiring entrepreneurs over a three-year period, conclude that such programmes can be effective and yield signicant benets for aspiring entrepreneurs. It is the use of control groups and longitudinal designs, they suggest, which ensures a level and quality of evaluation that can offer a real contribution to policy development. Summary and conclusions Despite an increasing body of theoretical literature on career choice in general and a large body of empirical literature on the career choice to start up a business in the form of intention models, there remains a lack of in-depth qualitative research on the stories, circumstances, contexts and complexities of graduates on their journey from student to business start-up. Moreover, a transition from entrepreneurial intentions to actual start-up is often assumed in the literature, but under-researched in terms of career development and decision-making processes. Whilst the broader careers literature suggests the importance of investigating career as a developmental process and as a socially learned experience, entrepreneurship research places more emphasis on a range of personality, demographic and behavioural factors, combined with the importance of career-related intentions and the processes leading to these intentions, e.g. desirability, feasibility and propensity to act. Taken together, these theoretical perspectives add value to our understanding of graduate career choices to start up a

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business and provide opportunities to think about the nature and potential inuence of support interventions. It is clear from the literature that graduate career choices are highly complex, contextualised and diverse processes that entail elements of various theoretical perspectives and that no universally accepted general theory exists. Whether one should be expected is more questionable. Some effort has been afforded in the literature to the impact of entrepreneurial training and support on entrepreneurial intent. However, the nexus between training, support, intent and actual career choice to start up a business remains under-investigated. Given the complexity of career decision processes a simple relationship should not be expected. Hence, rather than focusing solely on certain aspects of the start-up process, research is needed that takes a more holistic approach. Rotefoss and Kolvereid (2005), for example, argue for research that looks at interactions between human and environmental resources. Also, Segal et al. (2005) suggest in-depth research is needed that provides rich explanatory information which will add value to survey data. Rae (2002) too, in contrast to the bulk of survey-based research undertaken in the eld, attempts to understand the experiences of four independently owned businesses in all their complexity. A similar approach is taken by McMullan and Vesper (2000) who use a single case to demonstrate the process of change entrepreneurship education had on an individual. Critically, they argue that case studies can provide educators with a more complete understanding of the efcacy of interventions. This paper has highlighted the complexity of the decisions made in the process from student to start-up. There is evidently a need for more focused research which does justice to this complexity. Critically, there is a need to map the journey over a longish period (at least three/four years) to complement the very static entrepreneurial intent research. A more nuanced understanding of the career-making process in the journey from student to start-up/self-employment is required. Without this, public policy in relation to interventions, whether principally within HE (and pre-graduation) or externally based (and post-graduation), to enhance this key aspect of the graduate labour market, will essentially be running blind.

Notes 1. We reviewed two dominant perspectives in the careers literature relevant to graduate career-making and the self-employment route. Yet, it should be acknowledged that there are a wide range of theories and variations of theories that are beyond the scope of this research (see for example, Brown and Brooks, 1996). 2. This concept has been expressed in various guises, e.g. entrepreneurial potential (Krueger, 1993) and entrepreneurial conviction (see Henry et al., 2003). 3. In a similar vein, various researchers suggest that a number of negative push and positive pull factors inuence the career choice to start-up a business. Examples of negative factors that push individuals into starting-up include: lack of job security in other SMEs/large organisations, lack of employment or development opportunities. Examples of positive or motivating factors that pull individuals into starting-up include the wanting to be ones own boss, the need for independence, the need to achieve, wealth or the advent of new technologies, e.g. e-businesses (see Gilad and Levine, 1986; ISBA Consortium, 2004; McClelland et al., 2005; Segal et al., 2005 for more detailed reviews).

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