Principals’ utilization of external stakeholders in entrepreneurship education – Evidence from the general education

The purpose of this article is to examine the principals’ networking activities in entrepreneurship education. In this study, we are interested in the principals’ actions, when they aim at developing entrepreneurship education in their schools. More precisely, the focus is on how principals utilize external stakeholders in the school context. Our motivation for conducting this study is based on the assumption that while there are external stakeholders supporting entrepreneurship education, principals and their schools are not fully utilizing them. We suggest that the use of external stakeholders may be related to the personal characteristics of the principals, and therefore we examine if or how the background characteristics of the principals explain their use of external stakeholders. Furthermore, we aim at understanding how principals’ participation in entrepreneurship education related training explains the level of use of external stakeholders. As a method, analysis of variance and a linear regression analysis are used. The sample consists of 173 Finnish principals working in general education2. This article contributes to entrepreneurship education literature by analysis of external network resources in entrepreneurship education. We also pinpoint the role of the principal in this process. The article also provides empirical evidence on the importance of principals’ training for utilizing external stakeholders in entrepreneurship education.