HUMAN RELATION, INNOVATION SKILLS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUCCESS OF BUSINESS EDUCATION GRADUATES

Abstract

Business Education is a programme designed to enable students acquire the necessary skills to be self-employed and also to succeed as entrepreneurs after graduation. However, the unabated unemployment situation raises the question of whether the objective of the programme is achieved. It is as a result of this, that the investigated the influence of human relations, innovation and problem-solving skills on entrepreneurship success of business education graduates in South-West, Nigeria. The specific purposes are to determine the extent of influence each of human relation, innovation, and problem-solving on entrepreneurship success. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of the study was 223. The study sample consisted of 223 respondents, matching the population size; therefore, census sampling was employed. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled Influence of Human Relation, Innovation and Problem-solving Skills on Entrepreneurship Success Questionnaire (IHRIPSESQ).  The instrument was validated by three experts and a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained for the instrument using Cronbach Alpha reliability method. Frequency and percentage were used to analyze the demographic data of the respondents while mean and standard deviation were employed to analyze data for answering research questions. The two null hypotheses were tested using independent sample t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance.  The independent samples t-test revealed that there was a significance difference in the mean perception of male and female respondents regarding the influence of human relations skills on Business Education graduates’ self-reliance (t218 = 0.01, P<0.05). The study found that human relations innovation and problem-solving skills positively influenced entrepreneurship success of Business Education graduates. The study showed that there was a significant difference between the mean perception of respondents from federal and state universities regarding the influence of innovation skills entrepreneurship success of business education graduates (t218 = 0.001, P<0.05).  The study also showed that there was no significant difference between the mean perceptions of respondents from federal and state universities regarding the influence of innovation skills on self-reliance of Business Education graduates (t₂₁₈ = 0.172, P>0.05). It was concluded that human relations, problem-solving and innovation skills positively influenced   entrepreneurship success of Business Education graduates.  It was recommended among others that Business Education graduates need to acquire problem-solving skills that will equip them for entrepreneurship success and that Business Education graduates should aspire to possess innovation needed to generate new ideas, products and services for entrepreneurship success.