Achievement Motivation In The Clarification Of Self-Employment Intentions

Theoreticians, psychologists and researchers have been focusing their attention onto exploration of meaning, influence and dimensions of motivation. Since the 1950s, when the concepts of motivation were intensively debated, many studies have been conducted analysing motivational factors, whose diversification resulted in constructing numerous theories based on different approaches to motivation in literature. Generally speaking, the motivation research explores the impact of attitudes on behaviour, incentives associated with certain behaviour and behaviour management strategies. This paper focuses on research of achievement motivation and it's predictive power in self-employment intentions of young adults. Self-employment is one of the possible solutions to realizing employment status, however in the former socialist countries this phenomenon is still not the dominant category, especially not for young unemployed adults. In order to promote self-employment it is necessary to determine statistically significant difference in assessing readiness for job creation through one's own start up and assessing employment readiness in existing private or state-owned enterprises. The research was conducted in the Republic of Croatia among graduate students at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek (N=428). The respondents are near the end of their higher education and expected to pursue self-employment opportunities over the next few months. Results of regression analysis indicate that achievement motivation can be a predictor of self-employment intentions of graduate students.