Entrepreneurial Intention of Public Research Institute Researchers in Korea: The Role of Career Orientation and Educational Support

To foster national economic growth and facilitate employment creation, public research institutes are required to undertake the task of technology entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the policy framework's inadequacy lies in its failure to incorporate considerations of researchers' individual perspectives, including their personal disposition. Hence, this study seeks to enhance the effective formulation of policies supporting entrepreneurship by investigating the impact of researchers' career orientation on their entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, building on prior research indicating that education can shape individual attitudes toward entrepreneurship, this study introduces the variable perceived educational support into the conventional behavioral model. The analysis data is a survey data answered by 377 researchers, and structural equation modeling was used to identify the relationships among variables. The analysis revealed that entrepreneurial creativity orientation and security orientation affect perceived desirability, and perceived desirability and perceived educational support affect the researchers’ entrepreneurial intention. This underscores the need for policy considerations that foster researchers' entrepreneurship by promoting a creative research environment, entrepreneurship education, and concurrent employment in a secure state. Recently, education programs for researchers have been established and institutional improvements such as extension of entrepreneurship leave and concurrent employment period have been made, but these policy initiatives should take into account the researchers’ personal disposition and career design aspects discussed in this study.