Successful FHR alumnus Rajnishkant Paltantewari, the Winner of the VES Master’s thesis prize 2018
The Master’s thesis prize of the Association of Economists (VES) has been awarded for the third time. In 2017 this prestigious prize also went to a FHR alumnus. Since 2016, the VES organizes a competition for master’s thesis writers with an economic orientation. At the presentation of the award mr. Dirk Currie of the jury explained that this competition is intended, among other things, to achieve excellent results at a scientific level, further study and to stimulate ambition.
The winning thesis is titled: “The motivational factors that influence youth to venture into entrepreneurship in a government oriented business environment.”
The winner of the award Raj Paltantewari says “Winning this prize gave me more confidence about my own skills and it was also a recognition of all the hard work during this research. This is also another proof that the studies of FHR in collaboration with Maastricht School of Management are of a certain level. This prize is a result of the knowledge I gained during my time at FHR. This would not be possible without the help of the complete staff at FHR and my supervisor Dr. D. Dingli.”
Raj explained that according to the outcome of his thesis entrepreneurial activity is one of the major drivers of an economy. Because of this link, many governments are trying to find ways on how to stimulate entrepreneurial activity in their respective countries. Any activity most likely has some kind of motivation as a starting point. This is also the case with entrepreneurial activity. To stimulate entrepreneurial activity, it becomes important to know the factors which encourage this behavior.
The aim of this study is to identify the factors which can motivate young Surinamese individuals to choose the path of self-employment. To identify these factors, an inductive approach was used to explore the topic of entrepreneurial motivation. The first step in this study was to conduct proper literature review on this topic. During the literature review a couple of motivational factors were identified. To find which factors influence Surinamese individuals, interviews were conducted under young entrepreneurs in Suriname. The interviews were transcribed, and the data was analyzed using coding technique with NVivo Software.
From the findings of this study, the following recommendations were suggested: the government should create more awareness on the available initiatives and work on more incentives for entrepreneurs. Educational institutes should align the curricula more on entrepreneurial skills, besides their formal education. Youngsters should also be thought some additional skills. Parents and educational institutes should be more conscious about their role during the upbringing phase of children. Teaching children to deal with different situations such as failure as well as stimulating creative thinking in them can develop internal needs for an entrepreneurial career.
