Building self-efficacy for entrepreneurial careers: New resource skill

While the ability to garner resources is key to entrepreneurial pursuits, there is little research concerning potential entrepreneurs' resource acquisition skills or how these skills might be related to psychological and cognitive factors important for successful entrepreneurial behavior. Using data collected from two survey-based independent samples of undergraduate college students from two Midwestern universities, this research tests mediational hypotheses utilizing structural equation modeling techniques with bootstrapping. The findings, consistent across the two studies, indicate that new resource skill does indeed mediate the relationship between proactive personality-a personality characteristic-and entrepreneurial self-efficacy-a key cognitive antecedent of entrepreneurial intentions and behavior.