Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Pharmacists as Entrepreneurs or Employees: The Role of Locus of Control

A U Inegbenebor

Department of Business Administration, University of Benin. Benin City.;

For correspondence:- Email: aunebor@yahoo.com

Published: 16 September 2007

Citation: Inegbenebor AU. Pharmacists as Entrepreneurs or Employees: The Role of Locus of Control. Trop J Pharm Res 2007; 6(3):747-754 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v6i3.3

© 2007 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate whether locus of control distinguished between pharmacists who chose to become entrepreneurs and those who took up employee roles in pharmaceutical establishments.

Methods: The enlarged version of Rotter’s I-E scale designed to measure an individual’s locus of control was used to survey a sample of pharmacists in two major cities in Southern Nigeria. The sample consisted of 34 pharmacists who were owners/proprietors of retail pharmacies and 35 pharmacists employed in retail pharmacies or hospitals. The difference between entrepreneur pharmacists and employee pharmacists in terms of locus of control was analysed using student’s t-test.

Results: The mean locus of control score for entrepreneur pharmacists was significantly different from that of employee pharmacists (p < 0.01). Entrepreneur pharmacists had higher scores on the variable than employee pharmacists indicating greater locus of control internality.

Conclusion: Pharmacists characterized by locus of control internality are more likely to assume entrepreneurial rather than employee roles in pharmaceutical undertakings. Such pharmacists are more disposed to adopt innovative pharmaceutical care philosophy. Hence there is need to incorporate entrepreneurial education in the curriculum of pharmacy programmes to encourage positive attitude toward entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Locus of Control; Entrepreneur Pharmacist; Entrepreneur Education; Employee Pharmacist, Nigeria.