Can applied entrepreneurship education enhance job satisfaction and financial performance? An empirical investigation within the Australian pharmacy profession

This research investigated a small-scale example of an applied entrepreneurship education program, the Pharmacist Advice Program. 25 New South Wales pharmacists who had undertaken the program were compared to 23 who had not. Non parametric statistical techniques were employed to test the related propositions that pharmacists who learned and applied the entrepreneurship taught in the program (program ‘users’) would experience increased job satisfaction and better sales/profit performance than ‘non-users’. Results support the proposition that entrepreneurship education enhanced job satisfaction. The quantitative analysis on sales/profit performance data was less conclusive but a majority of users believed the applied entrepreneurial learning of the Pharmacist Advice Program led to improvement. The study makes a positive contribution to substantive knowledge in the pharmacy industry and formal theoretical investigation of the field of entrepreneurship education.