Career awareness as a mediator between communication skills and entrepreneurial tendencies in prospective sport managers

Universities are increasingly expected to develop transferable competencies that improve graduates’ employability, yet little is known about the psychological mechanisms through which such competencies translate into entrepreneurial outcomes in sport management education. Drawing on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), this study examined whether career awareness mediates the relationship between communication skills and entrepreneurial tendencies among prospective sport managers. Cross-sectional data were collected from 622 undergraduate sport management students in Türkiye (280 women, 342 men) using the Communication Skills Scale, the Career Awareness Scale, and the Entrepreneurship Scale for University Students. Following a pre-specified mediation protocol, a pooled measurement model containing all constructs was evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis before the structural model was estimated by maximum likelihood; indirect effects were tested with bias-corrected bootstrapping based on 5,000 resamples. All hypothesised paths were supported. Communication skills predicted career awareness (β = 0.73, p < 0.001) and entrepreneurial tendencies (β = 0.50, p < 0.001), and career awareness predicted entrepreneurial tendencies (β = 0.45, p < 0.001). Career awareness partially mediated the relationship between communication skills and entrepreneurial tendencies (indirect effect = 0.33, 95% CI [0.25, 0.42]), transmitting approximately 40% of a total effect of 0.83. Together, the two predictors explained 79% of the variance in entrepreneurial tendencies. The findings extend SCCT to the sport management education context by identifying career awareness as a cognitive-developmental mechanism that converts interpersonal competence into entrepreneurial orientation, rather than treating communication as a direct antecedent. Practically, they indicate that communication training yields limited entrepreneurial returns unless it is deliberately coupled with career-awareness interventions: sport management programmes should embed structured career guidance, industry mentoring, and venture-based project work into applied communication coursework, and accreditation frameworks should treat career awareness as an assessable programme outcome.