CREATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING (TVET) ENTREPRENEURS’ SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY (VUCA) ERA

Abstract

The business sustainability of TVET entrepreneur has become increasingly important as Malaysia continues to strengthen the TVET ecosystem to produce highly skilled graduates and encourage them to venture into entrepreneurship. While TVET programmes are widely recognised for emphasising practical and hands-on competencies, long-term business sustainability requires entrepreneurs to complement technical expertise with higher-order thinking skills, particularly creativity and critical thinking, to make informed decisions, solve complex problems, and adapt to rapidly changing business conditions. Although creative and critical thinking are widely recognised as essential entrepreneurial competencies, empirical evidence explaining how these cognitive capabilities contribute to the sustainability of TVET businesses remains limited. This study therefore examines the relationship between creative and critical thinking skills and business sustainability among TVET entrepreneurs in Malaysia. A quantitative correlational research design was employed, involving 131 TVET entrepreneurs selected through simple random sampling. Data were collected using the Yanpiaw Creative-Critical Thinking Style Test and a sustainability questionnaire based on the Triple Bottom Line framework. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyse the data. The results showed that the respondents demonstrated relatively high levels of creative and critical thinking skills. However, no significant relationship was found between thinking skills and entrepreneurial sustainability. In contrast, sustainability levels differed significantly according to business structure, with enterprise-based businesses reporting higher sustainability than other business forms. These findings suggest that sustaining a TVET business requires more than cognitive capabilities alone and is likely influenced by organisational characteristics, strategic adaptability, and effective business management practices. The study contributes to entrepreneurship and TVET literature by providing empirical evidence on the factors associated with business sustainability and offers practical guidance for educators, policymakers, and entrepreneurship support agencies for designing entrepreneurship education and support programmes that strengthen the long-term sustainability and resilience of TVET businesses in an increasingly uncertain business environment.