ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION INDICES AND PERFORMANCE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISES IN SOUTHWEST, NIGERIA
Keywords:
Proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, innovativeness, autonomy, risk-taking, performanceAbstract
The study examined how entrepreneurial orientation indices could be used to champion the performance of small medium scale enterprises in Southwest, Nigeria. Two null hypotheses were tested. A correlational research design was used. The population comprised 43,404 registered owners of SMEs in Southwest, Nigeria. Using purposive sampling technique, only SMEs operating in Lagos and Oyo States were selected. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 250 SMEs as sample size. A self-developed instrument titled Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Questionnaire (ENOPSMESO), with a reliability coefficient of r = .93 was used for data collection. Hypothesis 1 was tested using PPMC and Hypothesis 2 was tested using multiple regression analysis at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable (SMEs performance) in the following order of magnitude proactiveness (r = 0.846, P < .05), competitive aggressiveness (r = 0.456, P < .05), innovativeness (r = 0.433, P < .05), autonomy (r = 0.360, P < .05) and lastly risk-taking (r = 0.073, P >.05). The ANOVA results from the regression analysis revealed that there was a significant effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable: F (5, 232) = 233.482, P <.05. The study recommended that SMEs owners should anticipate customers’ needs, that is, monitor market changes continuously to address customer demands before competitors react.
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