Strategic Entrepreneurial Response of Small and Medium Enterprises in Developing Economies

Abstract

This study examined the influence of three dimensions of strategic entrepreneurial response, namely market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation and networking capability on SME performance necessary for firms to face challenges in competitive environments. The research confirmed positive influence of the three dimensions of strategic entrepreneurial response (SER), namely market orientation (MO), entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and network capabilities (NWC) on small and medium enterprise (SME) performance. The dimensions of SER explained a significant amount of variance (50.1%) in SME performance, with the largest amount (27.1%) of variance accounted for by MO. The findings suggest that emphasis on MO is a firm's strategic choice to generate strategic information which forms a seedbed of opportunities from which entrepreneurial oriented firms identify and proactively seize to build competitive advantage. Contrary to previous studies, which emphasized that opportunity seeking behaviour is a domain of EO, this paper argues that MO is pivotal construct to the SER. This paper views EO as more driven by an advantage seeking behaviour rather than opportunity seeking behaviour as conceptualised before. With these findings, this paper suggest that sustained market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation cultures build opportunity seeking and advantage seeking behaviours, respectively crucial to create and sustain SME performance.

Forces Driving Purchasing Behaviour of Tourists Hotels Along Tourist-Agricultural Supply Chain in Zanzibar

“…This analysis was crucial for strategic engagement of the smallholder farmers to take advantage of the emerging market (Bengesi & Le Roux, 2014b). Results on Table 2 revealed that each market outlet has specific driving forces motivating or demotivating tourist hotel managers to buy or not to buy agricultural produce.…”

Factors Influencing Tourism-Horticulture Linkage among Smallholder Farmers in Zanzibar

“…Failure of farmers to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the tourist industry is partly due to inadequate enterprise mind-set among smallholder farmers to be able to predict the market dynamics and be able to plan beforehand. According to Bengesi and Le Roux (2014a) and Bengesi (2013) strategic entrepreneurial intervention is crucial to inculcate entrepreneurial mind-set among smallholder farmers to create innovative and creative thinking to cope with the changes taking place in the market environment.…”

Network Dimensions and Performance of Small-sized Food Processing enterprises in Dar es Salaam Tanzania: An Empirical Study

“…Small and medium---sized businesses regularly operate in limited financial and managerial resources important for ensuring firm performance (Bengesi and Roux, 2014). They also often lack knowledge about markets, financiers, agents and other network partners.…”

“…One important explanation of how SMEs overcome resource limitation is that they use relationships they have with other businesses (Agndal, Chetty and Wilson, 2008). For example, it is often asserted that for a business to successfully perform must acquire information about markets it intends to serve, gather resources to produce the products and have appropriate strategies on hand (Bengesi and Roux, 2014). Networks may then be utilized to achieve targeted level of performance such as internationalization, increasing market shares or convincing new customers.…”