THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENT-FUNDED YOUTH GROUP ENTERPRISES

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been promoted around the world as a solution to rising unemployment rates. Youth appear to be the population group that is most affected. Organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, are launching initiatives aimed at empowering young people to start and run their businesses. As a result, they have created training programs that are aligned with the creation of new ventures and
the management of small businesses. Despite these interventions, the performance of the ventures thereof have not performed as expected, which could be attributed to a lack of entrepreneurial orientation on the beneficiaries of such trainings. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to establish the role of entrepreneurial orientation in the relationship between entrepreneurship training and organizational performance. A cross-sectional survey was carried out. Out of the 262 youth groups registered with the Youth Enterprise Development Fund of Taita Taveta County, Kenya, as of April 2019, 156 were sampled. Questionnaires were personally distributed and a response rate of 62% recorded. Entrepreneurship training was indicated by technical, business management, and personal entrepreneurial skills; entrepreneurial orientation by
innovativeness, risk-taking, and pro-activeness; and organisational performance by both financial and non-financial measures. Regression analyses were performed on the data. It was established that entrepreneurial orientation mediates the influence of entrepreneurship training on organizational performance. These findings, hence, indicate that the effectiveness of training in entrepreneurship is dependent on how well it enables the participants to think and act entrepreneurially. The results point to a need for scholars to link entrepreneurship training theories to entrepreneurial orientation. This contribution is important because it will enable policy-makers and managers of entrepreneurship training programmes to consider how their programmes are affected by entrepreneurial orientation. They may have to develop ways of changing the mindsets of those trained to incline them towards innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactivity.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship training, entrepreneurial orientation, organisational performance, government-funded youth enterprises