THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL SIZE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENTFUNDED YOUTH GROUP ENTERPRISES IN KENYA

Abstract

One of the avenues of reducing unemployment rates is entrepreneurship. Youth seem to be
the age group that is hit the hardest by lack of or inadequate opportunities for income
generation. This has seen governmental and non-governmental organisations front
initiatives aimed at empowering young people to start and run their ventures. They have,
amongst other things, created training programs that endeavor to build the capacities of
youth in this area. Despite these interventions, unemployment rates have been seen to rise,
which could be attributed to the small size of the outfits started by the beneficiaries of such
training. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to establish the influence of
organizational size on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and
organizational performance. A cross-sectional survey was carried out on 262 youth groups
which were registered with the Youth Enterprise Development Fund of Taita Taveta
County as of April 2019. 156 were sampled. Questionnaires were personally distributed and
a response rate of 62% recorded. Entrepreneurship training was measured using the
following indicators: technical, business management, and personal entrepreneurial skills.
The organizational size was deduced using questions regarding the number of employees
and money capital. Organizational performance was broken down into questions pointing
at fiscal, client, processes and advancement aspects. Regression analyses were performed on
the data. It was established that the size of an organization does have a significant
moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and performance.
This study enriches the apprehension of the conjugation between entrepreneurship training
and organizational performance as moderated by organizational size. This study
recommends that the government puts in place measures that encourage the growth of
organisations. It also emboldens policy-makers and managers of entrepreneurship training
programmes to consider emphasizing the importance of size and growth of startups.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship training, organisational size, organisational performance,
government-funded youth enterprises