Abstract
The contribution of women’s entrepreneurial activities to global economic development is vastly increasing, and the relationship between their entrepreneurial attributes and business performance is broadly questioned empirically. Therefore, a profound investigation of this phenomenon is essential as those activities’ social and economic outcomes are more critical in achieving economic development, specifically in developing countries. We examine in this study the association of entrepreneurial attributes of women entrepreneurs with the performance of SMEs interpretively by considering the small and medium enterprises in the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka as a case. To realize this purpose, we use a dataset from a survey conducted with 725 agro-based entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. We applied the chi-square test and cross-tabulation to study the research phenomena and explored the association between women’s entrepreneurship and SME performance under four entrepreneurial attributes. The study confirms the high performance of women entrepreneurs with business-related training and experience by considering human capital attributes. Financial management attributes confirmed the association of women entrepreneurs’ credit market accessibility and better business record-keeping behavior with higher performance. Social capital attributes revealed the high performance of women entrepreneurs with household responsibilities, internal social capital, and external social capital. The innovation capacity attribute confirmed the association of women entrepreneurs’ product innovation and market innovation in business processes with higher business performance. The results emphasize the importance of government and policymakers’ intervention in forming a secured, favorable, and sustained business environment for women entrepreneurs.
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Data Availability
The data supporting the findings of this study were collected in a survey conducted by a research project supported by the Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) Operation of the Ministry of Higher Education of Sri Lanka, funded by the World Bank. However, some restrictions apply to the availability of this data, so it is not publicly available. Nevertheless, the data are available from the authors upon reasonable request and with the permission of the Research Project Leader of the aforementioned project.
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This research was supported by the Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) Operation of the Ministry of Higher Education of Sri Lanka and the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka and funded by the World Bank.
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Conceptualization: Ran Pathige Indika Ruwan Prasanna and Jayasooriya Mudiyanselage Harshana Miyuranga Upulwehera; methodology: Sisira Kumara Naradda Gamage; formal analysis and investigation: Edirisinghe Mudiyanselage Samantha Ekanayake, Jayasundara Mudiyanselage Ganga Lalani, and Prasanna Sisira Kumara Rajapakshe; writing—original draft preparation: Ran Pathige Indika Ruwan Prasanna, Jayasooriya Mudiyanselage Harshana Miyuranga Upulwehera, Senanayake Mudiyanselage Sadeesha Nuwandi Senanayake, and Sisira Kumara Naradda Gamage; writing—review and editing: Jayasooriya Mudiyanselage Harshana Miyuranga Upulwehera, Senanayake Mudiyanselage Sadeesha Nuwandi Senanayake, and Jayasundara Mudiyanselage Samarakoon Banda Jayasundara; funding acquisition: Ganihi Achchi Kankanamlage Niroshan Jayalath Abeyrathne; resources: Ran Pathige Indika Ruwan Prasanna and Jayasooriya Mudiyanselage Harshana Miyuranga Upulwehera; supervision: Ran Pathige Indika Ruwan Prasanna.
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Upulwehera, J.M.H.M., Senanayake, S.M.S.N., Gamage, S.K.N. et al. Is Women Entrepreneurship a Key Driver for Business Performance of the SMEs in Asian Developing Nations? A Case Study of SMEs in the Agricultural Sector in Sri Lanka. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-01833-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-01833-z