Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance of Small and Medium- Sized Enterprises in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya’s economic growth, innovation and jobs creation has been has been hugely contributed by the Micro and Small Enterprises sector. This notwithstanding the Kenya’s economic growth slowed down from September 2017 when compared to the same period of 2016. Within this period, the economy was stable and it supported the dynamics of growth but due to shaky governmental and harsh atmospheric phenomenon adversely affected the economy. This resulted in poor economic results in most sectors of the economy. The Entrepreneurial orientation relates positively with business growth, but it seemed not to apply in Kenya prompting the researcher to find out if Entrepreneurial orientation components were being applied by Kenya’s businesses. The researcher’s generally investigates how the entrepreneurial orientation affects performance of Small and Medium businesses in Nairobi city County, Kenya with the specified objectives being to; find out the impact of taking risk, to analyze the result of innovation, and to finally establish the effect of pro-activeness on progress of Small scaled businesses. This study highly relied on Entrepreneurial Orientation Theory, Schumpeter’s Innovation Theory and Resource based Theories as they underpin the variables under study. The research design used was cross sectional descriptive targeting a population of 2300 Small scaled businesses registered to operate in Nairobi City County. A total 230 participants making a 10% of targeted population was obtained using a proportional sampling. A semi-structured questionnaire collected the data and its analysis done by both descriptive plus inferential statistics. The forms of graphs, tables and figures presented the data. Conclusion show entrepreneurial orientation to be an indicator of business performance and all the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation were positively related to performance of Small and Medium Businesses. This showed that aspects of innovation, proactive and risk-taking when applied as a strategy may propel SMES in Kenya to an economic growth and it can help firm owners make right choice and allocate resources wisely. From the research findings and conclusion the researcher recommends that: Small and Medium Enterprises should embrace the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions so as to strengthen business performance. This study makes recommendations for more research on the influencing Factors that intervene on the results of entrepreneurial orientation on business performance.