| dc.description.abstract | Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has been identified as one key component in empowering women to achieve the third millennium goal of gender equity. Entrepreneurship skills are needed to ensure growth of SMEs. This study sought to establish the influence of entrepreneurial skills in management on performance of women group projects of Nyaribari Chache Constituency, Kisii central district. Like many entrepreneurs, Kenya's women entrepreneurs face challenges in management which limit performance and exploitation of their full potential.
This study focused on three major objectives. First, it sought to establish the extent to which organizational management skills as an aspect of entrepreneurial skills influence performance of women group projects. Secondly, to determine the level to which financial management skills influence the performance of women group projects in Nyaribari Chache Constituency. The study also sought to investigate how business management skills influence the performance of women group projects in Nyaribari Chache constituency. Lastly, the study sought to examine the level to which interpersonal skills influences performance of women group projects in Nyaribari Chache constituency.
While many studies reviewed showed an increase in women participation in entrepreneurial activities, there was little evidence of successful groups who have employed sound management skills in their enterprises. It was therefore hoped that the study findings will inform policy makers on the need to equip the women with these skills as a way of boosting entrepreneurial activities. The main constrains of this study was availability of clear records showing transactions by these women groups. This was however mitigated by asking for rough estimates of the parameters in question. Groups who were in the sample who had stopped operations were replaced by active ones.
There was therefore an existing gap on the realization that even with good funding; the women need skills on management of the funds as well as their enterprises. A theoretical framework on reverence group theory by Cooler(1967) was used as a basis of the study. A conceptual framework linking all the variables was developed to guide the study. From a population of 2130 women in 213 women groups, a simple random sample of 327 was used based on the table of sampling given by Krejce and Morgan (1970). Data was collected by use of a questionnaire specifically tailored for women group respondents.
Data collected was analyzed by descriptive statistical methods. Information from the analyzed data was used to draw conclusions and generate recommendations. From this data, it was realized that women lacked simple entrepreneurial skills such as auditing, accounting, marketing, planning and public relations. These skills had a direct influence on their current situation. It was noted that more women had been trained on record keeping skills and communications as opposed to other skills under study. The study concluded that the need to train women on entrepreneurial skills surpasses the need to give them financial aid without the skills. It was therefore recommended that there was urgent need for policy makers to consider this aspect to enable women perform in their activities. To enable concrete conclusions, further research on the role of culture in wealth creation among women could be carried to supplement these findings. | en_US |
