The Effect of Entrepreneurial Competencies on Business Performance: A Case of Kenya's Public Transport Industry.

A Research Project Report Submitted to the Chandaria School of Business in Partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBA)Entrepreneurial competencies have been illustrated to have an impact on business performance and growth. The purpose of this paper is therefore to establish the effect of entrepreneurial competencies on business performance in Kenya's Public transport industry, so as to provide an integrated account of contributions relating to entrepreneurial competencies, develop an agenda for future research, and practice in relation to entrepreneurial competencies. The focus of the research is to measure the entrepreneurs competencies exhibited through innovativeness, creativity and risk taking and how these attributes contribute to the performance of a business enterprise. The research focused on a sample population of 150 entrepreneurs in the public transport industry who were selected through stratified random sampling method. A questionnaire with 40 questions was used to collect the data and the SPSS software was used by the researcher to run a descriptive and inferential statistics which included discriminant and convergent validity and structural model estimation. The study findings revealed that innovativeness, creativity and risk taking, are positively and statistically significant to performance in the public transport industry. This means that increase in the extent of innovativeness, creativity and risk taking, has a positive effect to performance, with a coefficient estimate of 0.316 and at significance of 5% level. This means if the three entrepreneurial competencies increase by 1, business performance will increase by 0.316, and that an increase in entrepreneurial competencies would lead to improved performance. The recommendations from the research were that fostering entrepreneurial education on innovativeness in the industry should be adopted as it is an important step towards growing the industry. This will expose players and stakeholders to efficient and effective ways to handle industry parameters which in turn will make the industry more competitive, and improve performance as a consequence. Key stakeholders in the industry should also strategize on how to incorporate creativity. Each industry should come up with unique creative ways in which they can gain competitive advantages and increase on performance as a consequence. Risk diversification in the industry could be pursued by the entrepreneurs, to cushion against unexpected and un- mitigated slumps in the industry. Entrepreneurs should also plan on potential risk implications on every venture they invest in by under taking surveys, conducting due diligence on these ventures and taking out insurance policies to act as buffers in times of depression and decreased business performance. A key element of the study was that it was based on business performance and not on the individual entrepreneurs competency set. Future studies were therefore recommended to incorporate individual competencies to business performance. The study used subjective data in measuring business performance as all the respondents are from one area. Objective data from other entrepreneurs could be used to mitigate the subjectivity of the study findings