Relationship Among Entrepreneurial Processes, Procurement Affirmative Action Practices and Business Success of Entrepreneurs With Disability in Western Kenya

Abstract

Global Network for Entrepreneurs with Disabilities support studies indicating that selfemployment as an entrepreneurial activity has nearly twice as many economically engaged people with disability running their own businesses or are self-employed as opposed to selfemployment of non-disabled people. According to the Kenyan 2019 census, 2.2% (0.9million people) of Kenyans live with some form of disability. Access to procurement opportunities is an affirmative action practice aimed at empowering youth, women and people living with disabilities by giving them more opportunities to do business with government. Despite these, entrepreneurs with disability are still challenged in terms of personal satisfaction, personal growth and business survival. These are evidenced by disability report in Kenya indicating that 67 percent of disabled populations live in poverty and Access to Government Procurement Opportunities report (2018) revealing dismal growth in that there are only 720 registered businesses owned by people with disability in Kenya. These facts may be attributed to ineffective entrepreneurial processes whose main importance is to create opportunities. Past studies on entrepreneurship have focused on entrepreneurship funding and entrepreneurial culture, but have not considered entrepreneurial processes and procurement affirmative action practices and their effect on business success of entrepreneurs with disability in Western Kenya yet this region has the second lowest number (eight) registered businesses of entrepreneurs with disability. Moreover, past studies have only focused on moderator variables like entrepreneurship passion for inventing, entrepreneurship training, business environment, social networking and religiosity and also treated procurement affirmative action practices as either dependent or independent variables but not moderator. Furthermore, they give mixed results. As such, the effect of procurement affirmative action practices as a moderator remains unknown. The purpose was to analyze the relationship among entrepreneurial processes, procurement affirmative action practices and business success of entrepreneurs with disability in Western Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial processes and business success; determine the relationship between procurement affirmative action practices and business success; investigate moderating effect of procurement affirmative action practices on the relationship between entrepreneurial processes and business success. The study was anchored on Empowerment and Need for Achievement theories and adopted a correlational research design. The target population was 73 registered businesses owned by entrepreneurs with disability in Western Kenya. Census sampling was used. The respondents were 69 business owners, out of which 4 were used for piloting, being 5-10% of the sample size considered as a sufficient representation. Reliability was tested using Cronbach‟s Alpha coefficient at α = 0.844. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaires. Both face and content validity were used. The findings revealed that Entrepreneurial processes statistically significantly contributed to business success (β=.609, t(69)=6.285, p=.000) and accounted for 37.1% change in business success (R2=0.371, F(1,67=39.496, p=.000), Procurement affirmative action practices contributed statistically significantly to business success (β =.511, p=.000) and accounted for 26.1% change in business success (R2=0.261, F(1,67=23.625, p=.000), Moderated regression analysis revealed interactive effect (R2 =change=0.050, change in F(1, 65) =5.971, p = .017), which implied that procurement affirmative action practices as a moderator improves business success by 5%. The study concluded that, if more effort is put in entrepreneurial processes and procurement affirmative action practices, it will lead to improved business success and procurement affirmative action practices moderates entrepreneurial-business success relationship. The study recommends the use of composite entrepreneurial processes and for entrepreneurs to enhance procurement practices for persons with disabilities to help them improve on their businesses. The study may inform policy on how entrepreneurial process can be used as a tool for improving access by persons with disabilities to procurement opportunities and how to empower them. The study highlights the applicability of both empowerment and needs theories in a new context and further facilitates creation of knowledge and growth of literature in entrepreneurship.