MSc Thesis
This study examined the influence of cultural dimensions on performance of women’s
entrepreneurial initiatives in Mvomero District. Specifically the study aimed to; examine
variations of cultural dimensions between men and women in the study area, asses
differential performance of women’s and men’s owned
entrepreneurial enterprises,
examine the influence of cultural dimensions on growth of women’s entrepreneurial
enterprises and identify the best predictor of women’s performance of entrepreneurial
enterprises. A sample of 115 including both women and men entrepreneurs engaged in
different entrepreneurial activities was taken for the study using stratified and simple
random sampling. The Mann Whitney U-test was used to examine the variation of cultural
dimensions between men and women. The results of the study indicate that there were no
variations of cultural dimension between men and women in the study area. Independent
sample t-test was employed to asses differential performance of women’s and men owned
entrepreneurial enterprises. The results show that the business performance between men
and women in the study area had no significant difference. To examine the influence of
cultural dimensions on performance of women’s entrepreneurial enterprises multiple linear
regressions was used. The results found that among three cultural dimensions only two
dimensions namely masculinity and uncertainty avoidance recorded significant influence
on performance with masculinity recording high influence on performance thus suggesting
the best predictor of entrepreneurial performance compared to uncertainty avoidance and
collectivism. The study recommended that to empower women on entrepreneurial
performance, the government should chart out extra strategies for
entrepreneurial
awareness and trainings, education especially in rural areas who mostly seem to end with
standard seven certificate and below, and loans for capital. These might be realized by
development practitioners in a period of time so that to increase the number of women iniii
the entrepreneurial arena as far as there is no variation on entrepreneurial performance
between men and women.