The Influence of Entrepreneurial Leadership in the Performance of Micro and Small Enterprises the Case for Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia

Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) play a vital role significantly in a country’s economic development and employment. But the volatile economic environment with intensified competition makes the survival of the MSEs a tough one. Hence the sustainable performance of the MSEs is an essential need today. Among the many factors that stimulates the performance of the MSEs entrepreneurial leadership and its effect on the performance is not explored well by the researchers. Hence this study attempts to find the relationship between the entrepreneurial leadership and the performance, effect of entrepreneurial leadership on the performance of the MSEs in Eastern Tigray Region of Ethiopia. The study throws a light on the performance of MSEs and how it is influenced by the entrepreneurial leadership of the entrepreneurs which may add values to the entrepreneurs. The respondents are the employees of the MSEs, the total no of enterprises in the region is 19718 and the sample size was derived as 392. Well structured questionnaires were administered to collect the required data. The data were collected during 2017. SPSS software was applied to compute the data. Mean and standard deviation are the statistical tools applied to describe the variables under the study. The statistical tools correlation and regression have been applied to test the hypothesis. The results decipher that there is a positive correlation between entrepreneurial leadership amd the performance of the MSEs. The study also has found that the entrepreneurial leadership considerably affects the performance of the entrepreneurs. The study results imply that there is a scope to the entrepreneurs to improve their entrepreneurial leadership which may result in higher level of performance of the MSEs in Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia.