THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL SIZE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENT-FUNDED YOUTH GROUP ENTERPRISES IN KENYA

One of the avenues of reducing unemployment rates is entrepreneurship. Youth seem to be the age group that is hit the hardest by lack of or inadequate opportunities for income generation. This has seen governmental and non-governmental organisations front initiatives aimed at empowering young people to start and run their ventures. They have, amongst other things, created training programs that endeavor to build the capacities of youth in this area. Despite these interventions, unemployment rates have been seen to rise, which could be attributed to the small size of the outfits started by the beneficiaries of such training. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to establish the influence of organizational size on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and organizational performance. A cross-sectional survey was carried out on 262 youth groups which were registered with the Youth Enterprise Development Fund of Taita Taveta County as of April 2019. 156 were sampled. Questionnaires were personally distributed and a response rate of 62% recorded. Entrepreneurship training was measured using the following indicators: technical, business management, and personal entrepreneurial skills. The organizational size was deduced using questions regarding the number of employees and money capital. Organizational performance was broken down into questions pointing at fiscal, client, processes and advancement aspects. Regression analyses were performed on the data. It was established that the size of an organization does have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and performance. This study enriches the apprehension of the conjugation between entrepreneurship training and organizational performance as moderated by organizational size. This study recommends that the government puts in place measures that encourage the growth of organisations. It also emboldens policy-makers and managers of entrepreneurship training programmes to consider emphasizing the importance of size and growth of startups.

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