*PhD Candidate, College of Business Studies, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Sudan
**Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration, College of Economics & Administration, Qassim University, KSA
Online published on 11 April, 2014.
Innovative and proactive firms that manage risk in rational way will be more successful by capturing opportunities that rise in changing environment and develop new capacity to attain better performance. All these characteristics are formed by entrepreneur orientation. The main aim of this study is to examine the role of entrepreneurial orientation on performance of women owned and managed enterprises in Somalia. Specifically, the study investigates the effect of 1) innovation, 2) risk taking; and 3) Pro-activeness of entrepreneur orientation on business performance. By using purposive sampling, 200 women from women owned companies in Somalia participated in the study. The findings indicate that innovation (β=.362, t=4.697, p<.001) and risk taking (β=.214, t=2.894, p=.004) were found to have statistically significant and positive effect on firm performance, whereas Pro-activeness has no influence on firm performance (β=.045, t=.576, p=.565). Future research scope and implications are further discussed.
Entrepreneurial orientation, innovation, Pro-activeness, risk taking, firm performance, women owned enterprises, micro enterprises
