WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN MICRO SMALL AND MEDIUM

SECTORS IN KERALA: AN EVALUATION OF MOTIVATIONAL,

PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS IN DETERMINING
SUCCESS

SYNOPSIS SUBMITTED TO BHARATHIAR UNIVERSITY,COIMBATORE IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MANAGEMENT

By

PREETHA ZAZJNAY. J

(Reg. No: Ph.D-CB-JUL2013-0638)

Under the Guidance of

Dr. V. A. SANTHOSH

Professor, TKM Institute of Management,

Karuvelil, Ezhukone (P.O), Kollam, Kerala.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

BHARTHIAR UNIVERSITY, COIMBATORE-641046

TAMILNADU, INDIA.

SEPTEMBER, 2018
 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN MICRO SMALL AND MEDIUM
SECTORS IN KERALA: AN EVALUATION OF MOTIVATIONAL,
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS IN DETERMINING
SUCCESS

INTRODUCTION
. One of the most pronounced and relevant megatrend that we could witness is the
shift in the global economic power to emerging economic economies in Asia and elsewhere.
This emerging market development has been estimated to create many opportunities
especially for business. India’s emergence as one of the fastest growing economies can be
largely attributed to the rapid growth of its knowledge based economy, represented mainly by
the manufacturing and services industries after the mid 1991 with the coming up of new
policies concerning the economic liberalization, privatization and globalization agreements
signed by Indian Government

Entrepreneurship is considered to be a major ingredient in the worldwide

developmental scenario and also a highly dynamic process of creating incremental wealth.
The need for a broad based entrepreneurial class in India arises from the need to speed up the
process of activating the process of production, leading to a higher rate of economic growth,
dispersal of economic activities, development of backward and tribal areas, creation of
employment opportunities, improvement in the standard of living of weaker sections of the
society and involvement of all sections of the society and the process of growth.

Entrepreneurship among women has become a concern and has been a major focus of
attention for all through the last few decades. Women entrepreneurs have been emerging as a
major focus worldwide and they have also garnered recognition in many parts of the world,
from the last few decades, calling attention to the value which women offer to their society .
Thus encouraging women entrepreneurship is found to be very essential since they have
enormous potential for contributing towards benefiting the business with their leadership
roles along with national development and bring about socio-economic transformation in
their society significant imbalances in economic activities and this should make the
governments to bring about sensitizing policies to address the concern of women.
Owing to the global megatrend, projected by 2020, which may dramatically alter the
landscape for the technology and business industry, the expectation of new avenues to be
opened up among a sizable untapped segment in the small and medium enterprises sectors,
invites governments, academicians and researchers to throw light towards the growing
recognition of the important role played by the micro small and medium sectors enterprises in
the economic development of the nation.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Basic Indian family structure expects women to remain subordinate and executors of the
decision made up by male superiors not that she is accepted and valued to be a part and parcel
of each activities and developmental process. In India a meagre, that is, less than 10 percent
of women are in the entrepreneurial arena, with major industries run by them, who are
exceptionally educated or from a well educated business class. Through a very concentrated
effort by government and other agencies and institutions, to an extend the entrepreneurial
potential of women have been exposed among the societies and some could showcase their
worth. A low proportion of women entrepreneurs have been working in the formal and
informal business sectors have been facing certain constraints which restricts the potential for
their business to grow. In India, in the midst of the several global and monetary recessions, it
is vital to promote entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking among the capable and
educated women population for building up a sustained and inclusive growth, creating more
employment opportunities and fostering more skills that may not only set women apart from
their male counterpart but also lead themselves to be successful entrepreneurs. Kerala being
blessed with a fertile ground for women to develop with the highest educated segment with
high sex ratio, all the possibilities have to be conquered to bring women up to the right level
of growth and success. To achieve such a state, women need to be empowered by bringing
them out of the binding normative structures which is inevitable for the society’s
development and progress. An empowered women can radically bring about changes to the
future of our nation and their initiatives of creating economic value

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

At time when the fight for equality has been growing continuously, the percentage of women
entrepreneurs is found to be staggeringly less. Only a few women could be spotted even now
among the male faces especially in the entrepreneurial arena. Experts believe that there is lot
of room for growth for women to come up with their enterprises even though some traces of
development and improvement were been noticed. Women entrepreneurs are now been
considered as the under tapped forces that can rekindle economic expansions. They can
occupy a very significant and decisive place in the social, cultural, economic and political life
and this is evident by their contributions made to the quality of day to day life. Women
entrepreneurs also have the same speciality as that of men who has an enterprising quality
with an optimistic view point to take risk with an adventurous spirit. India has been
traditionally a patriarchal society where women have been given low priority especially
towards economic matters. Even though women are at the end of the criticism, but as the
dust of the criticism ends it has been found that they have mostly been triumphant. There is a
need to bring about changes in the mindset of others towards women, who are the better half
of the Indian population and who have to be the better half of each and every family, so as to
give equal rights as enshrined in our constitution. . Supporting entrepreneurship is
undoubtedly a positive and practical choice appropriate to encourage and support the women
fraction which can scale up the MSME sectors which are equally important to sustain our
economy, create jobs and foster growth. Increasing the number of entrepreneurs and creating
favourable conditions for them to succeed is essential to improve the economic opportunities
and thereby enjoy better standard of living which can be helpful in nurturing a brighter future
for the next generation.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Present day, women have been recognised as an indispensible part of the global struggle for a
stable economy. Women in Kerala are more privileged than the rest of the states in India.
Kerala has a very distinctive position of being the only state in India with a sex ratio
favourable to women which is 1084 females for 1000men as against the national average of
940 females for 1000men (Census Report-2011). Also in Kerala women have the high
literacy rate. Female literacy rate in Kerala accounts to 92.07 percent against the national
average of 65.46 percent (Census Report-2011). Since literacy and educational standards are
the two important indicators of development and of course Kerala has retained a top most
position, The common notion of women being “better off staying indoors” or the notion of
working women has brought them down since generations are increasingly being done away
with. . The Sixth Economic Census, 2014 bring out the latest figures about the position of
women entrepreneurs who manage the enterprises all over the states in India. Kerala state
occupies a dismal 11.35 percent of women managed enterprises which is relatively less
compared to the annual report of MSME, 2015-2016, and which is comparatively much less
based on the high educational level and of course very high literacy rate which is really an
alarming statistics. . But does this meagre percentage of women entrepreneurs in the MSME
sector in Kerala accounts for the best home maker’s inability to lead an enterprise? So what
could have been the real influencing factors which decide upon the success or failure of these
women entrepreneurs?

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1. To explore the women entrepreneurs in Micro Small and Medium Enterprises sector
registered in the state of Kerala.
2. To measure the level of motivation and its influence in determining the success of
women entrepreneurs in Micro Small and Medium Enterprises sector.
3. To analyse the type of personality and its influence in determining success of women
entrepreneurs of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sector.
4. To measure the level of social dimensions and its influence in determining the success
of women entrepreneurs in Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises sector.
5. To understand how the demographic factors, like age, qualification, marital status, and
religion, influence the women entrepreneurs and their relationship between
motivational, personality and social dimensions of the successful and unsuccessful
women entrepreneurs of Micro, Small andMedium Enterprises sector.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

. To yield reliable results Quantitative Research was conducted as a category of

primary research where the study results are in the forms of hard numbers or
percentages. A descriptive survey design was used in this study. This design was
chosen to meet the objective of the study which mainly dealt with analysing the
influencing factors which determine the success of the women entrepreneurs of
micro,small and medium enterprises sector in Kerala. The study concentrated on
analysing how the influencing factors chosen ( motivational, personality, and social)
affected the success (the dependent variable) of women entrepreneurs of micro, small
and medium sectors through studying their demographic features ( independent
variable). To study motivation, the variables used in the motivational model as
depicted in Hackman and Oldham(1975) was chosen which states that for the
development and maintenance of strong internal work motivation, it is necessary that
the three psychological state of experienced meaningfulness (Skill Variety, Task
Identity and Task Significance), experienced responsibility (autonomy) and the
knowledge of result (Feedback) to be present. ). John Holland’s personality-Job fit
identifies six personality traits such as (1) Realistic. (2) Investigative, (3) Social (4)
Conventional(5)..Enterprising and
(6)Artistic. For social factors a self administered pattern was chosen with variables
like caste system, family background, education, societal attitude, cultural factors. The
success factor had been measured as a combination of profitability and autonomy.
Profitability was assigned by “triangular relationship” of turnover and profit margin.
Autonomy as considered by Dyson and Moore(1983) includes women’s social and
economic autonomy. Success variables were finalised after conducting a telephonic
survey among selected 25 entrepreneurs in two nearby states and thereby was
included..
By considering all these model, a questionnaire was framed, and a pilot study
was conducted for testing the questionnaire which is of course a replica of the main
study. After the pilot survey few of the questions had to be removed, few changes in
framing the questionnaire were made and the sequence was also altered. Cronbach
alpha was calculated. The final questionnaire was made ready for conducting survey.
Population of the study constituted the women entrepreneurs registered in the
msme sectors. A sample size of 375 sample was calculated. The whole population
was divided into 3 strata that is Northern Kerala, Central Kerala and southern
Kerala.and more or less equal proportion of samples were collected from all these
three regionsin the ratio 20:32:48 respectively. 955 questionnaires were posted to the
randomly selected and interviewed samples. Then questionnaire were posted with
returing envelope. After several remainder calls 382 questionnaires were returned and
had to discard 5 which were incomplete. In this way altogether 377 questionnaires
returned were included in our study. For analysing the data univariate, bivariate and
multivariate statistical analysis was adopted. descriptive statistics, correlation methods,
partial correlation and regression were used.

Findings
1. While analysing the descriptive data collected from the sample, the researcher could find
that of the 377 samples analysed, majority of women are Hindu, married, mothers with
two children owning a proprietary type business especially in the rural sector. The sample
study results show that instead of Muslim women depicted in the micro,small and
medium enterprises database, Christians were in the second position to muslims. who are
in business. also another important factor analysed is that majority of entrepreneurs were
 of the less educated group who focussed just to sell their products in the local market in
the local market
2. To determine the influence of motivational factors on women entrepreneurs, correlation
analysis was done and it was found that motivation given to women have a positive
influence on the success.
3. Concerning their personality factor, correlation analysis done to find the influence on
women entrepreneurs, the results shows that a positive relation between personality factors
and success. Less significance was found on the enterprising and social personality which
is a combination best suited as per the model.
4. The study reveals that the social factors showed a low positive influence on the success
factor. The need for giving more concern on some of the social variables seems to be very
important.
5. Concerning the influence of the demographic variables on the success of the business,
partial correlation and regression analysis was done, where the researcher could find that
the age factor had less influence on the business whereas the experienced in the field have
influenced the performance of women in business.