Motivational Patterns and the Performance of Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Study of Women Entrepreneurs in South-West Nigeria

Introduction

Entrepreneurship has brought women into the mainstream of economic development and turned them into world changers. Women form micro-enterprises and bring their values through product/service to the market place; thereby changing the face of the nation’s business. They strive to maximize the utilization of their talents in their own businesses. The factors that motivate Nigerian women entrepreneurs affect the way and manner in which they conduct business. Motivational patterns of women entrepreneurs deal with the issues of the nature, types and dynamics that exist among women entrepreneurs in different sectors of the economy. Their ability to evaluate the patterns of their motivation before starting a business goes a long way in helping them to perform effectively for the achievement of their business goals and objectives (Brunstein & Maier, 2005; Mansor, 2005). Motivational pattern is a complex phenomenon and often differs in terms of the constructs and types of business involved. According to Katz and Kahn (1978) different motivational patterns are likely to exist across the different sectors of the economy. In support of this, National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) (2003) opined that different motivational patterns arise when different types of enterprise are examined in different sectors of the economy. Kahn (1978) and Tung (1981) identified three patterns of motivation as (i) rule enforcement, (ii) external reward and (iii) internalized motivation. Orhan and Scott (2001) also identified five patterns of women entrepreneurial motivation; (i) dynastic compliance, (ii) no other choice (iii) entrepreneurship by chance (iv) informed entrepreneurs and (v) pure entrepreneurs.

According to Das (2005), women go into business simply because they had time to do the business; they needed something to keep them busy; because their husband is into the same kind of business; or because they see it as an opportunity to start business in that line. Others were forced into business because; of their need for money either to augment their earnings or because they have a need for business, availability of certain resources such as time, finance, labour, or because they want to be independent. Das (2005) classified these reasons under created entrepreneurs. Understanding the relationship between motivation and business performance among women entrepreneurs can help individuals, women, institutions in policy decision making. This study is carried out to examine the relationship between the motivational patterns of women entrepreneurs and their performance in South-West Nigeria. To achieve the objective of this paper, we hypothesized that there is significant relationship between different motivational patterns of women entrepreneurs and their performance in business.