THE INFLUENCE OF ENTREPRENEURAL ORIENTATION ON THE PERFORMANCE OF COOPERATIVE BUSINESS IN ANAMBRA STATE POLYTECHNIC MGBAKWU, SOUTH-EAST, NIGERIA

Abstract

This work was done  to study the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on the performance of selected cooperative businesses in Anambra state polytechnic Mgbakwu, Awka, Nigeria.                                                The study was necessitated as a result of collapses or folding up of many cooperative businesses due to the level of competition in the contemporary turbulent and globalized environment. The broad objective was: to investigate the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on the performance of selected cooperatives in Anambra state polytechnics (ANSPOLY).  The specific objectives were to; ascertain the effect of innovation on the performance of selected cooperatives, to examine the effect of proactiveness on the performance of selected cooperatives. In line with the above objectives, two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study.  Findings indicates that: the processed data had a significance level of 0.000, which shows that the data is ideal for concluding the population parameters as the value of significance (p-value) is less than 0.05. More so, the calculated value was greater than the critical value (16.811>3.499) which means that the null hypotheses were rejected, an indication that there was a significant effect of entrepreneurial orientation on the business performance of cooperative enterprises. It was also revealed that holding the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) to a constant zero, the Business Performance (BP) of cooperative enterprises would stand at 25.388. Nevertheless, the EO dimensions are as follows:   a unit increase in Innovativeness (IN) would lead to an increase in BP by a factor of 0.803; with IN being significant at 0.000. Furthermore, a unit increase in Proactiveness (PA) would significantly lead to an increase in the BP by a factor of 0.719; with PA being significant at 0.013. This shows that innovativeness and proactiveness have positive effect on cooperative business performance. Conclusively it is very vital for cooperative enterprises to have their entrepreneurial orientation (EO) fortified as this study has shown that overall, entrepreneurial orientation has a significant effect on business performance. The study recommends that entrepreneurial development initiative that aims at building the EO dimensions of cooperative enterprises, should focus on innovativeness and proactiveness