Leadership Mentoring and Entrepreneurial Development of Female-Owned Businesses in Rivers State

Abstract

The oil that greases the wheel of every economy has been small businesses, making the development of entrepreneurship essential for economic prosperity. While the odds of small businesses succeeding is relatively low, some scholars have argued that this low success rate can be upturned through leadership mentoring. On the premise of this, this study elects to examine the effect of leadership mentoring on entrepreneurship development, focusing on female-owned businesses in Rivers State. To achieve this, the study, which was cross-sectional in nature, sampled 150 female entrepreneurs out of the population of 329 female entrepreneurs in Rivers State using the stratified random sampling method. For this analysis, the study used primary data sourced using a questionnaire which was designed in the Likert 5-point scale. Using the primary data, the study estimated the effect of leadership mentoring on entrepreneurship development and the moderating role of work-life integration using statistical tools, namely, mean, standard deviation, and Pearson moment product correlation method. Using these tools, the analyses indicate that leadership mentoring (indexed by emotional intelligence, career sponsoring, and job coaching) significantly enhanced entrepreneurship development (as measured using innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking). Also, the empirical results revealed that work-life integration significantly moderates the influence of leadership mentoring on entrepreneurship development. The study recommends that the Rivers State in partnership with the Port Harcourt Chambers of Commerce should carry out training programmes directed towards improving the Emotional intelligence of female entrepreneurs in Rivers State. The programme should be geared toward pioneering the skill of self-control, self-awareness and social awareness of female entrepreneurs in the State.