The Effect of Demographic Characteristics of Owner/Manager on the Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises in Namibia: Specific Reference to Selected Towns

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises are the back bone of the economy of countries of the world. In spite of the important contribution of SMEs sector in the development of countries economy, studies have shown that SMEs are faced with challenges that hamper their growth. In Namibia, many studies have been done on the SMEs sector and factors affecting their growth. However, less consideration has been given to the effect of owner's/ managers demographic characteristics on SMEs growth in selected towns in Namibia. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on the effect of owners'/managers demographic characteristics such as age, gender, level of education and prior experience on the growth of SMEs in five selected towns in Namibia. This study applied the quantitative approach with a descriptive survey of 200 questionnaire distributed to the five towns in Namibia using a convenience sampling technique. The analysis of the data was done using SPSS. The finding from the tested hypothesis revealed a relationship between the Owners/managers demographic characteristics and the growth of SMEs. The correlation results show that all the variables have positive relationship but when the variables were analysed separately, the result from the regression analysis shows that only prior experience of Owners/Managers has a positive relationship with SMEs growth in the five towns in Namibia.