The Mediating Role of Competitiveness Between Entrepreneurial Challenges and Willingness of Female Business Graduates

Abstract

This research examines the challenges of female business graduate entrepreneurs; we have developed a modified conceptual framework in which willingness to become an entrepreneur has been taken as a dependent variable. However, financial, cultural, marketing, and technological challenges are independent variables. Additionally, we incorporated competitiveness as a mediation variable between independent and dependent variables. The competitiveness could be beneficial to the female business graduates’ entrepreneurs and might be reduced by their financial, marketing, cultural, and technological challenges. The data was collected through a modified structured questionnaire from the entrepreneurs of female business graduates. The information was collected from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka; we have collected 386 responses for the period from February 2021 to July 2021. We employed a structural equation modelingbased (SEM-based) multivariate approach and conditional process modeling for the data analysis. The findings of this research exhibit that the financial challenges, cultural challenges, marketing challenges, and technological challenges have a significant negative impact on female business entrepreneurs. These are the constraints that restrict female business graduates’ entrepreneurial opportunities. On the other hand, the mediation analysis showed that competitiveness has a positive and significant impact between financial challenges, cultural challenges, marketing challenges, & technological challenges, and willingness to become an entrepreneur. The perfect mediation of competitiveness established that the business success of SMEs does not rely on the individuals’ competencies and success factors only, but organizational competitiveness is equally essential for organizational performance.