DEPARTMENT OF MASTERS OF SCIENCE IN

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Business Research Methods Article Review Individual

Assignment

NAME ID
Negesa Bedada Gse/9791/13

Section 1

Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Submitted to: - Amare Abawa (PHD)
March 2022 G.C
Title: - Entrepreneurial Competency in Agriculture: Is it a Silver bullet for the
Farmers Welfare Problem?
Though agriculture remained the most important sector in Ethiopia, the performance is not as it
ought to be that some sort of techniques must be implemented to increase farm productivity that
in turn can improve farmers' welfare. As a result, the researcher tried to identify and examine
agriculture specific competencies and pinpoint those competencies that helped model-farmers to
surpass their fellow friends in productivity and welfare, as competencies have a mixed effect on
success that all competencies cannot be taken for granted as a silver bullet to solve all problems
and comprehend whether competencies possessed by model farmers are different from non-model
farmers in order to investigate the effect of farmers’ entrepreneurial competency on the welfare of
farmers. The researcher tried to answer questions that are Which sort of entrepreneurial
competencies are more significant to alleviate the welfare problems of farmers, What is the
moderating effect of farmers' category on the relationship between competency and welfare, and
Which kind of competency is more prevalent in model and non-model farmers.
The research was done by using descriptive analysis done for the variables, inferential analysis
using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
The questionnaire that comprises the competencies dimension is adopted from Phelan & Sharpley
(2012) with some modifications and the questionnaire part related to the welfare of farmers is
conceptually adapted from Ravallion & Lokshin (2002).
The researcher used stratified sampling method considering farmers’ groups as strata and collected
primary data from farmers and interviews conducted with two agricultural extension expert and
employed secondary data too.
The sample size was determined based on Slovin’s formula considering a 5% level of significance
(Slovin, 1960). The sample size (n) was 399. However, due to the political and security situation
in the zone administration during the data collection phase, the researcher was able to get data
from 178 respondents. The data is found to be valid for analysis based on the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
(KMO) result as suggested by (Williams, Onsman, & Brown, 2010).
The researcher found that from the six entrepreneurs' competencies which are Organizing
Competency, Strategic Competency, Relationship Competency, Conceptual competency,
Opportunity competency, and Communication competency identified by Phelan & Sharpley
(2012), only two of them (Strategic competency and relationship competency) are found to have a
significant effect on the welfare of farmers. The researcher concluded that this concurred with the
study conducted by Jama & Chellakan (2020) that claimed the mixed effect of entrepreneurs.
Moreover, the study revealed that there is no significant moderating effect of agricultural extension
based on the model and non-model farmers that the relationship between entrepreneurs’
competency and farmers’ welfare is not different for model and non-model farmers. Thus, it is
suggested that any stakeholder who wishes to enhance the welfare of farmers can work on
enhancing strategic and relationship competency and this effort should not be different for model
and non-model farmers as the agricultural extension category does not moderate the relationship
between farmers’ competency and farmers’ welfare.

BRM Article Review Individual Assignment Page 1