Browsing by Author "Mwinuka, Zacharia Michael"

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    An assessment of the entrepreneurial status of small engineering-based enterprises in Tanzania: the case of selected districts in Dar es Salaam and Pwani regions
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2009) Mwinuka, Zacharia Michael
    This study explored the factors that characterize entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs amongst small engineering-and/or vocational-based operators in selected districts of Dar es Salaam and Pwani regions, Tanzania. The main problem was lack of coherent understanding as to whether engineering-and/or vocational-based business operators are entrepreneurial or not. In popular talking and African entrepreneurship literature, the business operators and entrepreneurs are used interchangeably. Since there was not a complete sampling frame for small engineering- and/or vocational-based business operators in the study areas, purposive judgmental sampling techniques were used to identify respondents in a wide variety of activities located in popular vocation and small engineering and/ vocation-based business concentration zones. Structured questionnaire and a checklist of positive statements in a general enterprising tendencies test sheet were used to collect data. Ms Excel was used to analyze data. The results show that despite being in seemingly creative industry, significant majority (93.3%) of the respondents had no sufficient creative tendencies as per general enterprising tendencies test. Arguably, as one would expect about 56.7% of the respondents had general need for achievement while others had less than 50% of other entrepreneurial tendencies, namely calculated risk taking (13.3%), drive and determination (30%) and need for autonomy and independence (16.7%). The findings suggest that most small business operators do not purposely think of becoming entrepreneurial. In this regard, they usually do things on routine basis as determined by circumstances.