EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL EMPOWERMENT AND INDIGENOUS APPRENTICESHIP ON SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE OF WOMEN-OWNED SMEs IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIA

Abstract

This study examined the effects of entrepreneurial empowerment and indigenous apprenticeship on the sustainable performance of women-owned SMEs in Southwest Nigeria. It investigated how financial, educational, social, and technological empowerment influence sustainable performance, and whether indigenous apprenticeship moderates this relationship. Anchored in the Resource Based View (Barney, 1991; Penrose, 1959) and Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986), the study adopted a positivist, quantitative, cross-sectional design. Structured questionnaires were administered to 384 respondents across Lagos, Ogun, and Oyo States using stratified and convenience sampling. Data were analysed using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4 with 5,000 bootstrapping subsamples. Findings confirm that financial empowerment (β = 0.381), educational empowerment (β = 0.403), and technological empowerment (β = 0.360) each significantly predict all four sustainable performance dimensions: economic, environmental, operational, and social. Social empowerment significantly predicts three dimensions but not economic performance (p = 0.208), revealing a structural conversion failure rooted in the dominance of bonding over bridging social capital. Critically, indigenous apprenticeship significantly and negatively moderates the empowerment–performance relationship (β = −1.675, T = 4.083, p < 0.001; 95% CI [−2.312, −0.879]), with the moderation model explaining 39.7% of variance. This negative moderation is attributed to the Competing Obligations Hypothesis: the demands of indigenous apprenticeship systems for communal governance reduce the efficiency with which empowerment resources translate into sustainable performance gains. The study recommends complementing empowerment policies with institutional bridging mechanisms, digital training, and redesigned apprenticeship governance. Theoretically, it contributes the Gendered Conversion Efficiency concept as a refinement of the Resource-Based View and the Gender-Differentiated Self-Efficacy Proposition as a boundary condition for Social Learning Theory.