Track: Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Abstract

In Malaysia, entrepreneur and SMEs are the backbone of the economy. Entrepreneur is one who is brave in taking risks to create a new market with their innovative idea to fulfil the market demand. It is difficult to ascertain why the situation still the same, some entrepreneurs fail while other succeed, it is through that focus on entrepreneurial competencies offer a practical means of addressing the phenomenon. SME’s are still faced by lack of appropriate knowledge and skills, limited skills and limited access to technology. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the types of competency of entrepreneur that have relationship between with business performance among SMEs. This is a quantitative research. A structured selection sampling method will be used to select the entrepreneurs to respond to the survey questionnaire who are owners of SMEs in Pontian, Johor. The gathered primary data will be analysed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). It was found that Pontian SMEs have entrepreneurial competencies to make their business performance growth and there is a strong positive relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and business performance which are financial performance and non-financial performance. The standardized beta of the regression analyses shows that commitment competency, relationship competency, learning competency and personal competency is significantly related to the non-financial performance. The implication and limitation of study are also reported.