Project

Entrepreneurial Learning in Ethiopian Leather Industry: Towards Development of International Business Competencies and Export Performance

Exporting is increasingly seen as an important route through which entrepreneurial firms can realize their growth potential. Selling in the international markets benefits firms through enhanced revenues and greater productivity due to learning effects associated with exporting.

Profile

Worku was born in 1976 in Ethiopia. He has earned his BSc in Marketing and Sales Management from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and MBA in Small and Medium Enterprise Development from University of Leipzig, Germany. He has worked as a branch manager in one of the largest Microfinance institutions in Ethiopia. Up until he came to Wageningen for his PhD study, he has been working for Addis Ababa University, Institute of Development Studies with academic rank of Lecturer.

Research

Extant literature in international business linked improved firm export performance with firm’s international business competences (IBC), implying that firms having higher IBC perform better in exporting. However, an attempt to simply examine the direct IBC–export performance relationship provides an incomplete, simplistic, picture of determinants of export performance-: thereby excluding the importance of internal and external contingent factors in the examination. In other words, a static approach to IBC leaves the process through which entrepreneurial firms develop their competence over time that indirectly impact subsequent export performance unexplored. Drawing upon organizational learning theory and the domain of international entrepreneurship, this study therefore sets out to examine the effect of learning in entrepreneurial firms on further eliciting the relationship between IBC and export performance. To this end, the study will first identify specific organizational competencies that explain export performance and then measure the change in these competencies through firms’ entrepreneurial learning activities and examine the extent to which this change influence export performance. The study will also examine the role of key factors, such as social and business networks, managers’ prior international experience, and export promotion programs in facilitate organizations’ learning activities.

Specific Studies

  • Study 1: Identifying competencies that are necessary for internationalization and assessing self-awareness of mastery and beliefs about improvability of those competencies   
  • Study 2: Identifying firms’ entrepreneurial learning activities and measuring the change in firm-level international business competence
  • Study 3: Determining relationship between firms’ IBC, learning activities and export performance

Project team

  • Worku T. Birru, MSc
  • Prof. Dr. M. Mulder
  • Dr. Tilahun Teklu (Addis Ababa University)
  • Dr. Thomas Lans

Publications

  • Worku Tuffa Birru, (2011) "Horizontal inter-firm cooperation in Ethiopian small and medium enterprises: Evidence from leather shoe manufacturing firms in Addis Ababa", Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 18 Iss: 4, pp.806 – 820
  • Worku Tuffa Birru (2009) “Sustainable Business Development Service for Microfinance”, Proceedings 10th Anniversary of Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions, “Microfinance Scale-up in Ethiopia Challenges Ahead and the Way Forward”, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia