THE IMPACT OF FAMILY SUPPORT ON WOMEN ENTREPRENEURIAL PERFORMANCE IN SMES: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL
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The role of family support in women's entrepreneurial performance in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is analyzed from a sociological point of view, and the role of social capital as a mediator is explored. This study is based on Social Capital Theory and the Family Embeddedness Perspective. It examines how the emotional, financial, informational, and practical support provided by family members affects entrepreneurial outcomes, both directly and indirectly through social capital. The design of the cross-sectional survey used a quantitative approach. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 390 women entrepreneurs engaged in SMEs. The constructs family support, social capital, and entrepreneurial performance were assessed using scales commonly employed in previous research. To evaluate the measurement and structural models and test the proposed hypotheses, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was chosen. The measurement model had good reliabilities and validities because all indicator loadings were above 0.70, the composite reliability values were above 0.931, and the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) ranged from 0.729 to 0.827. The results of the structural model showed that family support does not have any significant direct effect on entrepreneurial performance. Still, it does have a significant positive effect on social capital (β = 0.159, p = 0.005). In addition, social capital has no significant impact on entrepreneurs' performance (β = –0.082, p = 0.178). The mediation analysis also showed no mediation effect of family support on entrepreneurial performance (β = –0.013, p = 0.262). The results indicate that family support is important for the development of social capital among women entrepreneurs, but neither family support nor social capital directly improves entrepreneurs' performance. This is particularly significant because this study brings together family support and social capital, a sociological approach to women's entrepreneurship. The findings call for policies and programs to increase networking, mentoring, skills training and business resources to improve the performance and sustainability of women's SMEs.
JEL Classification Codes: L26, J16, Z13.
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