Abstract:
This study was set to determine and analyze the role of business management on the growth of tailoring and dressmaking enterprises in Eldoret town, Kenya. The research was guided by Jovanovic’s Learning Effect Model (1982) for enterprise. A stratified random sampling procedure was used to obtain a sample of 130 licensed tailoring and dressmaking enterprises that participated in the study. The sample was selected from those operating both within the Central Business District (CBD) and outside the CBD but within the Eldoret Municipality (OCBD) forming 22% of the target population. Questionnaires, interviews and observation checklists were used in the data collection. The collected data was analyzed descriptively and inferentially using frequency tables, Chi-square tests, simple and multiple linear regression analyses using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 17. This study revealed that most of the tailoring and dressmaking enterprises were in disengagement stage either not growing or having a slight growth. This was greatly attributed to poor business management skills that were found to affect their growth significantly. The study recommends that there is need for the Government and other business support organization such as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), large scale garment producers, modeling firms and textile related industrial training institutions to team up and develop training progammes aimed at providing management skills to the owner-manager of tailoring and dressmaking enterprises in Eldoret town. This will improve the managerial efficiency and effectiveness of the owner managers and consequently resulting into growth of their enterprises.
