13th Annual International Management Conference Proceeding

found to be between 20 and 30 years of age. 60% were between the age of 31 and 45 years while 23% were
between the age of 46 and 61. This shows that male entrepreneurs value acquisition of more business skills
than female entrepreneurs do and that entrepreneurs in the middle age group attach great importance to
training and this tends to decrease towards the old age.
5.0 Education
On educational background, 33.3% of the respondents had completed University/College level, 13.3% had
completed "A" level of education, and 43.3% had completed "O" level, while 10% of the respondents had
completed standard 7. This shows that entrepreneurs with higher educational levels understand and attach
great importance on the acquisition of more business skills than those with low education levels.
Nature of Business
The respondents were in a number of businesses namely Woodwork (30%); tailoring (10%) and
dressmaking; retailing (10%); training and consultancy (10%); printing (7%) and fabrication (7%);
pharmaceuticals and chemicals (7%); Juice processing (3%) and restaurants (3%). 3% were engaged laundry
and dry-cleaning and 1% in saloons (Table 1).
Business Type No. of Male No. of Female Total Percentage
Woodwork 9 0 30%
Tailoring & Dressmaking 1 2 10%
Retailing 1 2 10%
Training & Consultancy 0 3 10%
Printing 2 0 7%
Tours & Travel 1 1 7%
Metal Fabrication 2 0 7%
Pharmaceuticals & Chemicals 1 1 7%
Juice Processing 0 1 3%
Restaurants 0 1 3%
Laundry & Dry-cleaning 0 1 3%
Saloons 0 1 3%
Total 17 13 100%
Table 1: Business Ownership types based on Gender.
As revealed earlier, a higher percentage of the respondents were male and this implies that they concentrated on
manufacturing than retailing and services. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the respondents were engaged in
woodwork, which is male dominated.
6.0 The Training
The study found out that the training programmes conducted by the three institutions for business
improvement and growth were relatively similar in content. The programmes covered topics such as business
planning, costing and pricing, customer care, total quality management, human resources management, sales
and marketing, record keeping, financial management, product design and improvement, purchasing, cost
reduction and credit control. However, the one conducted by K-MAP had Time and Stress Management,
which others did not have.
Amongst the topics covered (Table 2), the respondents were asked to indicate the ones they found to be
more relevant and appealing to their expectations. As shown in Table 2, Sales and marketing had the highest
score of 50% of the total respondents. This was followed by business planning with 40%. Customer care,
product design and improvement had 33% each. Total quality management had 23%, costing and pricing,
record keeping and financial management had 20% each respectively. Human resource management and cost
reduction and credit control had 13% each while purchasing had 3% of the total respondents.
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