Reputation of Entrepreneur Mediates the Business Performance: A Study of Women-owned Small Enterprise in Sri Lanka

This study intends to examine the impact of entrepreneurial network relationships on the success of women-owned small enterprises (WOSEs) in Sri Lanka. Knowledge sharing, innovation, transaction cost, and market opportunities all play a significant role as the network relationship's independent variables, with reputation representing as a mediator for the impact of innovation on women-owned small enterprises' performance. The present study used partial least square (PLS) structural equation modelling to examine the constructed hypotheses technique to examine the impact of entrepreneurial network relationships on WOSEs performance. The data used in this study is primary data collected from 384 women entrepreneurs registered in the chamber of commerce in Sri Lanka using a simple random sampling technique. The findings show that there is a significant positive impact of transaction cost, reputation, market opportunity, and knowledge sharing, on the performance of WOSEs. Innovation as a mediator also positively and significantly mediate the impact of knowledge sharing on performance. It implies that innovations strengthen the impact that knowledge sharing does on business performance. The findings of this study highlight the policymakers to take steps to improve the collaboration between other businesses which will indirectly improve the entrepreneurial network and ultimately improve the performance of WOSEs. Consequently, network relationships afford enterprises the opportunity to leverage embedded linkages to mitigate their vulnerabilities and attain economic benefits. Future studies could focus on businesses other than women-owned enterprises to examine the impact of entrepreneurial network relationships on small enterprise performance in Sri Lanka. Hence future research should establish how the entrepreneurial networks can help businesses to enhance competitive advantage and thus the performance of women owned enterprises. Keywords: Reputation, Small Enterprises Performance and Women-owned Small Enterprises.