Strategic Responses to Barriers Affecting Sustainable Entrepreneurship Performance: Ethiopian Apparel Manufacturing Case

Abstract

The apparel industry in emerging countries is crucial in creating employment, enhancing export earnings, and stimulating industrial growth. Within an increasingly competitive global environment, the apparel managers are expected to strategically overcome the triple bottom line barriers to achieve sustainable entrepreneurship performance (SEP) and remain competitive. Failure to overcome these barriers can significantly diminish the performance of sustainable entrepreneurship in the industry. Although several studies have substantiated the barriers to sustainability performance, further research is needed to develop a decision-support framework that determines the set of strategic approaches to overcome SEP barriers, particularly in emerging countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a decision-support framework to find the best set of strategic responses for barriers affecting SEP in Ethiopian apparel industries.  The study follows a multi-faceted research methodology approach with a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques. In the first phase, managers from the apparel industry were interviewed to identify context-specific barriers to SEP and a clear set of strategic responses to these barriers. The barriers were grouped into economic, social, and environmental dimensions based literature analysis. The Best-Worst Method (BWM) was then used to rank them based on their relative severity of effects on SEP. Subsequently, the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach was used to investigate the relationship between the prioritized barriers (WHATs) and strategic responses (HOWs) for enabling sustainable entrepreneurship performance and to rank the best strategic responses as a key takeaway for managerial decision-making. The results indicate that low product quality, weak buyer-supplier relationships, and high cost pressure are the strongest barriers to SEP. The study discovers that including developing circular practices (3R), adopting demand-driven production planning, and improving training and skill development are the most effective strategic responses to overcome the barriers. Grounded on stakeholder and resource based view theories, the decision support framework helps apparel managers for systematically prioritizing the barriers of SEP and build a best strategic response portfolio.