Enhancing Performance From Inside: Firm-Level Institutions in Small Apparel Firm Performance in Tanzania

Abstract

This study intended to examine how firm-level institutions in small apparel enterprises relate to performance. This is because enterprises are neither passively responding to macro institutions, nor are they fully subservient to the influence of external competition. Instead, enterprises operate under specific firm-level institutions, which could explain differences in performance given that they operate under the same macro institutions. After case studies, propositions were tested using MANOVA. It was found that firm-level institutions, for example, type of employees, kind of remuneration, source of working capital, advertisement and promotion, and networking result in statistically significant mean performance differences between firms that handle them differently. The conclusion was that innovativeness in how to handle small firms rather than acting on me too decisions is important in improving performance, and far from disregarding the importance of macro regulations, training on business development services (BDS) is quite important.