Community-Based Tourism (CBT) has emerged in many countries as a tool for poverty reduction and sustainability enhancement. Even though sustainability practices are essential for promoting community-level tourism, due to lack of capacity and know-how, poor attitudes, reluctance to change, etc. cause to lower the application of sustainability practices by community tourism entrepreneurs. Therefore, CBT projects were initiated and greater efforts were taken to indoctrinate the sustainability practices among the micro and small scale tourism entrepreneurs (MSSTEs). However, several past researchers argued that those efforts were unable to build fruitful results. This was reported in several community tourism villages, especially in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, this research endeavors to study the impact of empowerment efforts of CBT projects on the adoption of sustainability practices by the MSSTEs. The structured questionnaire survey was applied for data collection from a sample of 200 MSSTEs in six villages of Sri Lanka who were empowered by two selected CBT projects. Empowerment efforts were the independent variable, and capacity building, financial assistance, education and training, network building, monitoring and evaluation were the five sub-constructs of it. Sustainability practices were the dependent variable and economic, social and cultural, and environmental sustainability were the three sub-constructs of it. Findings revealed that CBT empowerment efforts affect significantly on the adoption of the three facets of sustainability practices by the MSSTEs. Economic sustainability was the highest achieved practice and it implies that CBT project empowerments were able to eliminate poverty in the rural community and strengthen their economic status.

New venture creations are vital for the economic growth of any country because of its contribution to employment generation, employment generation, GDP, innovations and value additions. Though a large number of new venture creations occur every year in Sri Lanka, research findings highlighted that a smaller percentage was able to survive. Hence, the number of business establishments cannot be considered as a meaningful indicator of economic growth of the country and the high failure rate is a crucial issue. Past studies revealed that business startup motives effect on the business growth and Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) plays a crucial role in directing the business towards success. Studies are lacking about the impact of business startup motives on the success and survival of newly established ventures and the mediating role of the EO on the relationship between start-up motives and new venture success. Therefore, the present study focused to reveal whether significant relationship exists between business startup motives and growth expectations; growth expectations between the necessity driven (NDEs) and opportunity driven entrepreneurs (ODEs); and whether EO plays a mediating role on the relationship between business startup motives and growth expectations. Independent Sample T test and Structural Equation Modeling were applied to test the hypotheses. Findings revealed that significant difference exists between the NDEs and ODEs in terms of proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy and no significant difference exists in growth expectations between the NDEs and ODEs. Entrepreneurial Orientation partially mediates the relationship between business startup motives and growth expectations.

The small and medium scaled Enterprises (SME) sector in any country including Sri Lanka is considered a vital sector for a country's economic growth. However, past research evidenced that despite the large number of business establishments that occur every year in Sri Lanka, a high SME failure rate, a low growth rate, and survival rates were reported comparatively with other countries. The prevailing economic crisis in Sri Lanka further creates a vulnerable situation for the SME sector and it affects highly the growth and performance of most of the SMEs. This effect may continue for a long period and affects seriously hamper the country's economic growth further. Therefore, it requires identifying the impact of the prevailing economic crisis on SMEs in Sri Lanka and ways for ensuring the SMEs' survival. Hence, this research aims to reveal the key problems encountered by SMEs during this economic crisis and determine which factors affect the business survival even if the crisis brings many negative impacts. This study was based mainly on the positivism paradigm followed by the quantitative approach. The study sample included 172 manufacturing SMEs which were located in the Southern and Western Provinces of Sri Lanka. The Independent variable of this study was entrepreneur-specific factors and two sub-dimensions including dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation of the entrepreneur were used to measure the independent variable. The dependent variable was the business survival. As data analysis techniques, the factor ranking method was applied to identify the key problems faced by the SMEs due to the prevailing economic crisis, and multiple regression technique was applied to reveal the most persuasive determinants of SME survival during the economic crisis. Key problems faced by the SMEs included: high cost of production and demand decline due to inflation, shortage of required raw materials, continuous power cuts, working capital and liquidity problems, and breakdown of their supply chain due to fuel issues. All these key issues affect diminish the capacity utilization rate and lower the business performance of many SMEs. This research found that several SMEs were capable to protect as survivors even during the economic crisis period due to their dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation possessed with them. Among the two factors that were considered as owner-specific factors in this study, dynamic capabilities possessed by the owner-manager work as the most persuasive determinant of the business survival than the entrepreneurial orientation during the economic crisis.

This paper aims to reveal the impact of social capital which was empowered by Community Based Tourism projects on the business success of micro and small-scale tourism entrepreneurs (MSSTEs) in rural tourism destinations and to determine is there any distinction of the variation created in the business success by the construct of social capital between the MSSTES who were empowered and who were not empowered. Further, determining of which type of social capital either structural or cognitive does affect highly on the business success was focused. Positivism research approach applied and a sample of MSSTEs in rural tourism destinations from two provinces from Sri Lanka was selected. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used for primary data collection. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested to reveal the impact of social capital on business success. Independent sample T-Test, correlation and multiple regression analysis were applied to test the hypotheses. Findings revealed that social capital affect significantly on creating a variance in business success. Both structural and cognitive social capital affect significantly on the business success while structural capital shows more power to create a variance on business success than cognitive social capital. This implies that tangible social capital attributes such as well-functioning of community associations, strong interpersonal and institutional networks, regular gathering, etc. are perceived as very important for business success. Also, cognitive type social capital such as shared vision, values and norms, trustworthiness, equality in sharing resources and benefits, etc. creates a significant impact on the business growth.

New venture creations have been considered as importance for the economic growth of any country because of its contribution to the Gross Domestic Production, diversification of local economy, employment generation, creation of innovations and value additions. Though a large number of new venture creations occur every year in Sri Lanka, recent research findings highlighted that a smaller percentage from those were able to grow and survive. Hence, number of business establishments cannot be considered as a meaningful indicator of economic growth of the country and why such a high failure rate was reported has become a crucial issue. Past studies revealed that business startup motives of the entrepreneur effect on the growth and survival of the SMEs. However, concentration on the impact of business startup motives on the success and survival of newly established ventures is lacking. Further, Entrepreneurial Orientation plays a crucial role in directing the business towards success. However, still there is a gap in the literature relating to the mediating role of the entrepreneurial orientation in the link between start-up motives and new venture success. Therefore, present study attempted to answer the research questions as; is there a significant relationship between the business startup motives and growth expectations; is there a significant difference exists in growth expectations between the necessity driven and opportunity driven entrepreneurs; and whether Entrepreneurial Orientation plays a mediating role. Independent Sample T test and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were applied to test the hypotheses based on a sample of 120 micro and small-scale entrepreneurs from Southern province of Sri Lanka. Findings revealed that there is a significant difference between the necessity driven entrepreneurs and opportunity driven entrepreneurs in terms of proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy. Results show that there is no any significant difference exist in growth expectations between the necessity driven entrepreneurs and opportunity driven entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Orientation partially mediates the relationship between business startup motives and growth expectations. Keywords: Business startup motives; Entrepreneurial orientation; Growth expectations; Necessity driven and Opportunity driven entrepreneurs; Micro and Small Enterprises.