The role of entrepreneurial orientation in firms has been a major area of interest to many scholars in the past. Entrepreneurially oriented firms are innovative, calculated risk-takers, and proactively reach markets ahead of their competitors. This paper examines the role of business development services, internal and external business environments on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm's performance. The article is a theoretical discourse and uses literature from secondary sources in the analysis. The paper finds that past studies conceptualized entrepreneurial orientation as a three factor single-dimensional model and a five factor multidimensional model. Studies using the three factor model have reported different results to those adopting the five factor approach. This has led to inconsistencies in the empirical results of entrepreneurial orientation on firm's performance. This article also finds that business development services play a mediating role in the entrepreneurial orientation and performance relationship, and that external environment moderates this relationship. However, the paper finds no role of internal environment in the EO-firm's performance relationship. The paper concludes that the link between entrepreneurial orientation and performance is still a worthy area for further study since contradictions still exist in empirical studies. This study recommends that future studies can use a contingency framework to focus on how other factors are likely to affect this relationship.

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This study was motivated by the need to establish what effects the balanced scorecard have on change management and performance of Commercial Banks in Kenya. The study utilized a descriptive cross-sectional survey so as to determine the use of balanced scorecard as a strategic tool and its impact on management of change and performance of commercial banks. The conceptualization of this study was anchored on open system theory and supported by organization change models which include Lewin's force field analysis and Kotter's eight stage model. The target population of the research was eleven commercial banks listed in the Nairobi Securities exchange. The data used for the study was primary data. The respondents included operations managers and representatives from the top management of the banks. Data analysis was done by use of descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics. The investigation found that the balanced scorecard assumed a major part in overseeing and monitoring change which thus means better execution. The study recommends that every commercial bank ought to constantly emphasize application of the balanced score with a specific end goal to track performance and measure it against the preset objectives. The findings of the study will serve to improve the Theory of the Balance Scorecard as a tool for performance measurement by laying out critical insights on the fundamental principles that were assessed on.

The broad objective of this study was to determine the joint influence of firm resources, organizational characteristics, and macro environment on export performance of small and medium manufacturing enterprises in Nairobi city county, Kenya. A conceptual model was developed, and from it, a hypothesis was formulated to test the joint influence of firm resources, organizational characteristics, and macro environment on export performance. The study is anchored on four theories; the Resource Based Theory, Porters Theory of competitive advantage, The Industrial Organization Theory and Firm Internationalization Theory. The research was a cross-sectional survey of 265 companies in Nairobi City County, chosen from a population of 853 companies. The unit of analysis was the SMME involved in exporting. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was used to evaluate internal consistency and homogeneity among the study variables. Out of the 265 firms sampled, 238 completed the questionnaire resulting in 89.1 percent response rate. The responses were then used to evaluate the hypothesis of the research. A level of five percent was chosen when testing the coefficients' importance. The findings from the hypothesis was that, jointly,firm resources,organizational characteristics and macro-environment influence export performance. The study has contributed to theory, policy, management and practice, industry and methodology. Based on the research results, the national and county governments need to formulate legislation and policies that promote the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, such as creating an appropriate atmosphere for SMMES to acquire credit and recommending appropriate and effective production processes. Further, stakeholders in export promotion should appreciate and place an emphasis on the importance and impact of the economic factor in the macro-environment to guide existing and potential investors in manufacturing and exporting sector. The research had certain constraints primarily due to the categorization of the enterprises by the various government agencies and stakeholders. The limitations however did not have significant effect on the findings. Future studies should address the scope and geographical coverage of SMMEs.

This study determines the influence of competitive strategy drivers on the performance of manufacturing SMEs in Nairobi County in Kenya. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of many economies all over the world through creation of employment opportunities as well as wealth creation for entrepreneurs. Strong competitive strategy drivers offer advantage to SMEs to help them achieve good performance and remain competitive in their respective markets. The study was anchored on resource-based theory which provided a framework for examining the association between the research variables. For the methodology, a cross-sectional survey was done covering 334 manufacturing small and medium enterprises in Nairobi County, Kenya. Structured questionnaires were used for data collection with a response rate of 89.6%. Various descriptive statistics were used to project the demographic characteristics of the association and the respondents. Inferential statistics was used to assess up the connection between the factors and test the model. The results indicated that the three competitive strategy drivers of environmental based drivers, resource-based drivers and hybrid strategy drivers exhibited significant relationship with performance of the Manufacturing SMEs in Nairobi county. The study’s recommendations will be useful to management of manufacturing-sector SMEs in developing long term strategies to address constraints that could have led to low capacity utilization and productivity in the sector. Additionally, it may be used to guide policy formulations geared to support manufacturing SMEs operations. The researcher recommends similar research to be undertaken in other SMEs and also have more managers respond to the questionnaires in order to enrich the collected data.