Assessing the impact of primal leadership on entrepreneurial performance: survey on Sri Lankan entrepreneurs

Abstract

“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” - Peter Drucker The principal purpose of this research is to critically assess the impact of primal leadership on the performance of entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. The study proposed a conceptual framework that was mainly derived based on a critical review of literature on two key disciplines, namely Primal Leadership and Entrepreneurial Performance. The conceptual framework consists of one independent variable – ‘Primal Leadership’ with 4 sub variable elements, namely Self- awareness, Social awareness, Self-management, and Relationship management, and one dependent variable – ‘Entrepreneurial Performance’ with 3 sub-variable elements, i.e., Subjective measures, Objective measures, and Managerial competencies. Thus, quantitative research was undertaken based on positivism and a deductive approach. All entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka were considered as the population of the study and using the probability-simple random sampling technique, a sample size of 105 was obtained based on 3 categories, namely (1) Startups, (2) SMEs, and (3) Large firms. The Survey technique was followed, and the data was collected using an electronically administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out to generate measures of central tendency and measures of association. Simple regression and multiple regression analysis techniques were used to generalize the sample-based findings to the entire population. Multiple findings were generated through the data analysis. In conclusion, the study proved that primal leadership has a strong positive relationship with entrepreneurial performance in the Sri Lankan context. Moreover, it was found that relationship management has the highest impact on the entrepreneurial performance of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs compared to the other 3 determinants of the notion of primal leadership, namely self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management.