From Effectuation to Empowerment: Unveiling the Impact of Women Entrepreneurs on Small and Medium Enterprises’ Performance—Evidence from Indonesia

Sherly Theresia (), Sabrina Oktaria Sihombing and Ferdi Antonio
Additional contact information
Sherly Theresia: Faculty of Economic and Business, Pelita Harapan University, Jakarta 12930, Indonesia
Sabrina Oktaria Sihombing: Faculty of Economic and Business, Pelita Harapan University, Jakarta 12930, Indonesia
Ferdi Antonio: Faculty of Economic and Business, Pelita Harapan University, Jakarta 12930, Indonesia

Administrative Sciences, 2025, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-28

Abstract: Women entrepreneurs in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging countries play an essential role in the economy of developing countries such as Indonesia. Drawing on the resource-based view and entrepreneurship effectuation theory, this study examines how women’s entrepreneurial effectuation (WEE) modeled as a higher-order construct (HOC) comprising its four dimensions (LOCs)—namely, flexibility, experimentation, affordable loss, and pre-commitment—can influence employee performance (EMPRF) mediated by structural (STREM) and psychological empowerment (PSYEM). Using a disjointed two-stage PLS-SEM approach with data from 218 female SME employees, our results confirm that flexibility is the most salient effectuation dimension. WEE strongly predicts both STREM and PSYEM but shows no direct impact on EMPRF, highlighting that effectuation must be activated via empowerment mechanisms. PSYEM emerges as the strongest mediator of WEE on EMPRF, with STREM also contributing significantly and being amplified by gender equality practices; market orientation, by contrast, fails to moderate any paths. Theoretically, these findings enrich resource-based view (RBV) theory by integrating entrepreneurial effectuation dimensions and empowerment as human resource capabilities that generate inimitable performance gains. Practically, they suggest that women-led SMEs should integrate effectuation heuristics with targeted empowerment programs to realize the full potential of their human capital.

Keywords: women entrepreneurial effectuation; structural empowerment; psychological empowerment; gender equality; SMEs’ employee performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/15/6/198/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/15/6/198/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:15:y:2025:i:6:p:198-:d:1662459

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().