Strategic Management and Sri Lankan Women Entrepreneurs

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to view and examine the various strategic management styles used by Sri Lankan women entrepreneurs. The paper further explores women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka to understand the impact created upon them on empowering women. Are there different management styles used by the women entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka? Have the women entrepreneurs made an impact on the development of Sri Lanka? What is the importance of women entrepreneurship on empowering females in Sri Lanka? These were the questions that this paper attempts to answer. In many parts of Sri Lanka women play a crucially important role in social and economic production. However, the constraints of poverty, combined with poor infrastructure and minimal resources, limit entrepreneurial possibilities. Nonetheless, Sri Lankan women entrepreneurs use enterprise to try to improve their lives. There is a thought that significant differences exist in the general entrepreneurial behaviour and performance between men and women, as well as between women from the same region and from other localities. This paper is aimed at increasing understanding on whether these differences are brought about by the cultural and social attributes, rather than physical and psychological differences. In summary the outcomes of this paper identify the intrinsic motivator for women entrepreneurs is to provide for their family, to give their children a better life than what they experienced, and to escape the entrapments of poverty. Stereotyping and discrimination combined with lack of capital and access to micro-credit were seen as the major inhibitors to business success of the women entrepreneurs. Therefore the paper has not only identified the unique management styles used by the women entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka but has found the various ways the women are empowered through the women entrepreneurship and how it affects the development of Sri Lanka.