| dc.description.abstract | Entrepreneurship in small food businesses plays a crucial role in driving economic growth, innovation, and employment in Indonesia. These businesses are often characterized by several aspects, such as simple organizational structures, labor-intensive operations, small-scale activities, limited use of technology, and reliance on informal funding sources. Consequently, they are more susceptible to failure due to their inherent limitations, including restricted resources and capital, insufficient knowledge, limited innovation, reduced market reach, and low productivity.
Effective mentorship has emerged as a key strategy to address these challenges. Mentoring aims to support career advancement and personal development for entrepreneurs by fostering knowledge growth and providing socio-emotional support. However, despite its benefits, mentoring may not always align with the specific needs of small businesses. Previous research indicates there is a disparity between the support services offered by mentoring organizations and the unique needs of small businesses, pointing to the need for enhanced communication efforts to foster better mutual understanding.
Interactive communication and engagement within mentoring practices are crucial. Mentorship programs typically employ various communication methods, with the level of interaction significantly strengthening the mentor-mentee relationship. Meaningful developmental conversations and skill-building activities reinforce this bond, enabling mentors to provide essential guidance, encouragement, and support. However, the effectiveness of interactions is often limited by factors such as time constraints, inadequate training, negative attitudes, and poor mentor-mentee matching. Understanding these dynamics is essential for designing effective mentorship programs.
Given the importance of these factors, this study focuses on examining how interaction frequency as a key determinant drives mentoring outcomes, including entrepreneurial effort, task completion, and venture goal commitment. It also investigates additional influencing factors such as mentor attitude, entrepreneurial experience, and business profile. Interaction frequency, being a controllable factor for program managers, plays a pivotal role in enhancing mentoring outcomes.
The study utilizes an experience sampling methodology, where data is collected through a longitudinal diary study. Participants regularly recorded their experiences and observations over a period of time, allowing for a detailed understanding of their ongoing activities and behaviors in the context of mentorship. Participants included 111 business owners from small food industries in Indonesia, processing and selling products such as chips, cookies, bakery items, and other food products directly to consumers (B2C). Data collection involved an initial baseline survey followed by biweekly diary surveys over three weeks. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis with SPSS and Mplus.
The results reveal that frequent mentor-mentee interactions significantly enhance entrepreneurial effort, which in turn, improves task completion rates. However, entrepreneurial effort does not directly influence venture goal commitment. Moderation analysis indicates that entrepreneurs with greater experience and more established business profiles derive greater benefits from frequent interactions, whereas mentor attitude does not significantly moderate the relationship.
The findings show that individuals with high entrepreneurial experience consistently maintain higher levels of effort compared to those with less experience. However, as interaction frequency increases, those with high experience show only a slight increase in effort. In contrast, individuals with less experience exhibit a significant increase in effort when interaction frequency is higher or more frequent. A similar pattern is observed in the moderation effect of business profile. Entrepreneurs with a more established business profile, such as those with longer operating histories and more employees, consistently demonstrate higher levels of entrepreneurial effort, regardless of interaction frequency. However, in these businesses, there is only a slight increase in effort as interaction frequency rises. On the other hand, for entrepreneurs with a less established business profile, those with newer businesses and fewer employees, a significant increase in entrepreneurial effort is observed when mentor interactions become more frequent.
These findings emphasize the importance of optimizing interaction frequency to enhance entrepreneurial effort. Effective mentorship should be tailored to the entrepreneur's experience level and the developmental stage of the business rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. Program managers can achieve better outcomes by designing mentorship formats and materials that align with the specific needs and profiles of mentees. | |
