“Moderating role of gender in influencing enterprise performance in emerging economies: Evidence from Saudi Arabian SMEs sector”

The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector plays an important role in the devel- opment of the local, regional, and global economy. This study seeks to examine the relationships among several factors that are claimed to influence the performance of SMEs. Internal and external environmental factors, as well as the moderating role of gender on the research variables, are empirically examined. A survey of 142 entrepreneurs in the northern region of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, using convenience sampling was conducted. Path analysis was used to test the research model using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) model by Warp PLS (ver. 7). Results suggest that both internal and external success factors influence enterprise performance. Based on statistically significant relationships, entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, and entrepreneur goals and motives (internal factors), as well as economic factors, socio-cultural factors, and legal and administrative factors (external factors) are influencing SME performance. Additionally, results indicate that SMEs almost perform at similar levels regardless of the gender of the SME owner. Gender is found to moderate the influence of economic factors, and legal and administrative factors on performance. There is no indication that gender moderates the influence of the rest of the factors on the performance. Such finding is surprising given the context of the study, i.e. Saudi Arabia was traditionally considered as a conservative male-dominated society. identifying the the organizational SME international offer simply there is no on the factors influence SME performance positively, a variety of theoretical and empirical these success in


INTRODUCTION
The success factors that influence organizational performance, including the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), have received growing attention throughout the past decades. Many factors are discussed in the literature of business strategy, entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and SMEs, but surprisingly, there is no consensus on the conclusive factors that are attributed to successful performance. Academics, practitioners, and policymakers are concerned with identifying the factors that positively affect the organizational and SME performance (Ramos et al., 2014;Hoque et al., 2018). Small and medium enterprises are found to contribute to local, regional, and international economic welfare. They combat unemployment and offer many advantages that cannot be simply overlooked. Since there is no consensus on the factors that influence SME performance positively, and that a variety of factors are put to theoretical and empirical validation, this study aims to explore these success factors in detail,

LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature of small and medium enterprises is very rich. However, variation exists as to what are the factors that lead to successful SME performance, which in turn refers to a gap in SMEs literature as noted by many scholars (Halabi & Lussier, 2014;Lussier et al., 2016). Different conceptual models of the success factors of SMEs exist. For example, Reynolds and Miller (1989), Cooper et al. (1991), and Lussier (1995) offered valuable contributions to this research stream dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. Other studies have examined the success factors of SMEs in terms of the demographic characteristics of the entrepreneur (Elenurm & Vaino, 2011;Ramos et al., 2014;Nneka, 2015).
With regard to studying the differences among SME performance in relation to the gender of the owner/manager of the enterprise (the entrepreneur), some scholars have attempted tackling this issue both in developing and developed countries. Apparently, further study is expected in other developing conservative societies such as the Saudi Arabian that is undergoing significant changes in terms of female education, employment, business ownership, and even the ability to obtain a driving license. Male and female entrepreneurs are claimed to be different in their managerial style (Robb & Watson, 2012;Zeffane, 2013Zeffane, , 2015Majumdar & Varadarajan, 2013;Hoque et al., 2018). In this regard, the social feminist theory argues that females contrast fundamentally to their male counterparts. When compared to males, female entrepreneurs differ in their attitudes towards risk, their leadership style, as well as other managerial practices, hence they are claimed to pursue different strategies and tactics to develop their organizational performance than their male counterparts (Calás & Smircich, 1989;Verheul et al., 2008;Gottschalk & Niefer, 2013;Shava & Rungani, 2014. DeTienne and Chandler (2004) compared how industry experience affected opportunity identification of male and female entrepreneurs. It was found that for females, industry experience positively predicted the number of opportunities identified and accounted for 20% of the variance compared to 5% for the male entrepreneurs. The results suggest that the higher the industry experience of female entrepreneurs, the higher the entrepreneurial outcomes. Other studies (Headd, 2003;Fairlie & Robb, 2009;Robb & Watson, 2012;Amin & Kushnir, 2012) have similarly explored the relationship between other types of business experience (i.e., business ownership experience, managerial experience) and the performance of the firm among male and female business owners. Findings generally report that women are more likely to possess low levels of prior business ownership experience (Fatoki, 2011;Robb & Watson, 2012). Moreover, Amin and Kushnir (2012) reported that women are found to possess higher managerial experience compared to men in only 13 out of 71 emerging economies based on analysis of the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011). Concerning the success factors that influence SME performance, Lo et al. (2016) offered five factors that lead to the successful performance of Malaysian SMEs, namely, top-management support, customer focus, employee orientation, technology orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation.
Other studies have suggested rather a behavioral and psychological approach to investigate factors influencing SME performance (Hankinson et al., 1997;Baum et al., 2001;Gomezelj & Kušce, 2013). Personal characteristics (traits of the entrepreneur) are found to influence the success and prosperity of the enterprise. Gomezelj and Kušce (2013) examined factors such as the founding reasons of the business and personality traits of the owner. Additionally, several environmental factors (e.g., social, cultural, political, and economic) that contribute to the success or failure of the SMEs were identified.
In terms of organizational performance (OP), it is certainly an important concept that has been put into an investigation in business lit-erature for several decades. Improving organizational performance is the ultimate goal for stakeholders. For scholars, establishing different ways to enhance organizational performance has been an important topic on research agendas. According to Perez and Canino (2009), Gomezelj and Kušce (2013), and Lo et al. (2016), OP is simply classified into financial and non-financial performance. While financial indicators of business performance have gained greater attention from academics and practitioners in terms of their ability to reflect organizational success, yet in the SMEs context, it is unfair to use only financial indicators to judge business success (Gomezelj & Kušce, 2013). The reason is that most SMEs in their early years of operations achieve poor financial results due to paying high-interest rates and experiencing higher costs. Indeed, this does not mean they are failures.
Gomezelj and Kušce (2013, p. 912) put the success of the SME as "the achievement of goals and objectives as they were set". The performance of the business is categorized into two main groups: the business performance, and the personal performance and satisfaction of the entrepreneur. The latter is rather a 'softer' indicator of success and includes personal satisfaction at work, customer satisfaction, independence, and lifestyle. The former refers to the classic financial indicators of OP. More recent studies, such as Lo et al. (2016, pp. 372), identified organizational performance as "the concept that measures a firm's position in the marketplace and the firm's ability in meeting its stakeholders' needs".  Financial measures included sales growth and profitability growth, while non-financial measures focused on indicators such as increased number of employees, survival (period of operation), ability to offer quality products and services, capacity to develop new products and processes, labor productivity, and social responsibility. In addition to industry characteristics and opportunity recognition, two sets of factors were proposed that are claimed to influence SMEs' performance. The first set is the internal (personal) factors and they included: . Therefore, the current study aims to extend the prior examination of success factors of SMEs into a new context that has not been widely researched. It is therefore the aim of this study to explore Saudi SMEs success factors with attention to adopting the model proposed by Hasan et al. (2016). This study extends the research into the Saudi Arabian context with further emphasis on examining the moderating role of gender on the relationship between the proposed success factors and SME performance.

AIM, CONCEPTUAL MODEL, AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
Based on the literature review, the aim is to examine the influence of enterprise success factors (internal and external) on SME performance. It is also aimed to observe whether the gender variable moderates such presumed influence. A con-ceptual model of SME performance in addition to the four basic hypotheses is presented in Figure  1. Accordingly, the following hypotheses are proposed and subjected to empirical testing: H1: Internal (personal) factors have a significant positive effect on SME performance.
H1a: EO has a significant positive effect on SME performance.
H1b: HC has a significant positive effect on SME performance.
H1c: EGM have a significant positive effect on SME performance.
H2: External (environmental) factors have a significant positive effect on SME performance.
H3: Gender plays a moderating variable role in the relationship between internal (personal) factors and SME performance.
H3a: Gender moderates the relationship between EO and SME performance.
H3b: Gender moderates the relationship between HC and SME performance.
H3c: Gender moderates the relationship between EGM and SME performance.
H4: Gender plays a moderating variable role in the relationship between external (environmental) factors and SME performance.
H4a: Gender moderates the relationship between EF and SME performance.
H4b: Gender moderates the relationship between SCF and SME performance.
H4c: Gender moderates the relationship between LAF and SME performance.

METHODOLOGY
This study is descriptive in nature. It follows a quantitative methodology to test its set of hypotheses. The study used a structured self-administered questionnaire to collect data from a convenient sample of the owners of SMEs that are established and operating in the region of Tabuk, northwest of Saudi Arabia.

Scale development
The instrument consisted of two sections, one belonging to the demographic characteristics of the respondents and their enterprises (e.g. gender; age; marital status; education; past expertise; business sector; age of the enterprise; start-up capital; and enterprise size in terms of a number of employees). The second section of the questionnaire consisted of a 5-point Likert scale to measure the extent of agreement of respondents with a set of statements related to the conceptual model (32 statements).
The available responses on the scale ranged from 1 = strongly disagree, to 5 = strongly agree, where the anchor point of the scale is 3 = neutral. All scales were adopted from previous studies, which were validated in either the context of developed economies or developing economies. Table 1 gives details of scale development and the relevant prior studies that were consulted in constructed the measurement scales.

Sample
To further evaluate the validity of the questionnaire and its scales, in-depth interviews were conducted with seven SME owners, and five academics closely working with the SMEs indus-

Concept measures Scale items Articles
Entrepreneurial orientation In my company, changes in product or service have not been quite dramatic in the last 5 years.
In general, I have a weak tendency for high-risk projects (with chances of very high returns

Enterprise performance (EP)
There is an increase in sales and profitability during the three last years. My business cannot develop new products and processes. I don't think that my business will survive and continue its activity forever. More than 50% of the profit is reinvested in the business. My business is offering a high quality of products and services. I am committed to social responsibility, i.e., employing local nationals.

Measurement model
The measurement model is used to assess the instruments' quality in terms of item factor loadings, internal consistency, and discriminant validity.   Table 4 shows the correlations and discriminant validity. The bold numbers in the diagonal show the square root of AVE while the numbers below them show the correlation coefficients. The square root of AVE for each construct is greater than the variance shared with the remaining constructs. Therefore, all measures adopted in this study are valid and internally consistent (Henseler et al., 2009).  According to the direct effects, all internal and external factors are significantly associated with SME performance. Specifically, entrepreneurial orientation, human capital and entrepreneur goals and motives are significantly associated with SME performance (β = .120, p < .05, small effect size = 0.08; β = 0.173, p < .01, moderate effect size = 0.13, and β = 0.160, p < .05, small effect size = 0.04 respectively). Therefore, the results support H1a, H1b, and H1c. In the same vein, H2a, H2b, and H2c are also accepted. There are positive effects of economic factors, socio-cultural factors and legal and administrative factors on SME performance (β = 0.241, p < 0.001, moderate effect size = 0.18; β = 0.143, p < 0.05, small effect size = 0.09 and β = 0.433, p < 0.001, large effect size = 0.33; respectively).

Structural model
Surprisingly, gender does not moderate the relationship between internal factors (e.g. entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, and entrepreneur goals and motives) and SME performance. So, H3a, H3b, and H3c are rejected. In addition, there is no moderating role of gender in the relationships between the external factor named socio-cultural factors. Gender is a moderating variable between economic factors and SME performance (β = 0.117, p < .05, small effect size = 0.05), and legal and administrative and SME performance (β = 0.232, p < .05, moderate effect size = 0.11). H4 is partially supported.
Finally, the determination of coefficient (R 2 ) equals 0.80. This means that 80% of the variance in SME performance is predictable from internal and external factors that were studied in this model. This indicates a better fit for the model.

DISCUSSION
This study has examined the relationships among internal and external success factors as independent variables; enterprise performance as a dependent variable; and gender as a moderating variable. In this regard, the results indicated that gender does not seem to have a direct effect in predicting SME performance. Specifically, the moderating role of gender is only evident in the EF and LAF external environmental factors where female SMEs ownership are found to have less access to funding and to face stricter legal and administrative constraints. In a culturally and religiously conservative society such as the Saudi Arabian, it is expected that female entrepreneurs face more obstacles, especially in the socio-cultural domain.
In addition, females were expected to have less entrepreneurial orientation, less human capital capabilities, and less entrepreneurial goals and motives. Apparently, due to the significant changes undergoing in the Saudi societies, SMEs run by female entrepreneurs are found not to differ in their performance from those SMEs run by male entrepreneurs. Female access to education and social tolerance to female employment are among the justifications for this finding.
Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is reported to influences SME performance. Consistent with Covin and Slevin (1989) and Hasan et al. (2016), the SMEs owners'/managers' entrepreneurial orientation in the form of providing innovative and creative products, radically changing the products provided, risk-taking, long term planning, clear vision, and opportunity recognition had a significant and positive relationship with the SME performance. It also emerged that human capital (HC) is significantly and positively related to SME performance. Human capital is an important organizational resource and is based on the levels of education, experience, and skills of workers. When personnel gains knowledge, their capabilities improve which in turn affects different aspects of business performance. While this finding is consistent with Rosa et al. (1996)

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to examine the relationships between internal and external success factors and SME performance. Moreover, the study also aimed at examining whether gender plays a moderating role in such relationships among the study variables. Success factors were elected from relevant literature and were put to empirical examination to validate their influence on SME performance. The findings revealed that all proposed factors significantly influence the performance of SMEs, which means that having a higher degree of, for example, entrepreneurship orientation is more likely to reflect positively on SME performance. Likewise, investing in human capital is claimed to result favorably in the performance of the enterprise. Similarly, when the enterprise's goals and motives are entrepreneurial in nature and aspire to creativity, self-actualization, independence, freedom, and social status, they are likely to impact positively on the performance of the enterprise too. If the economic, socio-cultural, and legal, and administrative factors are favorable, it is more likely for the SME to succeed and prosper. On the contrary, SME performance is expected to deteriorate if the above factors are less encouraging and prove unfavorable.

Limitations, managerial implications, and recommendations for future research
This study has investigated SMEs in Saudi Arabia, using a convenient sample from SMEs established and operate in the region of Tabuk. Generalization of the findings to other sectors, contexts, or countries should be treated with care. The use of a convenient sampling technique also limits the applicability of findings.
In terms of the managerial and practical implications, the following are put forward to practitioners and policymakers in contribution to the professional domain of SMEs: 1. There are significant associations between independent variables and the performance of SMEs. These variables are ascribed as success factors that were derived from the literature of SMEs. Accordingly, stressing the EO, HC, EGM, EV, SCF, and LAF factors are likely to guide SMEs to improve their performance.
2. Entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, enterprise goals and objectives, economic factors, socio-cultural factors, and legal and administrative factors were found by the study to influence the enterprise performance leading to its success, or failure if not adequately tackled.
3. Practitioners, i.e., owners, directors, and managers of SMEs have promising opportunities to identify strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats that face their enterprises in terms of the six success factors elected by this study as its independent variables that influence enterprise performance.
4. Investing in human capital, adopting an entrepreneurial orientation, and setting adequate organizational goals and motives are three suggestions related to one half of the study's independent variables. The other half is more relevant to policymakers, legislators, and government officials.
5. Policymakers, legislators, and other officials should pay attention to three success factors if the important SMEs sector is to prosper and flourish. The SMEs sector is an important catalyst of economic development in national, regional, and international economies. These factors are an economic factor, socio-cultural factors, and legal and administrative factors.
6. To encourage and support female entrepreneurs in culturally and religiously conservative societies, legislators and policymakers need to carefully consider economic and legislative and administrative factors as those found to hinder females from establishing and running SMEs. Access to start-up funding, operative and expansion funds, as well as legal and administrative obstacles, are severely discouraging female entrepreneurs.
Academics and researchers are encouraged to consider the following points for future research: • Researchers are encouraged to put the reported relationships among the study variables to further validation in other contexts, and by using other sampling techniques.
• Future studies are encouraged to test the findings that emerged from this study in other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, as well as other developing economies context.
• Comparative studies with other countries, regions, or industries are encouraged for future research to improve understanding of the relationships among the study variables.
• Other research approaches, such as case studies are important for future research to advance understanding of the research variables.
• Finally, a rather qualitative approach in the form of depth interviews with entrepreneurs, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the SMEs sector should be encouraged to induce knowledge and enrich relevant literature.