Impact of the firm and the owner/managers characteristics on the growth of renewable energy enterprises

Abstract

Several researches is devoted to the influence of the characteristics of the owner/managers and the firm on the growth of the firm. Nevertheless, the majority of such research tends to focus in developed countries and very limited studies have provided such research in developing countries, and even less in Nepal. This study contributes to fill the gap. The paper aims at determining impact of the owner/managers and the firm characteristics on the firm growth of renewable energy enterprises in Nepal. The growth of the firm comprises as a dependent variable while the firm characteristics such as sector, legal status, firm age and firm size as well as the characteristics of the owner/managers such as age, gender, education and experience are included as predictors. The necessary data is collected through a primary survey using structure questionnaire from 118 renewable energy enterprises having 264 observations. The empirical results are estimated through cross-tabulation, chi-square test and Cramer’s V using IBM SPSS statistics 20.The study reveals that all the firm characteristics except firm size have a significant effect on thegrowth of the firm. In case of the owner/managers characteristics, the level of education and experience of the owner/managers have significant influences on the growth of the firm. The owner/managers characteristics such as age and gender do not have a significant influence on the firm growth. This paper can be further extended by developing resources based entrepreneurship models in renewable energy sector to get a greater insight into the results.