NETWORKING AND RISK -TAKING ON GROWTH OF SELECTED KENYA EXPORT FIRMS: AN ANALYSIS

Networking and Risk _Taking on Growth of of Export Firms have such an important role in global success and become more useful overtime. Networking and Risk _Taking on Growth of Export Firms have not been addressed in full, their challenges such as lack of Literature on Risk -Taking on Export Firms is very scanty and hence not exhaustive .This Research attempts to utilise Sample size of 169 ,adopted from thesis on in Selected Kenya Export Firms .The Research employed Analysis of Moment Structures to compare Networking and Risk _Taking to Analyse Growth of Export Firms Selected Kenya Export Firms, GFI was utilized to determine model goodness of fit, Multiple Group Model Comparisons. Finding indicate that the two Models of Networking and Risk _Taking differ, it was clear that equal Standardized Regression weight model results were substantially worse on overall model fit, specifically on Risk -Taking. A comparative analysis identified issues on Networking which proved to be useful as a construct of Growth of Export Firms for its application on Export Firms however some limitations in terms of: Error difference, Low model goodness of fit were faced by the Risk-Taking. The study concludes that the dimensions of Networking were positively related to export firm growth. The study recommends: development of entrepreneurship policy, the public sector needs to focus attention on developing networking opportunities among employees. Export firms should undertake research on RiskTaking and segments that can support firm growth.


Introduction
Growth is known as a revenue generation, value addition, and expansion in terms of volume of the business. Belderbos et al. Http://www.granthaalayah.com ©International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH [352] growth and activity, increasing the internal production, reducing the unemployment rate, supplying foreign currencies for import, becoming growth accelerator, making favourable balance of trade, enhancing trade balances and industrial development, improving capacity utilization and productivity and providing employment. The researcher thus deduces that one of objectives of most firms and national governments is to expand exports and that exporting may be considered a fundamental strategy in ensuring firms' survival or growth. The vital role which export trade plays in the economic growth of countries, Kenya included, also causes the researcher to posit that knowing factors which may influence growth of export firms, is key as their application may contribute to firms' growth, that may ultimately contribute consistently to economic growth. ROK (2008ROK ( , 2016 state that Kenya pursues export oriented economic growth, with emphasis laid on value addition on products, innovation of firm processes, export market diversification and industrial transformation. Presently in Kenya economic development is export trade led because, there is more benefits that are gained from export of goods and services to other countries (ROK, 2016 Risk taking propensity is was studied by De Haan (2010) quotes Brockhaust Sr. (1980) who defined risk-taking propensity as perceived probability of receiving rewards associated with success of a proposed situation required before embarking on a venture. For the purpose of this study, the researcher adopts definition of risk taking propensity as the tendency of a decision maker either to take or to avoid risks. Risk Taking Propensity and Firm Growth Risk-taking refers to a firm's willingness to engage in calculated businessrelated risks in the market place, even when their outcomes are uncertain (Lumpkin and Dess, 2012). Firms with risk taking behaviour are described as being bold and aggressive in pursuing opportunities, as they are ready to incur large resource commitments in the hope of obtaining high returns (Miller, 2011). Risk -taking behaviour consists of activities such as borrowing credit heavily, venturing in unknown markets and committing a high percentage of resources to projects with uncertain outcomes (Kusumawardhani, 2013). Prapah (2011) argued that the importance of networks could not be overemphasized because of their role in developing the private sector in contributing to gross domestic product, employment creation and raising income levels through its spill over effects. The scholar further posit that an entrepreneur's network's position reveals its ability to access information and knowledge, that is transformed into production of new products and improving upon existing ones. Cisi et al. (2016) posit that business network is a group of entrepreneurs that voluntary share knowledge and experiences. According to the scholars, the relationships among firms in the network are closer, have clear objectives and respect a specific contractual scheme, Firms enter this type of legal contract voluntarily with the explicit aim of co-producing, co-marketing, co-purchasing or cooperating in product or market development.  2011) whose study findings showed that networking significantly improves firm competitiveness. The researcher argues that firm competitiveness ensures frim growth that is if a firm has competitive advantage due to its competitiveness, a firm is most likely to increase market share, which culminates into firm growth. The difference in the study findings indicates literature gap, which this study set to examine to reveal more in-depth insights and bridge the knowledge gap.

Methodologies
Design, Target population and Sample size This Research employed cross sectional survey research design using Mixed (quantitative and qualitative) approaches. The target population whose data was adopted from the PhD thesis by Achola, J.,O., (2018), data was collected by questionnaires from Selected Kenya Export Firms. It was conducted based on data collected from selected export firms in selected towns, namely; Eldoret, Mombasa, Nairobi, Naivasha and Thik. in Kenya

Analysis Techniques, Methods, Findings and Discussions
Normality, Skewness

Networking, Risk Taking Propensity & Export Firms Sub Models by Bootstrapping
The bootstrap confidence intervals are presented in ( . In this case the relationship between export firms and (service Quality) Risk taking propensity has a p-value 0.07, Export Firms and Networking S2 has a p-value 0.05 which means that a 94% confidence interval would have a lower boundary at zero. In other words, a confidence interval at any level less than 94% such as 90% or 92% would not include zero, and therefore reject the hypothesis that the regression weight is zero for a 90% confidence interval.  The values in (Table 4.2) Standardized Parameter are very small for most of the cases and positive values indicate that the estimates of the bootstrap samples are higher than the original maximum likelihood estimates, while negative vales indicate lower original maximum likelihood estimates. The low bias indicates that the maximum likelihood estimates and the bootstrap estimates are very close to each other. The last column, labeled SE-Bias, reports the approximate standard error of the bias estimate. For the majority of the cases the estimated bias is smaller in magnitude than its standard error. This indicates that there is little evidence that the regression weights are biased.
The values in (Table 4.

Conclusion
The analysis on the study demonstrates that strategic entrepreneurial orientation dimensions of Risk taking propensity has a negatitive contribution to growth of selected export firms in Kenya, while networking has a positive contribution to growth of selected export firms in Kenya. The findings substantiate the conceptual framework of the study. The analysis reveals that application of Networking is useful in growth of a firm. This is more so due to today's business environment that is characterized with competition and ever-changing consumer preferences. New product, process and distribution technologies provide significant levers for creating competitive value. Dogan (2017) quoted Ahmed

Recommendation Future Studies
Kenya National export development and promotion strategy should be enhanced by formulating strategic objective on entrepreneurial inclination. Activities under such an objective would ensures that application of Networking and hence Risk-taking propensity should be further investigated in the process of promotion of export trade. The current strategy does not include an aspect of application of strategic entrepreneurial orientation dimensions. Future studies on export firms should use larger samples to validate these results, the study is limited to Kenya, and hence it is recommended that similar study be conducted in other developing countries.