Success Indicators of Enterprises Anchored on an [African] Indigenous Apprenticeship Model of Entrepreneurship

Recent calls to integrate indigenous entrepreneurship models, such as Igba-boi of the South-eastern Igbos of Nigeria into contemporary entrepreneurial space have drawn attention to an important but under-researched question: Does the model have sufficient documentation regarding its functionality? This exploratory study provides indicators that can be used to measure the success of enterprises anchored on the Igba-boi model. A mixed research design was utilised; in the qualitative phase, peer-to-peer interviews were conducted with 21 Igba-boi mentors who were selected using snowball and purposive sampling techniques, in three markets of South-eastern Nigeria. Using Atlas-ti v8 software open coding system for qualitative data analysis, five themes emerged which informed the questionnaire for quantitative data collection with 317 participants (mentors). Descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation performed on the quantitative data structure revealed that - capacity of established apprentices, enterprise expansion, improved standard of living, enterprise survival and scale of business networks are indicators for examining success of enterprises anchored on the Igba-boi apprenticeship model of entrepreneurship. Among the five indicators, capacity of established apprentices, enterprise expansion and improved standard of living were found to have a stronger effect on the success of enterprise anchored on the model. It is worth emphasising that these indicators are unique and should be considered in policy decision related to indigenous entrepreneurship.