The context of entrepreneurship in Hong Kong: An investigation through the patterns of entrepreneurial competencies in contrasting industrial environments

The context of Hong Kong has nurtured numerous small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in which the owners/managers have exhibited rather consistent set of characteristics over decades despite shifts in the industrial structure. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how such characteristics can sustain in different industrial environments. By using the competency approach on a sample of 153 SME owner/managers in the wholesale trade and IT services industries, the authors conducted hypothesis testing on comparing first, the overall rankings of 10 competency areas for SME owner/managers, and second, the ratings of individual competency areas between two industries. While there are consistent patterns of competencies across these two contrasting industries in Hong Kong, the owner/managers in IT services industry have significantly higher ratings in innovative, strategic and learning competencies than those in the wholesale trade industry.