The Role of Industrial Parks Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Strengthening Ventures' Capability: Evidence From Ethiopian Small Manufacturing Enterprises

Small scale enterprises sector has been recognized as an integral component of economic development and it is advisable and indispensable to integrate the enterprises with Industrial parks for sustainable business operation. IPs plays a crucial role in organizing the resources and innovation of manufacturing operation through business advising, infrastructure provision, technology transfer, and R&D support which advances rms’ capability. In this sense, the objective of this was to investigate the role IPs entrepreneurial ecosystem towards improving the capability of small ventures. Data were obtained from a sample of 245 small manufacturing enterprise owners selected through simple random sampling and analysed using descriptive, multi-level regression analysis and OLS regression analysis. From this, the presence of better and suitable entrepreneurial ecosystem which consists of provision of training, market information, adequate nance, and government commitment positively contributes for improvement of small rm’s capability. Despite of this, the study also found that there are many barriers hindered the development of strong entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ethiopia, such as, human capital, institutional, nancial, market, policies and legal procedures, cultural and resource barriers. The entrepreneurial ecosystem inuences the resources capability more when academia-industry linkage exists. The OLS regression result also shows that the entrepreneurial skill mediates the inuence of entrepreneurial ecosystem on technological capability, while managerial knowledge mediates the inuence of entrepreneurial ecosystem on the rm’s resource capability. The implication for policymakers is to develop a policy that supports incorporating small rms in industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem and link with academia. The study also forwarded a clue for managers of small rms in improving their rms technological and resource capabilities through building managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skills.


Background of the study
One can think of capabilities as the e ciency with which a rm uses the inputs available to it, and converts them into whatever output(s) it desires (Dutta et al., 2005). It's the rm's processes that use resources -speci cally the processes to integrate, recon gure, gain and release resources -to match or even create market change (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). Firm capability includes factors that enhance small business' awareness of strategic prospects/threat and its ability to undertake strategies (Kamasak, 2017). Firms capability can be considered as organizational capabilities embedded in rm routines (Collis, 1994)  In relation to entrepreneurial ecosystem, capabilities can be a source of competitive advantage because they decisively determine the acquisition, development, and deployment of the rest of the resources and capabilities (Camisón et al., 2018). This resource are a set of knowledge, skill, experience, and ability to select technologies, set up, operate, assimilate, sustain, advance, and extend new values to the processes and products in a dynamically changing manufacturing environment (Ahmad et al., 2014). For instance, human capital plays a crucial role in developing and maintaining the capabilities of a company (Costa et al., 2019). The key to sustainable entrepreneurship lies in the speci c combinations of the elements in an entrepreneurial ecosystem (Isenberg, 2011). Entrepreneurial ecosystems is a combinations of social, political, economic, and cultural elements with a supportive platform of creation and growth of enterprises (Miriam & Flores, 2018). Nieves and Haller (2014), therefore, consider it a fundamental resource for a series of essential capabilities to be realized (Costa et al., 2019).
Ethiopia is envisaging being an industrial and a middle income country by 2025, and high income country within the next four to ve decades. And later on, it has formulated GTP I and GTP II. The rst Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP -I) is ended. The next GTP -II is underway, which focused, among other, to transform its economy from agricultural-led to industrial-led economy (Weldesilassie et al, 2017). Therefore, with the support of appropriate entrepreneurial ecosystem, industrial parks will continue to change with the economy around them and will remain an important tool for integrating indigenous and foreign investment together to create the linkages that stimulate industrial and economic development (Isenberg, 2010;Brennan, 2012;World Economic Forum, 2013, Spigel, 2015Mariam and Flores, 2018).
Moreover, Ethiopia is building industrial parks with associated basic infrastructures to attract investment in the manufacturing sector (EIC, 2017).
In this practice, the government provides a number of incentives to rms located in the industrial parks with envisaging to establish additional industrial parks across economic corridors of the country (MoFED, 2017). Furthermore, it is also recognized that the importance of linkage of higher education institutions with small rms for a given country is crucial. Experience demonstrates that a mutual integration between university and industry can foster the development of the communities in which both are operating (Yilma & Alemu, 2018).
Firms at the global level are facing many challenges in the forms of market uncertainty, human and nancial capital and increase in both local and international competitors (Raghuvanshi and Garg, 2018; Al Mamun, 2019). Besides, the rm-level capabilities can be di cult to imitate because these systems involve routines that are rm-speci c, socially complex, and path-dependent (Kor & Leblebici, 2005;Harris, et al., 2013). Therefore, there is a necessity for industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem development towards improvement of small rm's capability. Improvement in small enterprises capability can be highly impacted by several factors, among these the crucial ones are the entrepreneurial ecosystem, academiaindustry linkage, managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skill. Unfortunately, these variables remain understudied in developing countries. Even though, these evidences are obtained from other countries the researchers cannot access similar evidences in Ethiopia.
One of the problem we have been witnessing is that small rms are isolated from the industrial parks due to limited nance, experience in an industry/manufacturing centres, operations scale, improper policy, and so forth. On the other hand, Yilma & Alemu (2018) research outcome revealed that the linkage between universities and industries seems to be very weak particularly in developing countries. We also identi ed that the practice of academia-industry linkage (AIL) is very week in Ethiopia, even if the institution that coordinate this issue is established in public universities. With this challenges, increasing the number of high growth and capable rms is now a major focus for industry policy. However, existing approaches are proving ineffectiveness (Mason & Brown, 2014).
Theoretically, the relationship between industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem, rms capability and academia-industry linkage which forgotten by previous studies was researched in this study. Therefore, this study is aimed at investigating the entrepreneurial ecosystem in industrial parks in strengthening the capability of small venture. The study further tests the role of academia-industry linkage, managerial knowledge, and entrepreneurship skill on the relationship between industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem and improvement in ventures capability. Besides, there are many studies that studied the in uence of rm capability on competitive advantage (eg. . Moreover, there is a lack of studies that identi es the building block of rm capability. Besides, before going further relationship with competitive advantage and performance, we found the necessity to test the role of managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skills on building and improving rms capability. Therefor this study revealed the determining factors of rm's capability and the role of managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skill. Therefore, this study is aimed at investigating the industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem on rms capability improvement, with a speci c role of AIL, managerial knowledge, and managerial skill.

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Industrial Parks
Industrial parks are planned and developed with provision of the physical infrastructure for the use of enterprises (Regional Conference on Industrial Parks, 2012), in order to accomplish the innovation capability and the R&D support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Park, 2016). In industrial park, buyers, producers, and suppliers can operate in the same location, thus cutting the transaction costs of economic learning while establishing new standards and norms of entrepreneurial behavior (Regional Conference on Industrial Parks, 2012). Since the SMEs have the limitations of manpower and resources, it is di cult for them to search for the promising elds autonomously (Park, 2016). Therefore, the formation of industrial parks has unquestionably built a better entrepreneurial ecosystem. Besides, entrepreneurial ecosystems have similarities with industrial districts, clusters, and innovation systems; entrepreneurs and spin-offs are present in these other frameworks but are not central as they are in entrepreneurial ecosystems (Stam & Spigel, 2017).
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem is a set of interconnected entrepreneurial actors, entrepreneurial organisations, institutions and entrepreneurial processes which formally and informally coalesce to connect, mediate and govern the performance within the local entrepreneurial environment (Andrews, 2014). Acs et al, (2017) accordingly identi ed entrepreneurial ecosystems as having developed from literatures in both business strategy and regional development.

Firms Capability
Capabilities represent the ability of the rm to combine e ciently a number of resources to engage in productive activity and attain a certain objective (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993;Collis, 1994 , 2017). There is also a belief that IPs could play a positive role in economic development (Wei & Xie, 2000), through improving small rms capability. That is, improved SME competitiveness (in uenced by rm's capability) could obviously contribute to economic and social development and poverty reduction (OECD, 2004). More speci cally, by clustering in to industrial parks, small, medium and even large enterprises can take advantage of improving capabilities obtained from public infrastructures, economize on construction and common facilities, and gain access to nearby skilled labour markets, research and educational facilities and other critical inputs (Falcke, 1999).
Industrial park also encourage and help SME to participate effectively in national dialogues that help set the strategic frameworks for development (OECD, 2004); provide an institutional framework, modern services and a physical infrastructure (Regional Conference on Industrial Parks, 2012); and enhance relationships between different actors (Regional Conference on Industrial Parks, 2012), which can improve the capability of small rms. From this, we proposed that; H1: As IPs entrepreneurial ecosystem becomes better, the better rms' capability. Particularly, technological capability is an expression used to encompass the system of activities, physical systems, skills and knowledge bases, managerial systems of learning and incentive, and values that generate an extraordinary bene t for a company (Ahmad et al., 2014). Besides, RBV was applied to explain the bene ts of entrepreneurial competencies on entrepreneurial skills as practices and know-how instigate unique capabilities in the organization (Barney, 1991;Grant, 1991

Research Design
The design of the study was both Descriptive and causal. It mainly aims at describing the existing situation in the integration between small business enterprises and industrial parks. It also explains what factors determine small rm's capacity improvement. In top of this, the study has formulated a functional framework for industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem and rm's capability improvement.

Sampling Techniques and Sample size determination
The population of this study were from small manufacturing rms in Ethiopia. According to Addis Ababa city administration micro and small scale enterprise development o ce (AAMSSEDO) (2018), there are 8697 micro and small manufacturing enterprises in the city. Total 269 + (10% contingency) approximately= 326 samples were taken and the same number of questionnaires were distributed. Concerning the sampling size, Yamane's formula was adopted to determine the sample size for this study. Out of these 245 (82.77% of 326) and 75.15% of 326, were completely lled and returned to the researchers. Thus, the analysis of questionnaire was done based on these data.
Simple random sampling technique was found appropriate for this study (to gather data through questionnaire). The reason to adopt SRS was nature of the target population, the population was small manufacturing rms' owners. This technique offer equal participation for each element. Despite its popularity, there is not yet a widely shared de nition of entrepreneurial ecosystems amongst researchers. However, Isenberg identi es six domains with entrepreneurial ecosystem such as a conducive culture, enabling policies and leadership, availability of appropriate nance, quality human capital, venture friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional supports (Isenberg, 2011). Besides, the question of the level at which entrepreneurial ecosystem operate has not been answered yet.
This would depend on the spatial scale on which the elements are achieved, on the one hand, and how they are limited, on the other hand (Stam & Bosma, 2015). From the various discussion made on the issue previously, seven items associated with the above domains were developed and asked to be rated on the ve point Likert scale compared to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the industrial parks. These items particularly contain questions related to infrastructure, government support, market access, access to human capital, reputation, risk minimization, and access to resources.
The academia industry linkage has measure with multi-item questionnaire in most researches. In this study the purpose of measurement is related with whether the academia-industry linkage intensi es the relationship between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and rms capability. Therefore, we developed a single item that asks respondents to rate the level of linkage with academic institutions. Similarly, the entrepreneurial skill and managerial knowledge were also asked to rate on the ve point Likert scale.

Data quality assurance and analysis
The primary data's collected using questionnaire were coded and entered to SPSS software for analysis. The collected data's were then analysed using SPSS Version 24, which was used to analyse descriptive and hierarchical regression analysis. OLS regression analysis were undertaken to show the moderating impact of academia-industry-linkage, managerial knowledge, and entrepreneurial skill. To achieve this objective, a four stage hierarchical regression analysis was undertaken. In the rst stage controlling variables were included. Next, the main effect and the moderators were added and lastly, the interaction variables of main effects and moderators were added to the analysis. The ANOVA result shows that the model was tted signi cantly in all the four models. Finally, based on the outcome, discussion and interpretation were performed by the researchers.
The measurement instruments are tested for validity and reliability before analysis were made for completeness and compatibility with the purpose of the study. Their reliability and validity of the data was tested. To ensure validity a pilot study was undertaken and for the test reliability, Cronbach's Alpha test was used. Accordingly, the Cronbach's alpha test was more for all items. With this, we can say that questionnaires were reliable enough. Moreover, by looking to the tolerance and VIF level, we con rmed that multicollinearity is not a concern, since all tolerance values are above .1 and VIF are less than 5.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem
By looking to other countries experience such as China, Malaysia and Singapore, entrepreneurial ecosystem in Industrial parks requires a strong government commitment, formulating functional procedures and legislations, providing social facilities, building cheap industrial sites (Stam, 2016

Entrepreneurial ecosystem and small ventures capability improvement
The results from Table 2 indicates that when technological capability is a dependent variable, in the rst model the controls alone explains the improvement in rms capability is nothing, however it explains about 32.1% after all the variables.  The improvement of industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem was measured in terms of infrastructure, government support, market opportunity, pool of human capital, reputation, minimum risk, and access to other resources. The improvement in these factors in general will lead to improvement in these rm's capability. Entrepreneurial ecosystem creates opportunities for rms to improve their capability, however the speci c cause of ventures capability development has not been clearly delimited. Governments, industrial park developers and resident rms in Ethiopia experience multi-faceted challenges, such as complications associated with administrative and regulatory capacity building, coordinating key actors and stakeholders, infrastructure and public utility provision, nancing issues, skills development, and Even though the practice of AIL is poor in low-income economy, there is a strong contribution to the improvement of industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem. The concentration of small rms around clusters and centres will have an opportunity to access infrastructures and services that improve entrepreneurial ecosystem. The industrial clusters provides access to essential resources, competencies, knowledge and legitimacy (Gulbrandsen & Solesvik, 2015). In improving these resources, an AIL plays a crucial role in regard to improving the industrial parks entrepreneurial ecosystem. Particularly, academic  (Liu, 2009). In support to the above ndings, our nding shows that there is a signi cant moderation from academia-industry linkage on the relationship between entrepreneurial ecosystem and rm's capability (i.e. resources) improvement.
Interesting arguments about the positive impact of industrial linkages can also be found in a sizable number of empirical studies on industrial clustering (Hu et al., 2011). That is, as we make universities entrepreneurially oriented, the universities and industries build good entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports the rms to improve their capability. At the rm-level scale, many other scholars have accepted the notion that linkage bene ts derived from cluster occupancy lead to superior rm performance  . There are also researchers that argue management team may satisfy the conditions for achieving competitive advantage' (Carmeli and Tishler, 2004). However, before going further relationship with competitive advantage, we found the necessity to test the role of managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skills on building and/or improving rms capability.

Implications for practitioners
Small scale enterprises sector has been recognized as an integral component of economic development and a crucial element in the effort to lift countries out of poverty. More importantly, our country is developing industrial parks on selected economic corridors. Letting small business to operate their business in the industrial parks could generate positive if it implemented properly. Thus, outcome of this study will serve as an input for policymakers, enable small rm owners to make a right decision on their investment, and forward suggestion on integration between small scale rms and industrial parks. It's found that the in uence of entrepreneurial ecosystem on the rm's capability improvement is better when rms made a linkage with academic institutions. Therefore, this paper clearly shows the importance of the integration to the government body, who might use the study as a stepping stone to improve the integration between higher educations and small rms. This may also be accomplished through incorporating small enterprises to industrial parks and improving the entrepreneurial ecosystem that contributes for the success of small enterprises. Moreover, it provides a clue for managers of small rms in improving their rms technological and resource capabilities through building managerial knowledge and entrepreneurial skills.

Declarations
We, Tesfaye Hailu and Abdella Kosa, hereby declared that we have carried out a research entitled "The Role of Industrial Parks Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Strengthening Ventures' Capability: Evidence from Ethiopian Small Manufacturing enterprises". Thus this is our bona de work and that all sources of materials used for this research have been duly acknowledged. We are submitting the manuscript of this study to the reputable journal -Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for publication.
Brief quotations from this article are unallowable without special permission provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the authors.

Availability of data and materials
This manuscript was designed from a research which was conducted by Tesfaye Hailu and Abdella kosa.
Data were collected from small manufacturing owner in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and their responses were