Mentorship and Venture Growth Intention in a Fragile Context: The Sequential Roles of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Leadership Identity

This study examines the association between mentorship and venture growth intention among entrepreneurs who own or manage micro and small enterprises in the fragile Palestinian context. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory and Identity Theory, it proposes that mentorship is related to venture growth intention through a sequential pathway linking entrepreneurial self-efficacy to entrepreneurial leadership identity. The stimulus–organism–response framework organizes this pathway, positioning mentorship as an external stimulus, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial leadership identity as successive internal states, and venture growth intention as the intended response. Survey data were collected from 385 Palestinian entrepreneurs (280 women and 105 men) in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Mentorship was positively associated with entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which was associated with entrepreneurial leadership identity, which in turn was associated with venture growth intention. The sequential indirect association between mentorship and venture growth intention was significant and accounted for most of their small total association, whereas mentorship had no significant direct association with entrepreneurial leadership identity or venture growth intention. Mentorship explained only 10.1% of the variance in entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and the model explained 43.4% of the variance in venture growth intention. A rival model reversing the order of the two mediators explained venture growth intention equally well but yielded a much weaker sequential pathway. Exploratory gender comparisons detected no significant differences, which does not establish equivalence. The findings suggest that support programs may benefit from addressing entrepreneurs’ capability beliefs and leadership identity alongside business advice, with potential relevance to livelihoods and inclusive economic participation. As the study used cross-sectional data, the results indicate associations but do not establish temporal order, causality, or effects on actual business growth.