Proportionality in enterprise development of South African towns

South African Journal of Science

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Proportionality in enterprise development of South African towns
 
Creator Toerien, Danie F. Seaman, Maitland T.
 
Subject Economic Geography economic geography; enterprise development; entrepreneurship; South Africa; towns
Description We investigated proportionalities in the enterprise structures of 125 South African towns through examining four hypotheses, (1) the magnitude of enterprise development in a town is a function of the population size of the town; (2) the size of an enterprise assemblage of a town is a function of the town’s age; (3) there are statistically significant relationships, and hence proportionalities, between the total number of enterprises in towns and some, if not all, of the enterprise numbers of different business sectors in towns; and (4) the implications of proportionalities have far-reaching implications for rural development and job creation. All hypotheses were accepted on the basis of statistically significant (p 0.05) correlations, except for the second hypothesis – the age of a town does not determine the size of its enterprise assemblage. Analysis for the fourth hypothesis suggested that there are two broad entrepreneurial types in South African towns: ‘run-of-the-mill’ entrepreneurs and ‘special’ entrepreneurs, which give rise to different enterprise development dynamics. ‘Run-of-the-mill’ enterprises are dependent on, and limited by, local demand and if there is only a small demand, the entrepreneurial space is small. By comparison, ‘special’ enterprises have much larger markets because their products and/or services are exportable. We propose that the fostering of ‘special’ entrepreneurs is an imperative for local economic development in South African towns.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Centre for Environmental Management, University of the Free State
Date 2012-05-03
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Statistical comparisons
Format application/pdf text/html application/epub+zip text/xml
Identifier 10.4102/sajs.v108i5/6.588
 
Source South African Journal of Science; Vol 108, No 5/6 (2012); 10 Pages 1996-7489 0038-2353
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/view/588/1186 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/view/588/1187 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/view/588/1190 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/view/588/1188 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3664 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3665 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3666 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3667 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3668 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3669 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3670 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3671 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3672 https://journals.sajs.aosis.co.za/index.php/sajs/article/downloadSuppFile/588/3673
 
Coverage South Africa Current South African towns and their populations
Rights Copyright (c) 2012 Danie F. Toerien, Maitland T. Seaman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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