The causes and impact of business failure among small to micro and medium enterprises in South Africa

Africa's Public Service Delivery and Performance Review

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The causes and impact of business failure among small to micro and medium enterprises in South Africa
 
Creator Bushe, Bernard
 
Subject SMMEs; business management SME; entrepreneurship; business; failure; causes; impact
Description Background: Over 70% of small to micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa fold within the first 5–7 years of inception and there is generally no agreement among scholars and experts as to why this is so.Aim: This study conducts an empirical review of literature which summarises itself into a hypothetical framework, putting the causes of SMME failure into some reasonable perspective and finally making suggestions for further enquiry into the subject in future.Setting: This study is located in the Republic of South Africa where SMME failure and success are important among national strategic priorities in the wake of many economic hardships, chief among which are unemployment, poverty, as well as HIV and AIDS.Methods: This study conducted an empirical review of literature from an explorative perspective focusing on the causes and impact of SMME failure in South Africa.Results: Because of varied SMME failure factors, this study consolidated its findings around three factors: entrepreneur incapacity, environmental inauspiciousness and enterprise incompetence. All these are attributed to poor understanding of the varied needs of SMME at each stage of its growth process. The impacts are loss of jobs and income, poverty, social evils and unemployment, among others.Conclusion: Every SMME failure situation ought to be reviewed as a unique case and treated on its own merit. Consequently, the success of SMMEs would be found in the reverse of these elements, namely, entrepreneur capacity, enterprise competitiveness and environmental conduciveness (alignment).
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Talent Xplora Group
Date 2019-01-24
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Empirical Review of Literature
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/apsdpr.v7i1.210
 
Source Africa’s Public Service Delivery & Performance Review; Vol 7, No 1 (2019); 26 pages 2310-2152 2310-2195
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/210/365 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/210/364 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/210/367 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/210/362
 
Coverage South Africa; Southern Africa January 2014 - November 2017 SMMEs
Rights Copyright (c) 2019 Bernard Bushe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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