Assessing immigrant entrepreneur’s contribution to entrepreneurial development: A case of small retailers in the Mangaung, Free State province

Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Assessing immigrant entrepreneur’s contribution to entrepreneurial development: A case of small retailers in the Mangaung, Free State province
 
Creator Moloi, Lebohang Y. Mosweunyane, Lentswe Chipunza, Crispen
 
Subject — SMME’s; immigrant entrepreneurship; entrepreneurial skills; entrepreneurial development; collaboration, and government support
Description Background: Despite numerous training programmes by the South African (SA) government equipping citizens with entrepreneurial skills to create businesses for economic development. The country still faces a high rate of liquidation of businesses leading to unemployment.Aim: This article mainly aimed to assess immigrant entrepreneurs’ contribution to entrepreneurial development in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality (MMM).Setting: The study focuses on the role that skilled immigrant entrepreneurs play in entrepreneurial development in MMM through Human Capital theory.Methods: Drawing on interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted empirical stance and qualitative approach. A total of 20 participants’ immigrant entrepreneurs and employees from small retailers in MMM were interviewed. Data collected were analysed using the Burnard’s (1991) stage-by-stage method of the semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was used to analyse data collected. Whilst thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data obtained from the face-to-face interviews.Results: Although immigrant entrepreneurs were using their resources to share expertise and experience, most of their employees were not willing to learn. Immigrant entrepreneurs considered government support as a valuable tool when seeking to understand their contribution to developing the citizens. Accordingly, the results demonstrated that entrepreneurial skills transfer via in-store training influenced local citizens’ entrepreneurial mindset and decision to start businesses. The findings also revealed that immigrant businesses might play a critical role in solving entrepreneurial development of SA as government funding was considered to be a tool for skills transfer and entrepreneurial growth.Conclusion: Whilst most studies investigated immigrant-citizen’s entrepreneurial skills transfer process, little attention was given to possible entrepreneurial development mechanisms through business collaboration. The study concludes that human capital in the form of skilled labour has a positive effect on entrepreneurial development. This informs policymakers to prioritise the upskilling of the workforce and contributes towards value-generating economic activities.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor Central University of Technology research grant
Date 2022-04-28
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Interview
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajesbm.v14i1.440
 
Source The Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management; Vol 14, No 1 (2022); 12 pages 2071-3185 2522-7343
 
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://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/440/634 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/440/635 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/440/636 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/440/637
 
Coverage South Africa Africa Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Qualification
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Lebohang Y. Moloi, Lentswe Mosweunyane, Crispen Chipunza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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