Christian Friedrich

Is Entrepreneurial Education at South African Universities Successful? An Empirical Example.

After more than ten years of democracy in South Africa, many of the previously disadvantaged segments of the community, especially Blacks, would have hoped that a new economic order would have been created. Instead, South Africa still has very high unemployment and even young Black South Africans with a degree are not guaranteed a job. The purpose of this research was to ascertain whether a traditional first-year university business management course with an entrepreneurial component can contribute to the entrepreneurial orientation of students. The major features of entrepreneurs and innovators are knowledge, skills and attitudes. While the imparting of knowledge and the development of skills development receive, respectively, thorough and sketchy attention in formal education, attitude is hardly addressed. The need for achievement, innovation, locus of control and self-esteem are the variables of attitude that have been most commonly used in research on business motivation and the entrepreneur. To determine the success of an enterprise education course, therefore, the change in attitude of the students can be used as a measure. The instrument that was used to gauge the entrepreneurial attitude orientation of the students was an adaptation of an Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation (EAO) scale. The authors tested 463 students using a pre-test and post-test approach, incorporating an experimental group and a control group. The results of this study do not augur well for the improvement of the entrepreneurial orientation of students.

Does Training Improve the Business Performance of Small-Scale Entrepreneurs? An Evaluative Study

In surveys conducted in different countries over four years, the authors investigated why entrepreneurs in the same sector and during the same period were not equally successful. From the findings of this research they developed a new three-day training programme to address primarily skills and techniques relating to personal initiative, planning, goal setting and innovation. The training programme follows the ‘action learning’ approach, which links learning to activity, and is based on the assumption that competencies and behavioural patterns can be learned. A sample of 84 entrepreneurs was selected in South Africa. In the first stage (T1), before the start of the training, a standardized interview was conducted. The sample was then split into two groups: the ‘experimental’ group, which participated in the training (T2) and the ‘control’ group (no training). After six months (T3) the results of the training group were compared with those of the control group through the use of behavioural measures. The results at this stage showed that members of the training group had made significantly better progress in their business performance than members of the control group.

Can Personal Initiative Training Improve Small Business Success? A Longitudinal South African Evaluation Study

High levels of personal initiative will be required to unlock the potential offered by the many untapped resources in Africa in terms of business opportunities. Significant resources are ploughed into the development of the small business sector by governments in Africa, particularly in South Africa. However, there is little evidence that these efforts are sufficiently effective to produce the desired results. Two issues are addressed in this article: (a) whether or not enhancing the personal initiative of owner-managers improves the performance of small businesses, and (b) the moderation of the content and effectiveness of a short training intervention by means of a longitudinal evaluation study, including a control group. The findings show an increase in the training groups business activities and performance, and also identify the varied contributions of the components of the training.

HIV/AIDS, Crime and Small Business in South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is located on the southern most part of Africa and stretches latitudinally from 22° to 35° South and longitudinally from 17° to 33° East. Its surface area is 1,219,090km2. It has a population exceeding 44 million and 11 official languages namely English, Afrikaans, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga (Burger, 2004). Since becoming a democracy in 1994 it has embarked on an ambitious process of political, economic, social and legal reforms to improve the quality of life of the people of South Africa.

Building Human Capital in Difficult Environments: An Empirical Study of Entrepreneurship Education, Self-esteem, and Achievement in South Africa

The lack of traditional employment opportunities for many students and the oft-repeated cry for South Africa to invest in developing black entrepreneurs prompted the University of Western Capes Department of Management to introduce an Enterprise Management stream at graduate level and Entrepreneurship as a subject at 2nd and 3rd year levels in recent years. All these initiatives are based on a strong capability in entrepreneurship and small business that has been developed in the department since the introduction of the Enterprise Development Unit in 1997.

The Relationship between Planning Strategies and Entrepreneurial Success for Start-Up Entrepreneurs in the Western Cape: A Psychological Approach to Entrepreneurship

The total entrepreneurial activity rate in South Africa was 9.1% in 2011, compared with 8.9% in 2010, which is below the average for similar economies. This study examines the moderating impact of environmental difficulty on the relationship between planning strategies and entrepreneurial success. The authors carried out a cross-sectional interview-based study of 60 start-up entrepreneurs in the Western Cape in South Africa. The results show that environmental difficulty moderated the relationship of ‘opportunistic’ and ‘reactive’ strategies to entrepreneurial success. No moderation effects were found for environmental difficulty on the relationship between success and ‘complete planning’ and ‘critical point planning’ strategies.

Selection of Postgraduate Students in a South African Management Programme: How Effective Is the General Reasoning Test?.

South African higher education institutions are experiencing challenges regarding access, redress and the successful completion of programmes in an environment where there are still imbalances in the schooling system. Tools are needed that will assist with the process of selecting students. The aim of this study is to determine whether a test battery predicts academic success for postgraduate students at a historically disadvantaged university, and whether there are differences relating to gender and racial and language groups. The test battery considered, GRT2, was designed to measure three areas of ability – verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning. The sample consisted of an applicant group (774 candidates) and a student group (178 candidates). The internal consistency of the three subtests on the total applicant group was sufficiently reliable (above 0.8). Significant mean differences were found between the language groups and the race group for all three subtests, but only significant differences were found between the gender groups, with males obtaining higher scores. For the student group as a whole, correlations of all three subtests with both academic total and academic average marks were highly significant. In addition, the test exhibits predictive bias with regard to language, race and gender in the prediction of the academic total, and particularly for the numeric subtest. The results suggest that the test battery can help in identifying potentially successful students. However, cognisance must be taken of the differences between language groups and gender when interpreting test results. The paper contributes to the presently limited research on the validity of selection tools used in postgraduate programmes in African universities.

Family Business Succession: Founders from Disadvantaged Communities in South Africa--An Exploratory Study.

It is estimated that 50–70% of all South African businesses are family-owned and that these businesses form the backbone of the South African economy, their qualities providing stability and resilience in the changing society of the nation. Succession is one of the biggest challenges for family business owners. Research shows that only 33% of all family businesses progress from the first to the second generation and only 16% progress to the third generation. This is because in many small and medium-sized family businesses there is no formal succession plan and no appropriate governance structures are in place. Matters may also be complicated by destructive conflicts, with more than one family member believing that he or she is best equipped to take over as leader. In most developed countries family business research is receiving the same attention as, for example, entrepreneurship, but in South Africa neither topic has yet come of age. Of the 23 registered universities and technical universities in South Africa, only one offers a full semester-based module on family business, while four of the other institutions offer around two credit modules, of which succession is a small part. It is clear from the investigation reported here that unless the topic of succession receives more attention unclear succession plans, incompetence and/or lack of preparedness of successors and family rivalries will continue to result in unsuccessful successions and business failures.

SME Performance – Results from a Longitudinal Study

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have become the backbone of industrialized economies. This trend is also evident in South Africa, where, however, there are more closures than expansions: it is believed that only around 1% of the micro-enterprises started with fewer than five employees grow to employ up to 10 people. Consequently, these businesses contribute little to the taxation base of the economy, thus depriving the country of potential and much needed tax revenue. The rhetoric about the importance of SMEs in relation to the sustainability of jobs and poverty alleviation is current in South Africa, as elsewhere. Yet no studies have been conducted in the country to confirm that SMEs do have the desired effects. This study was therefore undertaken to ascertain whether SMEs do indeed contribute to and/or are able to sustain jobs over time. Performance data on SMEs were collected over a three-year period. During this period, a very small number of businesses closed due to failure; others simply disappeared or ceased business operations without formally de-registering the business.