Abstract
The textile manufacturing industry in Zimbabwe has faced many challenges, which caused contraction of the industry. The main aim of this study was to establish how industrial upgrading could help to control market failures, improve competitiveness and sustainability to stimulate and enhance sustainable economic growth through the development of a structural model. The causal research strategy was used and the data collection tools used was focus group discussions (FGDs), questionnaires and personal interviews. Stratified random sampling method was used to select the sample size of 325 respondents in Kadoma, Glendale and Harare. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed and implemented through confirmatory factor analysis and estimation of the model. The results showed that the measurement model fits the data satisfactorily, and the proposed model fits well to the observed data as demonstrated by the goodness of fit indices CFI 0.86, TFI 0.84 and RMSEA 0.07. The study provided evidence that industrial upgrading could redress market failures in the textile manufacturing industry and that there is a positive correlation between industrial upgrading, competitiveness and sustainability. The study revealed that industrial upgrading could restore competitiveness in the textile manufacturing industry in Zimbabwe. On the way forward, the article is valuable to the policymakers, academics and other researchers, among others. The stakeholders will be able to apply the model to determine which specific influences are the most important for their respective business.
Highlights
Zimbabwe has been experiencing an unprecedented number of economic challenges in the past decade, and this is evidenced by the underperformance of businesses across industries in the country (Mazikana, 2017)
According to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (2019), the contribution of the manufacturing to gross domestic product has progressively declined to 12% in 2019 from a peak of 25% between 2008-2018 and the country projected negative economic growth of 6.5% in 2019
The results indicate excellent reliability of the scales shown by Average Extracted Variance (AVE) and Maximum Shared Variance (MSV) above the recommended threshold
Summary
Zimbabwe has been experiencing an unprecedented number of economic challenges in the past decade, and this is evidenced by the underperformance of businesses across industries in the country (Mazikana, 2017). Massive deindustrialization and contraction of the companies have reached catastrophic levels, especially in the clothing and textile manufacturing industry. The textile manufacturing industry has been affected by a massive influx of cheap substandard imports; reducing the country to a simple exchange base in the region (Mastamet-Mason & Nyoni 2018). Local industries are unable to compete globally, and it is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore the number of organisations closing down; escalating figures of unemployment and the general slowdown of the economy (Bonga 2019; Sithole, Sithole & Chirimuta 2018). Like other developing nations, is not spared from high levels of unemployment, and the unemployment rate is 95% (Sinthumule & Mkumbuzi, 2019)
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