Abstract
Two concepts, (1) companies are 'living' entities and (2) 'company ecology', stimulated our hypothesis that towns are 'enterprise ecosystems'. This hypothesis cannot be tested directly. However, if it is correct, application of clustering and ordination techniques used frequently in studies of natural ecosystems, should reveal clusters of towns that are statistically significantly different (p < 0.05). A dataset of 47 towns in the Karoo, South Africa served as study material and their enterprise assemblages were profiled through the use of a simple method based on the examination of telephone directories. Clustering and ordination techniques revealed six different clusters of towns at a correlation coefficient level of 0.65 and the clusters differed significantly (p < 0.05) in some respects. The agricultural products and services, the tourism and hospitality, and the trade sectors were particularly important in defining these clusters. We concluded that enterprise ecology is a valid concept and towns are 'ecosystems' that also cluster together in larger groupings. An array of potentially important techniques and approaches for the study of business development in towns now provide support to, and intriguing questions confront, academic and practical researchers of enterprise development in towns.
Highlights
Towns as enterprise ecosystemsSimilarities between business enterprises and living organisms have, over the past decades, been mentioned from time to time
Clusters 1 and 2 were small, each consisting of 2 towns only (Figure 2)
The cluster analysis provided a one-dimensional analysis of the relationships between the different Karoo towns and showed clearly that there were clusters of towns in the Karoo
Summary
Towns as enterprise ecosystemsSimilarities between business enterprises and living organisms have, over the past decades, been mentioned from time to time. Researchers agreed that information about the past could be stored in organisations, giving rise to the concept of organisational memory.[1] Learning at organisational level was recognised as a constantly repeated cyclic process of doing, reflecting, thinking and deciding,[2] similar to the way in which humans learn.[3] The central question posed in the book The living company[4] is whether companies can be thought of as living beings.[5] Beinhocker[6] stated: Economic wealth and biological wealth are thermodynamically the same sort of phenomena, and not just metaphorically Both are systems of low entropy, patterns of order that evolved over time under the constraint of fitness functions.
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