Abstract
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a significant role to play in a country’s sustainable development. The measures of a country’s sustainable development include economic and social factors. The sustainability of small and medium enterprises is vital to job creation, poverty reduction, and sustainable economic growth. The high failure rate of SMEs negatively impacts on South Africa’s sustainable development. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and the success of SMEs in South Africa. Success was measured using both organisational and individual criteria. The Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale 10 (CD-RISC 10) was used to measure entrepreneurial resilience. Data was collected from 170 small business owners through the survey method. The self-administered questionnaire method was used to collect data from the participants. Convenience and snowball methods were used for sampling. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation, and regression analysis were used for data analysis. Cronbach’s alpha was used as a measure of reliability. The results indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and individual and organisational success. Ways to enhance the resilience of small business owners in order to ensure the sustainability of SMEs are suggested.
Highlights
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a major role to play in a country’s sustainable development [1]
The failure rate of small and medium enterprises” (SMEs) is very high in South Africa
The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and personal and organisational success
Summary
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a major role to play in a country’s sustainable development [1]. Societies are expected to follow the three main development goals when designing their growth strategies. These are: social inclusion, environmental protection, and economic development [2,3]. Growing attention from researchers, companies, and government towards sustainability is changing the competitive environment. This has led to companies changing the ways that they think about technologies, products, processes, and business models [3]. SMEs are expected to serve as crucial engines of job creation and sustainable economic growth. SMEs provide approximately 60 percent of employment in South Africa [5,6]
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