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Enterprise Performance, Accountability, and Rurality in South Africa

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Strengthening Systems Accountability for Enterprise Performance and Development Planning

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Abstract

Despite several investments by the South African government in initiatives to promote entrepreneurial activities and business efficacy, about 70% of enterprises fail within the first year after their establishment. In order to address the phenomena, an understanding of the root cause of enterprise failure is vital to providing context-specific support that can stimulate enterprises in the country. This study examined the performances of enterprises in rural areas of Vhembe District in Limpopo to find where the failure lies. As a quantitative, a cross-sectional research design was utilised. Through a snowball sampling technique, 280 participants were drawn from 16 villages in four local municipalities of the district. Structured questionnaires were used for the data collection. Microsoft Excel financial and logical functions; descriptive statistics and Crosstabulation through IBM SPSS v26 were exploited with the quantitative data. Results indicate that 70.2% of the total sample did not meet at least the 50% success benchmark with enterprises in rural areas recording more failure as compared to those in extremely rural areas. The male-run enterprises accounted for 53.1% of the failure in terms of gender, while supported enterprises contributed slightly (1.2%) higher to the failure rate than non-supported enterprises with a 2% (p = 0.02) statistical significance level.

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Acknowledgements

This study is an aspect of a Ph.D. research initiative of one of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Ishmael Iwara & Simon Michael Taylor

  2. Department of Economics and Finance, Bay Atlantic University, Washington, DC, USA

    Gbadebo O. A. Odularu

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  1. Ishmael Iwara
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  2. Gbadebo O. A. Odularu
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  3. Simon Michael Taylor
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Correspondence to Ishmael Iwara .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Finance, Bay Atlantic University, Washington, DC, USA

    Gbadebo O. A. Odularu

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Iwara, I., Odularu, G.O.A., Taylor, S.M. (2022). Enterprise Performance, Accountability, and Rurality in South Africa. In: Odularu, G.O.A. (eds) Strengthening Systems Accountability for Enterprise Performance and Development Planning . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11779-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11779-4_3

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