Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) play a significant role in the stimulation of economies around the globe. In South Africa, though SMMEs add significant socio-economic value to the national economy, approximately 75 per cent of these business entities fail after being in existence for less than four years. Among the economic factors which have been highlighted to adversely affect the sustainability of these business entities is the lack of scarce skills – in particular, that of critical innovation skills. The objective of this study was to ascertain whether critical innovation skills had any statistically significant influence on the perceived profitability of South African SMMEs. Empirical research, exploratory research, and survey research were conducted in this quantitative research study whereby 387 responses were received from South African SMME management who had to adhere to relevant delineation criteria. Based on the results, the critical innovation skills of...
Category - Suzaan LE ROUX
School of Accounting Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa
Knowledge management is deemed as an important tool for an array of firms across the globe to fortify their overall sustainability. In particular, the proper management of knowledge inside a firm should allow for better efficiency and effectiveness. One of the facets of knowledge management is that of knowledge sharing; better understood as the dissemination of knowledge (insight) to such an extent, and in such a manner, that it assists with the solving of problems and/or the creation of solutions within a firm. Albeit the aforementioned, is appears that small businesses (SMMEs) in South Africa do not make use of sound knowledge sharing initiatives as they have one of the worst sustainability rates in the world. Through the conduct of non-empirical research, this matter was theoretically investigated where it was found that the lack of knowledge sharing as a value-adding initiative within South African SMMEs is assumed to have a theoretically adverse influence on the effectiveness...
