Kreatiwiteit in Suid-Afrikaanse klein- en mediumgroot ondernemings

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The development of small to medium enterprises (SME's) hasvarious advantages for a country's economy, inter alia thecreation of job opportunities. South African SME's areexpected to realise these advantages, as set out in thenational strategy for SME's.The turbulent national and international environment offersunique challenges to SME' s, but could also be the cause ofthem not meeting expectations. One possible way to securedynamic behaviour of SME's in such a turbulent environment isto stimulate creativity. The question arises whether SouthAfrican SME's are creative, and what can be done to promotetheir creativity.This study therefore focuses on two issues, namely creativityand SME' s. Creativity is discussed on the basis of existingtheories and definitions. The primary aim of the discussionis to identify elements which can explain creativity in SME's.The following four elements are discussed:• characteristics of creative persons;• creative processes;• an environment which can support creativity; and• manifestations of creativity.The second issue under discussionframework of D'Amboise and Muldoneyis SME's. An adapted(1984) was used as basisto discuss characteristics of 8ME owners, 8ME behaviourpractices, and how 8ME's interact with the task environment.Conclusions regarding 8ME owners and 8ME behaviour patternsindicate that an entrepreneurial approach is conducive tocreativity, and that 8ME's that interact dynamically with theenvironment tend to be creative.These conclusions are then integrated. Characteristics of 8MEowners, 8ME behaviour practices, creative processes, andmanifestations of creativity are discussed. It was notpossible to provide a list of manifestations, and thereforeonly an instrument for identification and classification isprovided. Evaluation is subjective, which supports findingsin the literature that objective evaluation is probably notpossible.The integrated 8ME profile is an adapted conceptual modelwhich serves as basis for the empirical research. This modelsuggests that there could be associations betweencharacteristics of 8ME owners and 8ME behaviour practices, andmanifestations of creativity.It was decided on a questionnaire for data collecting, becauseit is inter alia less expensive, and less time consuming for8ME owners to complete. Questionnaires were forwarded to 3310addresses, and 342 usable questionnaires were returned.Telephone inquiries confirmed that the low response could notbe attributed to either the study or the questionnaire, butrather to factors unique to 8ME's, such as owners' limitedtime.After the descriptive statistics were reported, a stepwiselogistic regression for binary dependant variables(creativity) and multiway analysis for categorical and ordinalexplanatory variables were executed in an explorative way, inorder to identify possible predictors of creativity. Thesepredictors were then compared with the descriptive statisticsto establish possible deficiencies.The most important deficiency is that the present profile ofSME owners is not in equilibrium with predictors, and istherefore regarded as the most important reason why SME's arenot creative. There is greater equilibrium between SMEbehaviour factors and predictors, but this is neutralised bynon-creative SME owners.Internal (SME's) and external interventions which can createan environment conducive to creativity in SME's, are finallydiscussed. This approach can be visualised as an iceberg,which implies that manifestations of creativity are onlyperceptible if the imperceptible phase has a sound basis.This development approach is not an instant, but rather a longterm process. If, however, deliberate efforts are not made topromote creativity in SME's, they will not be able to meetexpectations, which could have serious consequences for theeconomy.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University