Although post-apartheid South Africa has introduced various policies and institutions to support small and micro businesses, these efforts have not delivered expected results; many such firms are not growing and are failing. Hence, this study investigates the constraints holding back the development of micro ventures and recommends what can be done to assist them. It is based on a sample of microenterprise informal sector operators in the South African province of Mpumalanga. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a set of fourteen external and another of fifteen internal environmental constraints on growth were examined. The results indicate each set explains almost two-thirds of the total variation in growth limitations, with growth as an integrated component of sale, asset, labor and profit. The regression analyses confirmed that internal factors were significantly heavier hurdles in limiting the growth of the microenterprise operators than the external ones. The internal constraints were ‘education and training,’ ‘entrepreneurial factors’ and ‘storage and infrastructure,’ and the external constraints related to market factors. Because the external constraint is mainly exogenous, more efforts have to be placed on addressing internal entrepreneurial limitations for microenterprise to experience growth.

中文翻译：

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了解南非省背景下微型企业发展的内部和外部限制：以 MPUMALANGA-MKHONDO 为例

尽管后种族隔离时期的南非出台了各种政策和制度来支持小微企业，但这些努力并未取得预期成果；许多这样的公司没有成长，而且正在倒闭。因此，本研究调查了阻碍微型企业发展的限制因素，并建议可以采取哪些措施来帮助它们。它基于南非姆普马兰加省的微型企业非正规部门运营商样本。使用主成分分析 (PCA)，检查了一组 14 个外部环境约束和另一个 15 个内部环境约束对增长的影响。结果表明，每组都解释了几乎三分之二的增长限制总变化，增长是销售、资产、劳动力和利润的综合组成部分。回归分析证实，内部因素对小微经营者成长的限制明显大于外部因素。内部约束是“教育和培训”、“创业因素”和“存储和基础设施”，以及与市场因素相关的外部约束。由于外部约束主要是外生的，因此必须更多地努力解决内部创业限制，以使微型企业获得成长。