Developing entrepreneurial organisations for sustainable growth

M.Comm.The overall objective of this study was to find the influence of entrepreneurship on sustainable economic growth by defining entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial organisations as well as the inter relationships between entrepreneurship, development and growth. In today's competitive environment the influences on success through sustainable economic growth needs to be known. This will allow the understanding of failure as well as the reproduction of the success in other business. If the success can be reproduced this will be of benefit to the organisation, the community and at a macro level the country. There is an everincreasing amount of research to quantify the contribution entrepreneurship has to sustainable economic growth. Most research agrees entrepreneurship has a significant impact on economic growth. What is also of importance is that the economic growth is sustainable since there are areas such as the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises that may yield growth in the short term but can not sustain it. This can be argued as being more harmful to an economy than no growth at all. This strongly contrasts entrepreneurship where the sustainability of the growth is paramount. Entrepreneurship has over the past years enjoyed more and more attention as the underlying reason for sustainable growth. One of the reasons for this is that specific theories such as activity based costing or total quality management or any other management theory does not explain the complex inter-relationships of an organisation. Entrepreneurship is viewed as a broader approach that includes various management theories but also attributes the sustainable growth to the softer areas of study such as psychology, culture and creativity. These areas must be researched to assess the true impact on sustainable growth. The effect of the softer areas such as psychology on entrepreneurship, is shown by the way an entrepreneur is motivated. By understanding how an entrepreneur is motivated, more individuals can be exposed to this set of circumstances thereby potentially increasing the number of entrepreneurs. The effect of culture on the climate for developing entrepreneurship is also important. If the culture that is conducive to entrepreneurship can be maintained and introduced to a wider audience, it may be possible to increase entrepreneurship. In the same way creativity, which has been linked to studies in entrepreneurship, may be stimulated thereby increasing entrepreneurship. Various stakeholders have roles in developing entrepreneurship. This is important to understand since if these stakeholders do not develop entrepreneurship there may be a decrease in sustainable growth. The stakeholders must know the role as well as being measured on the success of the development. Even if stakeholders develop entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurs must then make use of the favourable environment to grow at a rate that is sustainable. This can be achieved by the use of entrepreneurial strategies. The conclusion is the inter-relationships and the positive impact entrepreneurship has on sustainable growth can be affected most by mentoring a potential entrepreneur. This was a method that produced the most significant results in previous empirical studies