The Impact of Entrepreneurial Resilience on the Success of Small and Medium Enterprises in South Africa

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a significant role to play in a country’s sustainable development. The measures of a country’s sustainable development include economic and social factors. The sustainability of small and medium enterprises is vital to job creation, poverty reduction, and sustainable economic growth. The high failure rate of SMEs negatively impacts on South Africa’s sustainable development. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and the success of SMEs in South Africa. Success was measured using both organisational and individual criteria. The Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale 10 (CD-RISC 10) was used to measure entrepreneurial resilience. Data was collected from 170 small business owners through the survey method. The self-administered questionnaire method was used to collect data from the participants. Convenience and snowball methods were used for sampling. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation, and regression analysis were used for data analysis. Cronbach’s alpha was used as a measure of reliability. The results indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and individual and organisational success. Ways to enhance the resilience of small business owners in order to ensure the sustainability of SMEs are suggested.


Introduction
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a major role to play in a country's sustainable development [1].Recommendations to achieve sustainable development include the eradication of poverty, and measures to promote economic growth.Societies are expected to follow the three main development goals when designing their growth strategies.These are: social inclusion, environmental protection, and economic development [2,3].Sustainable SMEs have a critical role to play in a country's sustainable future.Growing attention from researchers, companies, and government towards sustainability is changing the competitive environment.This has led to companies changing the ways that they think about technologies, products, processes, and business models [3].There is increasing interest from the government and researchers in the small business sector.SMEs are drivers of job creation and economic growth [3].South Africa suffers from high unemployment, at a rate of 26.7 percent [4].In addition, the country experiences high levels of poverty and income inequality, and weak economic growth.SMEs are expected to serve as crucial engines of job creation and sustainable economic growth.The SME sector has a significant presence in the South African economy.The sector accounts for approximately 91 percent of all formal business entities and contributes between 51 percent and 57 percent of South Africa's gross domestic product.In addition, SMEs provide approximately 60 percent of employment in South Africa [5,6].
Despite the noted contribution of SMEs, the failure rate of these enterprises is very high in South Africa [7].About 75% of SMEs in South Africa fail within the first five years of creation [8].In addition, the performance of SMEs in South Africa as measured by turnover and profitability is weak.The business environment in South Africa is highly unstable and challenging, and many SMEs operate in a hostile rather than a benign environment [9].The high failure rate and weak performance cast a doubt on the ability of SMEs to create sustainable employment and reduce poverty in South Africa [10].
It is important to understand how entrepreneurs survive during uncertainty and what drives entrepreneurship during challenging times.The pursuit of entrepreneurship often comes with high stress, multiple obstacles, and high levels of uncertainty regarding outcomes [11].Decision-making by entrepreneurs often comes with errors and misjudgements because the information available is either ambiguous or incomplete.Entrepreneurs have to continually keep up with changing contingencies by adjusting their goals and strategies [12,13].Entrepreneurial resilience, which can be described as the ability to withstand and quickly overcome adversity, is an important personal characteristic in the pursuit of entrepreneurship.Resilience may be one of the drivers of entrepreneurial success.However, the findings of previous empirical studies on the effect of entrepreneurial resilience on firm success have been inconclusive [12,14].In addition, entrepreneurial success is about achievement not only at the organisational level but also at the individual level.Choosing only the organisational level is restrictive.Including both micro (individual) and macro (organisational) indicators shows the recognition of the relationship between the entrepreneur and their venture.The entrepreneur is at heart of his/her organisation [15,16].
Entrepreneurial resilience has stimulated some studies in South Africa [17,18].However, to the best of the author's knowledge, no study has investigated empirically the effect of entrepreneurial resilience on the success of SMEs in South Africa.This is significant in the light of the weak performance and high failure rate of SMEs in South Africa.Improving the performance of SMEs has positive implications for South Africa's sustainable development.The study contributes to sustainable entrepreneurship by linking both the individual and organisational measures of success to entrepreneurial resilience.The combination of the two measures gives a more comprehensive measure of success.The study is based on the following research questions: (1) What is the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and business/organisational success?and (2) What is the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and individual success?

SMEs and Sustainable Development of South Africa
The National Small Business Act of 1996, as revised in 2003, defines a small business as "a separate distinct entity including cooperative enterprises and non-governmental organisations managed by one owner or more, including branches or subsidiaries if any is predominately carried out in any sector or subsector of the economy mentioned in the schedule of size standards" ( [19], p. 2).The quantitative definition focuses on the turnover, the number of workers and the gross asset value of the business [20].
The small business space in South Africa includes micro, very small, small, and medium enterprises.However, the term "small and medium enterprises" (SMEs) is generally used.One of the indicators used to classify SMEs in South Africa is the number of employees.Quantitatively, micro enterprises in the retail sector have fewer than five employees, very small enterprises fewer than 20 employees, small enterprises fewer than 50 employees, and medium enterprises fewer than 250 employees.This is similar to the definition of SMEs in the United Kingdom where SMEs are defined as enterprises with fewer than 250 employees [20].Sustainable development can be achieved by entrepreneurial enterprises with economic and social responsibilities [21].SMEs contribute to South Africa's sustainable development through employment creation, poverty reduction in rural and urban areas, and economic growth [5].The failure rate of SMEs is very high in South Africa.The challenges faced by SMEs are both internal and external.Internal factors include lack of business planning, lack of entrepreneurial skills and mindset, lack of creativity and innovation, and high levels of stress and burnout.External factors include high levels of competition, difficulty in accessing markets, and lack of external finance [6].SMEs are disproportionately impacted by a wide range of internal and external shocks [14].The high failure can have negative implications on the ability of SMEs to contribute to South Africa's sustainable development [10].Entrepreneurial resilience may be a driver of success and sustainability of SMEs.

Entrepreneurial Resilience
The term resilience does not have a single universally accepted definition and the complexity of defining the construct resilience is broadly recognised.Many authors have defined resilience in different ways [12,13].The word resilience originated from the Latin verb "resilire", or "to leap back" [22].Tonis [23] traced the origin of the concept of resilience to the physics of materials.Resilience describes the resistance of materials to a forceful shock and the ability of the material to absorb the shock without breaking.Fletcher, et al [24] introduced the concept of resilience to the field of psychology.Resilience in psychology refers to the capacity of individuals to positively cope with catastrophe and stress.Resilience is a way of coping with change, adversity or opportunity [25,26].It is the ability of an individual to move on with life after adversity or hardship [27].Despite the construct being operationalised in different ways, most definitions are based around two fundamental concepts: adversity and positive adaptation [22].The characteristics of resilience include bouncing back after traumatic events, coping with adversity, and successfully managing challenges to realise positive outcomes.The author of this study defines resilience as the ability of an individual to bounce back after adversity and cope with challenges in order to obtain positive results.
Although resilience has become an increasingly multi-disciplinary concept, it is still inadequately theorised [28,29].The theoretical explanations of resilience often involve related psychosocial constructs and overlap with other areas of scientific inquiry.Various theories and models of resilience have been proposed in the literature [22].These include the family adjustment and adaptation response model found in [30], the resiliency model in [31], and the grounded theory of personal resilience reported in [32].The majority of resilience theories are specific to particular populations.There is the need for a generic theory of resilience that can be applied across different individuals and situations.Abebrese and Richardson, et al [31,33] developed a metatheory of resilience and resiliency.The theory is applicable to different life events and adversities and different levels of analysis such as individual, family and community.The resilience theory reported in [31] argues that the resilience process starts with a comfort zone where an individual is in balance mentally, physically and spiritually.After some time, there will be adjustment and reintegration by the individual that has experienced disruption.One of four outcomes will come from this process.The first outcome is resilient integration, which is a situation where disruption leads to the realisation of additional protective factors.The second outcome is homeostatic reintegration, where individuals remain in their comfort zones after disruption.The third outcome is reintegration with loss, which is a situation where protective factors are lost due to disruption.The fourth outcome is dysfunctional reintegration, where individuals resort to destructive behaviour after disruption.
Entrepreneurial resilience is a dynamic adaptation process that allows business owners to continue to be forward looking despite harsh market conditions and the destabilising events that they consistently face in the marketplace [25].Entrepreneurial resilience can be described to the ability of an entrepreneur to manage difficult personal and market conditions as well as destabilising events, and be future-oriented.Resilient entrepreneurs welcome rather than resist change, and work hard to achieve goals and manage challenges.In addition, resilient entrepreneurs have a high tolerance for ambiguity [34].Resilient entrepreneurs look at difficult situations with a positive attitude rather than fear, apathy or desperation.Resilience helps an entrepreneur to manage an unstable and changing business environment [35].The characteristics of entrepreneurial resilience include hardiness, resourcefulness and optimism.Hardiness refers to the ability of an entrepreneur to exercise personal control and not wait for the support of other people.Resourcefulness refers to the skill, capacity, and resources possessed by the entrepreneur to manage adverse conditions.Optimism is the capacity of the entrepreneur to have a positive attitude despite difficult circumstances.Optimism helps the entrepreneur to learn from past mistakes and look at mistakes as an opportunity rather than failure [12].Entrepreneurial resilience involves: (1) the ability of the entrepreneur to cope with instability and change in the business environment; (2) the ability of the entrepreneur to maintain good health and energy despite constant business pressures; (3) the ability of the entrepreneur to bounce back from personal and business setbacks and adversities; and (4) change to a new way of managing the business if previous ways are unsuitable [36].Other characteristics associated with entrepreneurial resilience are the capacity to make realistic plans, self-confidence, positive self-mage, communication skills, and the capacity to manage strong impulses and feelings [37].
Theoretically, entrepreneurial resilience can be linked to the psychological trait based on personality characteristics of the entrepreneur and the attribution theory [38,39].The trait theory argues that entrepreneurs possess certain specific traits or personal characteristics.These include creative and innovative skills, propensity to take risks, ability of building on organisation and managing it effectively, perseverance, resilience, and foreseeability [40].Entrepreneurial resilience can also be linked to the attribution theory.Attribution theory is a motivational theory that looks at how an individual constructs the meaning of an event based on his/her motives to find a cause, and his/her knowledge of the environment.Entrepreneurship success or failure can be attributed to three dimensions.These are locus of causality, stability and controllability.Entrepreneurs perceive the outcome of an event to be within or outside his/her personal control.Entrepreneurs tend to attribute success as well as failure only to him or herself and their own actions.An important underlying factor for entrepreneurial drive is resilience [38,39].

Entrepreneurial Resilience and Success at Organisational and Individual Levels
Resilience can help the entrepreneur to withstand internal and external shocks and may be one of the drivers of entrepreneurial performance or success.However, previous empirical studies on the effect of entrepreneurial resilience on firm performance have been inconclusive with respect to their findings [13].Adeniran, et al [12] investigated the relationship between resilience dimensions and the success of entrepreneurs.The study used the multi-dimensional approach to measure resilience.The dimensions of resilience obtained through factor analysis were resourcefulness, optimism and hardiness.The results indicate that the three dimensions of resilience are predictors of entrepreneurial success.Resourcefulness is the most important factor in predicting the success of the entrepreneur.Resilient entrepreneurs work hard to achieve their goals and quickly adapt to changes in order to take advantage of opportunities and learn from past mistakes [41].Bullough, et al [13] found that resilience helps entrepreneurs to manage business failure and helps re-entry into entrepreneurship.In addition, resilience is positively linked to innovation, which is one of the attributes of successful entrepreneurship.High growth firms tend to be a rational consequence of innovation.Growth is a proxy for entrepreneurial success.A resilient business constantly changes its portfolio of innovation to adapt to changing environmental conditions [42].Markman, et al [43] examined the relationship between resilience and innovation of SMEs.The results indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between innovation as measured by idea management capability, strategic management capability, and knowledge management and resilience.Reinmoeller, et al [44] also find a positive relationship between entrepreneurs' resilience and the success of their businesses.Ofunoye [45] however found an insignificant relationship between resilience and business success as measured by employee numbers, profitability growth, and sales growth.
Hayward, et al and Fisher, et al [46,47] point out that within the economic approach to entrepreneurship, success is measured by organisational performance indicators such as sales, profit, return on investment, and market share.The psychological approach to entrepreneurship focuses on the entrepreneur's personal motives, goals and aspirations, or intangible success factors when defining and measuring entrepreneurial success.Entrepreneurial success is a mixture of financial and non-financial factors.The classification of success into organisational and individual criteria gives a comprehensive framework for measuring success [48].Ofunoye [45] found a significant positive relationship between resilience and personal entrepreneurial success.Gorsuch [49] found that the higher the number of individual difference dimensions such as resilience, perseverance, and self-efficacy, the better the individual person-entrepreneurship fit, and the greater the likelihood of personal success.
This argument of this study is that entrepreneurial resilience is a dynamic adaptation process that allows business owners to continue to be forward-looking despite harsh market conditions and the destabilising events that they consistently face in the marketplace.Resilient entrepreneurs welcome rather than resist change, and work hard to achieve goals and manage challenges, take risks, and have a high tolerance of ambiguity.The characteristics of resilient entrepreneurs give them the tools, skills and dexterity that are key to the success of their business.Consequently, it is hypothesised that: (1) there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and success at the organisational level; and (2) there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and success at the individual level.

Materials and Methods
The study used the quantitative research approach with a descriptive and causal research design.Data was collected through the use of self-administered questionnaire in a survey using the cross-sectional approach.The survey was conducted in the Central Business District of Johannesburg in the Gauteng province of South Africa.The area was used for the survey because it contains a large number of SMEs.Because of the difficulty in obtaining the population of SMEs in the study area, convenience and the snowball sampling methods were used to identify survey participants.In total, 450 small business owners were contacted and 170 participated in the study.Gorsuch (1983) recommends at least 100 respondents for factor analysis [50].All the respondents in this study were in the retail business, and were owners of the firms.Examining respondents from similar line of business helped to control the effect of industry on entrepreneurial resilience.Also, the owner of the firm often possesses detailed information about the firm.A pilot study was conducted on the survey instrument used in this research with 20 SME owners in order to ensure face and content validity.The questionnaire was divided into three parts: (1) biographical information; (2) entrepreneurial resilience; and (3) business and individual success.Descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis were used for data analysis.The Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 24 was used for data analysis.The Cronbach's alpha was used as a measure of reliability.For ethical, consideration, the participants were informed about the purpose of the study, participation was voluntary, and confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed.The variables in the study were measured as follows:

Entrepreneurial Resilience
There are many scales used to measure resilience [50].These include the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 10 (CD-RISC 10), the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA), and the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS).The CD-RISC and CD-RISC 10 scales are the most dominant scales in measuring resilience because they have the best psychometric properties.The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (revised) ten-item scale was used to measure entrepreneurial resilience.Scale items are ranked on a five-point type scale from "0 not true at all" to "4 true nearly all the time".The ten-item scale is a revision of the original 25-item scale reported in [51].Factor analysis of the original scale yielded five factors which were: (1) personal competence, high standards and tenacity; (2) trust in one's instincts, tolerance of negative effect, and strengthening effect of stress; (3) positive acceptance of change and secure relationships; (4) control; and (5) spiritual influences.The original 25-item scale was refined in [52] and named CD-RISC-10.Markman [52] agreed that the 25-item scale showed acceptable levels of validity and reliability, but were not satisfied with the conceptual relationships between items that appeared in the same factors.Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the CD-RISC has an unstable factor structure across two demographically equivalent samples.CD-RISC 10 is a unidimensional ten-item scale that has high loadings and shows a high level of consistency.CD-RISC 10 has an alpha value of 0.85, indicating good reliability.Items are summed to produce a scale score that ranges from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 40 which indicates the highest level of resilience.The CD-RISC-10 has been validated by other studies with acceptable psychometric properties [53,54].The CD-RISC-10 has been adapted to measure entrepreneurial resilience with acceptable reliability [45].
Business/individual entrepreneurial success: The author of [45] points out that there is no single measure of success.The indicators include business or organisational, individual, and social indicators.Success was measured by this study using individual and organisational (business) criteria.This gives a more comprehensive framework to measure success.
Individual entrepreneurial success: Consistent with early empirical studies [45,48] individual entrepreneurial success was measured by four items on a five-point Likert scale ranging from "1 strongly disagree" to "5 strongly agree".The four items are: "(1) I am successful if I: am personally satisfied with my life and business (2) do only that which I want to do in life and business (3) continually grow my business and (4) achieve the business goals I set out to achieve".The four items are averaged to produce a scale mean score for individual entrepreneurial success.
Organisational entrepreneurial success was measured by growth in profitability and sales.A five-point Likert scale ranging from "1 significant decline" to "5 significant increase" in the prior year was used to measure sales and profitability.The items were summed, and their average used as the scale score [45].

Response Rate and Biographical Details
In total, 450 questionnaires were distributed to small business owners and 170 questionnaires were returned.The response rate was 38%.
The results as depicted by Table 1 show that the majority of the small business owners that participated in the survey are male in the 31-40 age bracket with Matric qualification.In addition, the majority of the participants have been in business for between 6 and 10 years.According to the schedule of size standards of the National Small Business Act, the SME sector can be branded into four separate groups.These are micro, very small, small, and medium.The groups are can be differentiated by the number of employees, gross asset value and turnover (Government Gazette of the Republic of South Africa 2003).This study used the number of employees to classify SMEs.For the retail sector, a micro enterprise is an enterprise with fewer than five employees, very small (fewer than ten employees), small (fewer than 50 employees), and medium (fewer than 100 employees.The results indicated that the majority of the respondents employ between one and four workers and thus can be classified as micro enterprises.

Descriptive Statistics of Entrepreneurial Resilience
Table 2 shows that the scale used to measure resilience has a satisfactory reliability.The internal consistency of scale is 0.80.A Cronbach's alpha of 0.70 is generally accepted as satisfactory [55].A Cronbach's alpha of 0.80 is consistent with that of other studies that used the ten-item scale to measure resilience.In Reference [52], a Cronbach's alpha of 0.85 was reported.Connor, et al [54] showed a Cronbach's alpha of 0.81 and the author of [45] used the same scale to measure the resilience of entrepreneurs with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.82.The resilience scale score is 28.12 out of a maximum of 40.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis
The appropriateness of a single factor model underlying 10-item CD-RISC was analysed by confirmatory factor analysis.
Confirmatory factor analysis as shown by Table 3 produced one factor.All the items used to measure entrepreneurial resilience have factor loadings of between 0.78 and 0.41.

Individual Entrepreneurial Success
Table 4 shows that the scale used to measure individual entrepreneurial success has satisfactory reliability, as shown by the Cronbach's alpha of 0.78.Four items were used to measure individual entrepreneurial success.The scale mean is 3.30.This indicates that the participants in the survey are on the average satisfied with their individual entrepreneurial success.Table 5 shows that the scale mean of organisational entrepreneurial success is 2.83.The participants in the study are moderately satisfied with sales growth.The satisfaction with profit growth is lower than the satisfaction with sales growth.The profitability of small businesses is affected by high operational costs.Macro factors such as high inflation, high interest rate, high electricity, fuel, labour, and other operational costs erode the profit of small businesses.

Correlation and Regression Results
The assumptions of correlation and regression include normality, homoscedasticity, and absence of multicollinearity.Normality was assessed by examining the normal Probability-Probability plot (P-P) plot.The P-P plot is used to assess whether or not a dataset is normally distributed.The data forms a straight line along the diagonal, thus normality can be assumed.To assess homoscedasticity, the researcher created a scatterplot of standardised residuals verses and standardized predicted values.The plot shows random scatter, and thus assumption is met.Multicollinearity was assessed by calculated variance inflation factors (VIFs).The VIF value is 4, which indicates that multicollinearity can be assumed.
The relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and individual and organisational success was examined using the Pearson correlation and regression analysis.Table 6 depicts the results of the correlation.The results "R = 0.78, Sig.< 0.05" and "R = 0.72, Sig.< 0.05" indicate a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial resilience and individual and organisational success.The results of the regression analysis are depicted in Tables 7 and 8.The regression results "R square = 0.782; Beta = 0.801, Sig.< 0.05" and "R square = 0.744; Beta = 0.709, Sig.< 0.05" indicate a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and individual and organisation success.The findings are consistent with those reported in Reference [12] in that entrepreneurial resilience is a predictor of organisational success.In addition, the findings are consistent with those reported in [45] in that entrepreneurial resilience has a significant positive relationship with individual success.

Conclusions and Implications for Theory and Practice
The failure rate of SMEs is very high in South Africa.The pursuit of entrepreneurship often comes with high stress, multiple obstacles, and high levels of uncertainty regarding outcomes.Small business owners operate in a difficult and constantly changing business environment.Entrepreneurial resilience is an important personal characteristic and may help drive business success.Entrepreneurial success is not only about achievement at the organisational level but also at the individual level.Research on the effect of entrepreneurial resilience on success is limited and the findings are inconclusive.The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and personal and organisational success.The results indicated that entrepreneurial resilience has a significant positive relationship with success at both individual and organisational levels.The findings of the study are relevant to small business owner and managers, researchers, and governmental and non-governmental bodies that support entrepreneurship in South Africa.From a theoretical perspective, the study used a bi-dimensional measure of success at personal and organisational levels.The findings contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial resilience and the success of small businesses.The empirical findings of the study can assist entrepreneurship researchers in having a better understanding of how entrepreneurial resilience impacts on success.By understanding the nature of the relationship between the two variables, the failure rate of small businesses can be reduced.The findings of the study can help small business owners to develop strategies to improve resilience by attending training and seminars on entrepreneurship especially in the areas of energy, pressure, change, failure management, and coping strategies.In addition, the findings of the study can help government bodies that support entrepreneurship in South Africa such as the Small Business Development Agency (SEDA) to understand how entrepreneurial resilience affects success at both personal and business levels.This can assist these organisations in designing training programmes on how to improve the resilience of small business owners.Additional studies can investigate the effect of owner's factors (gender, age, level of education) on entrepreneurial resilience.The survey was conducted in the Central Business District of Johannesburg in the Gauteng province of South Africa.Care should be exercised in generalising the findings of the study to all SMEs in South Africa.Other studies can investigate the impact of innovation on entrepreneurial resilience.In addition, the effect of firm and owner characteristics on entrepreneurial resilience can be investigated.

Funding:
The funding for the study was provided by the Research Department of the University of Limpopo.

Table 1 .
Biographical information of the respondents.

Table 6 .
Correlation results of resilience and success.

Table 7 .
Regression results of entrepreneurial resilience and individual success.

Table 8 .
Regression result of entrepreneurial resilience and organisational success.