Page 1 of 10 Research Article Proportionality in enterprise development of South African towns Authors: We investigated proportionalities in the enterprise structures of 125 South African towns 1 Danie F. Toerien through examining four hypotheses, (1) the magnitude of enterprise development in a town Maitland T. Seaman1 is a function of the population size of the town; (2) the size of an enterprise assemblage of a Affiliation: town is a function of the town’s age; (3) there are statistically significant relationships, and 1Centre for Environmental hence proportionalities, between the total number of enterprises in towns and some, if not Management, University of all, of the enterprise numbers of different business sectors in towns; and (4) the implications the Free State, Bloemfontein, of proportionalities have far-reaching implications for rural development and job creation. South Africa All hypotheses were accepted on the basis of statistically significant p( < 0.05) correlations, Correspondence to: except for the second hypothesis – the age of a town does not determine the size of its Danie Toerien enterprise assemblage. Analysis for the fourth hypothesis suggested that there are two broad entrepreneurial types in South African towns: ‘run-of-the-mill’ entrepreneurs and ‘special’ Email:
[email protected] entrepreneurs, which give rise to different enterprise development dynamics. ‘Run-of-the- mill’ enterprises are dependent on, and limited by, local demand and if there is only a small Postal address: demand, the entrepreneurial space is small. By comparison, ‘special’ enterprises have much PO Box 339, Bloemfontein larger markets because their products and/or services are exportable. We propose that the 9300, South Africa fostering of ‘special’ entrepreneurs is an imperative for local economic development in South Dates: African towns.