Author(s): Samson Nambei Asoba, Nteboheng Mefi and Khulekani Yakobi
Sustainability is a concept that has recently gained significant interest in a wide spectrum of fields including management and business sciences. Despite this situation, few of these studies have been focused on the sustainability and growth of small immigrant owned craft enterprises in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition, national policy on entrepreneurship has not considered the sustainability of immigrant entrepreneurs adequately. This problem has been compounded by the existence of limited theoretical models and frameworks to inform policy on immigrant entrepreneurship. In this paper, the concept was explored against the high failure rate of small business in South Africa. This study focused on immigrant owned small craft enterprises in Cape Town given that Cape Town is a key tourist attraction area where crafts contribute immensely to the city’s growth. The aim of the paper was to explore the factors that can be considered for the growth of the small craft enterprises owned by immigrants in Cape Town. The grounded theory methodology anchored on interviews was adopted. The study found that there are personal traits, social drivers, institutional drivers, technology adoption factors and shock resilience drivers that promote the sustainability and growth of the immigrant owned small craft enterprises.