Faktore wat winsgewende groei in klein en mediumgrootte sakeondernemings beïnvloed

English: The existence of a small business sector presents certain advantages to economic households. The continued existence of the small business sector will, however, only be secured if small businesses grow profitably. It seems that profitable growth is the exception and when it occurs, growth is uncontrolled or the results thereof is negative. The question is therefore: Why do some businesses grow profitably and others not? According to this study, profitable growth is rooted in a combination of factors. The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent the entrepreneur, opportunity and resources contribute to profitable growth in a small business enterprise. A two-fold investigation, consisting of a literature study and empirical research, was conducted. Section A consists of Chapters 2 to 5, and covers the theoretical discussion of profitable growth and the three factors influencing profitable growth, namely the entrepreneur, opportunity and resources. Section B includes the empirical results and conclusions of the study. Profitable growth is regarded as the real increase in profitability and turnover in relation to each other over the long term. Profitable growth leads to wealth increase which is the justification for the existence of businesses. Profitable growth will only occur if entrepreneurs identify sound opportunities and overcome financial and management problems due to the growth process. Sound opportunities can be classified as follows: the organisation has the ability to exploit the opportunity; the duration of the opportunity is long enough to recover investment; a real demand for the product exists; products differ from those of the competitor's; little competition and substitute products exist; low bargaining power of customers and suppliers and entry barriers can be overcome. A competitive advantage ensures profitable growth. Small businesses can obtain a competitive advantage through strategy differentiation. A growth strategy that can be used to adapt to the changing environment is intensive growth, with specific reference to product and market innovation. Management problems that entrepreneurs experience as a result of growth are leadership dilemmas; poor long term focus; poor communication; increased uncertainty amongst workers; forming of subgroups in the organisation; poor human resource management; increased stress for the entrepreneur; increase in rigidity and a change in organisation's culture. Added to the aforementioned, the entrepreneur's own role has to change as well. The entrepreneur also plays a crucial role in the development of organisational structures, entrepreneurial teams and organisational cultures. Small businesses usually experience shortages in capital. One of the main results of growth is cash flow problems which increases the shortages in capital. To prevent financial problems, cash flow can be monitored by means of cashflow statements, cashflow ratio's and by determining an affordable growth rate by using the percentage of sales model and the Boston-model. Entrepreneurs are forced to use external financing to finance growth although the generation of own funds for growth is the most desirable. The financing of growth in small businesses, however, often takes place by means of debt. The literature study is followed by an empirical study that consisted of four phases, namely the definition of the target population, compilation of the questionnaire, completion of the investigation and the processing of the data. Structured data collection, namely personal interviews by means of a questionnaire was used to obtain information from the sample (profitable, growing, small and medium sized businesses in Bloemfontein). After that data was analyzed by means of cross tabulation and variance analyses. It is clear from the empirical investigation that profitable growth is an attainable objective for small businesses. Profitable growth is anchored in identifying and exploiting of sound opportunities and the overcoming of management and resource problems stemming from the growth process. The potential for profitable growth does exist for small and medium sized businesses in different markets, trades and circumstances.