Despite the demand for ICT skills, businesses are experiencing an ICT skills shortage. Constantly changing ICT technologies require business leaders to find qualified ICT professionals to implement new business strategies and business processes. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is experiencing a continued skills shortage and various initiatives have been launched to address the problem. Businesses continually struggle to find qualified and suitably skilled ICT personnel. As a result businesses have had to outsource their ICT requirements off-shore to obtain the required ICT skills and maintain their competitive advantage. In a country desperate for job creation, entrepreneurial inclination and start up of new businesses may play a pivotal role in the economic development and well being of individuals able to capitalise on the availability of ICT opportunities. Entrepreneurship is a critical factor in promoting innovation, creating employment opportunities and generating social and economic wealth in a country's economy. Sectors such as Information and Communication Technologies can be seen as archetypal entrepreneurial industries and can consequently play a key role in economic development. In the research that follows the author identifies an ICT skills shortage in South Africa. This is followed by an exploratory study that investigates the influence of psychological traits and socio-cultural variables on the entrepreneurial intent of selected ICT SMME’s in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Area. The findings revealed that both psychological traits together with socio-cultural variables influence an individual’s intention to start up a business. The predominant psychological trait discovered during the research was perseverance. Family environmental issues were the dominant socio-cultural variable influencing entrepreneurial intention amongst the case study subjects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8754 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Whittaker, Donna |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MBA |
| Format | xiii, 126 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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