A Dissertation Submitted to Dar Es Salaam Campus College in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements of the Award of the Degree of Master of Business Administration in Corporate Management of Mzumbe University, Tanzania
The study was set to investigate the effect of crime prevention on the growth of SMEs at Ilala Municipality.In approaching these research questions, the researcher used two set of well-prepared structured questionnaires and interview guide questions to obtain the study results. Data were collected and analyzed by descriptive analysis and correlation analysis technique while considering a sample size of 92 SMEs owners and 48 police officers of Ilala Police Centre.
The study revealed that the direction relationships among the identified variables are positively correlated. Therefore findings of the study entail that there is a strong relationship between crime preventation and the growth of SMEs. With respect to the types of crimes affecting SMEs at Ilala Municipality, the study also revealed that among the crime types include but not limited to all burglary, vandalism, cyber crime, all fraud, all theft, and assaults and threats. The study further revealed that theft as the type of crime was found to be mostly regularly reported by SMEs owners at Ilala Police Centre, while the least type of crimes reported at Ilala Police centre were assaults and threats.
The study also concludes that among the strategies for crime prevention towards SMEs that were used by the SMEs owners of Ilala Municipality include surveillance cameras, burglar alarms, use of locks, key control, keeping minimal cash on hand and security guards or guard dogs. It was discovered that the among these strategies, security guards or guard dogs strategy was found to be the most effective strategies to prevent my business from criminals. The study uncovered that crime prevention contributes on the growth of SMEs in terms of enhancing safety of customers, enhancing confidence in business, minimizing robbery and burglary risk, minimizing fraud risk and minimizing the theft risk.
The study suggests that another study need to be conducted while focusing on exploring the extent to which crime prevention has an impact towards the entire community.