The influence of managerial leadership styles on the sustainable growth of small and micro enterprises in South Africa.

Abstract

Communities are concerned about the sustainability of businesses. The determining factors for sustainable growth of businesses include experience, relationship with employees, supply and demand, and whether or not the key industry resources are available. The other key factor that contributes to the sustainability of businesses is managerial leadership style. There are different styles of managerial leaderships, and the aim of this research is to investigate the influence of three managerial leadership styles on the sustainable growth of small enterprises in South Africa (SA).

The primary data for this study was gathered through hand-delivered questionnaires sent to a sample of 384 small enterprise owners in Pietermaritzburg (PMB), South Africa. The sample size was chosen based on the survey calculations by Krejcie and Morgan (1970). Their survey calculations are similar to the calculations one gets from an online survey calculator. At a confidence level of 95 percent and a confidence interval of 5, a population value of 770,007 resulted in a sample size of 384 respondents. The researcher used a non-probability sampling method with convenience and snow-ball sampling methods to collect data. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows Version 25 was used to analyse the responses obtained from structured and unstructured questions.

For any organisation to succeed and become profitable, it is imperative that the leadership have the necessary style, skills, and vision. Current research has shown that the two predominant styles of leadership that are well suited to small enterprises are transformational leadership and the transactional leadership. However, the study by Franco and Matos (2015) has evident that laissez-faire leadership style is appropriate for SMMEs as well. For the results of this study to perceive that laissez-faire leadership style has several gaps, could be because of the particular sector the business falls under. Based on the type of business, due to the involvement of monetary transactions in some business organisations, employees still need to be monitored and the decisions made mostly need to be shared, as the employees cannot make decisions on their own.