Dynamic challenges facing SME consulting firms in the built environment sector in Kwazulu-Natal province: The entrepreneurial approach

The consulting SME firms in the built environment sector of KwaZulu-Natal face challenges that prohibit them from sustaining and growing their businesses. This has a propensity to thwart the government's ambition of empowering the SMEs as partners of choice to improve the economy, alleviate poverty and eradicate unemployment. The blame is usually leveled against MNEs, the globalized business environment, and the government's lack of support. Whilst that is partly true, however, the other stark reality is that the business environment is rapidly and forever evolving, and local consulting SMEs are still entrenched in their traditional, dependent practices of doing business. It is concerning that in KwaZulu-Natal, established and fledgling SME companies in this sector are collapsing at an alarming rate. What is also worth noting is these companies are often portrayed as helpless, failing "fly-by-night entities that perpetually require government assistance to stay in business more like “tenderpreneurs” than entrepreneurs. Within this context, the study aimed to explore the challenges facing SME consulting firms in the built environment sector in KwaZulu-Natal and developed some guidelines that can be used to help them towards a paradigm shift so as to embrace independence as well as new trends to compete more effectively locally and globally. Methodologically, the study was informed by the interpretive research paradigm. The idea was to elicit the underlying feelings, thoughts, and experiences of SME owners, managers, and other employees of different ages, different qualifications operating at different levels of their organizations. Drawing from social constructivist understandings, the researcher established relations and interactions with the conveniently, and purposively selected SME companies (5 in total), yielding 20 participants. The intention was to obtain deeper insights into their personal experiences and viewpoints about their business world. Data was collected through elaborate and in-depth interviews, observations, and was enhanced through personal reflections. Data were analyzed using content, and thematic analysis, and was managed using NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software. The intention was to generate actionable knowledge to help provide practical solutions to the challenges and realities faced by these SMEs in their business millieu. The findings revealed several internal and external challenges. The most noteworthy internal challenges were a lack of financial discipline, a lack of managerial skills, failure to utilize internal resources as resources for competitiveness, a lack of strategic planning, and organizational inertia to change, among others. The most prominent external challenges included a culture of corruption and bribery, the brain drain, globalization, and economic liberalization, money laundering, bank lending models, public sector procurement policy, and a lack of trust in strategic alliances, among others. The study contributes to the prevailing theoretical understandings of SMEs by unveiling knowledge systems that are often taken for granted by SME owners and managers. It is argued that localized understandings of existing theories are needed to help utilize local knowledge systems more effectively. This encourages SMEs to focus on utilizing their competitive advantage founded on their internal resources to participate and contend more effectively locally and globally. Guidelines were also developed with the idea to assist SMEs to be more independent, sustainable, and competitive in the face of the fluid and ever-changing business world.