Understanding Entrepreneurial Leadership in South African SMMEs: A Soft Systems Methodology Approach

Entrepreneurs operating within South African Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) face persistent complexity arising from economic uncertainty, institutional fragmentation, resource scarcity, and rapidly changing market conditions. Despite the critical role of SMMEs in socioeconomic development, there remains a limited scholarly understanding of how entrepreneurial leadership is conceptualised and enacted within such complex, context-specific environments. This study explores Entrepreneurial Leadership (EL) as a dynamic, contextually embedded, and systems-oriented leadership approach suited to navigating uncertainty in developing economy contexts. Drawing on Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), the research adopts an interpretivist, qualitative design to examine how leadership is conceptualised, practiced, and constrained within South African SMMEs. Empirical data collected through semi‑structured interviews, focus groups, and participatory workshops with entrepreneurs and key stakeholders were analysed using thematic analysis informed by systems thinking principles. SSM techniques – including rich pictures, CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformation process, Weltanschauung [Worldview], Owners, and Environmental) analysis, and conceptual modelling – were employed to elicit multiple stakeholder perspectives and explicate the systemic conditions shaping entrepreneurial leadership practice. The findings reveal that entrepreneurial leadership in South African SMMEs is deeply embedded within interconnected institutional, social, and economic systems. Leadership challenges are not merely individual capability issues, but are influenced by misaligned education systems, fragmented policy support, and limited access to leadership development infrastructure. The study further demonstrates that SSM provides a valuable analytical and participatory framework for enabling strategic sensemaking, surfacing systemic misalignments, and identifying contextually feasible interventions. By integrating leadership theory, entrepreneurship scholarship, and systems thinking, the paper contributes a holistic systems-based framework for understanding entrepreneurial leadership as a process shaped by dynamic interactions between individual agency and structural conditions. The proposed model offers practical insights for policymakers, educators, and practitioners seeking to strengthen leadership capacity, strategic foresight, and sustainable value creation within SMMEs across the Global South.