Abstract
Strategic management is a mainstay to every organization and can be adapted for the effective management of Small Medium Engineering (SME) companies. The area of interest of this study was to explore the understanding of the proprietors of SME companies in Polokwane city of Limpopo province about the use of strategic management principles in the operation of their organizations. It was primed by three objectives, firstly, to investigate the understanding and use of strategic management principles by the proprietors of SME companies in Polokwane city; secondly, to determine the impact of the application of strategic management principles on the progress or otherwise of SME companies. Thirdly, to understand the perception of the proprietors of SME companies on their knowledge of strategic management. To achieve these objectives, a structured questionnaire was sent to 155 respondents, proprietors of SME industries and 149 usable questionnaires were returned and acknowledged. This gave a response rate of approximately 96%. Statistical software SPSS (version 22) was used to analyse the quantitative data and results was represented on the frequency tables and figures. The exploratory factors analysis was adopted in order to explore the connections between the variables responded to in the questionnaire. The outcome of the analysis facilitated the identification of the most essential factors or variables and provision of group name for the associated variables. The Cronbach alpha was used to test the internal consistency of the empirical factors and were found satisfactory. The study established that proprietors’ knowledge and competence in management skills are means of growing SME companies, development of knowledge skills is key in the impact of application of strategic management principles needed for developing SME industries. Furthermore, the knowledge of strategic management principles is used to resolve business problems and offer significant benefits for SME industries. Therefore, the study recommended that proprietors of SME companies should embrace strategic management principles by investing sufficient resources to boost the holistic development of the capacity of their employee, in order to support the growth of SME companies.
M.Ing. (Engineering Management)