Developing a South African Entrepreneurial Coaching Framework for Entrepreneurs in Business Incubators

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is a crucial economic driver, with small enterprises recognised as a critical source of employment and poverty alleviation for South Africa. The public and private sectors thus place a strong emphasis on the growth of small businesses to secure their long-term viability and prevent their collapse. However, despite South Africa’s focus on small business development and high investment by the public and private sectors in entrepreneurial coaching, small business failure rates remain high. Thus, an urgent need is to develop an entrepreneurial coaching framework to improve the outcomes for entrepreneurs and their incubated businesses. This empirical research study employs a mixed-method, cross-sectional design within a pragmatic paradigm. Data collected via a questionnaire administered to a sample of 296 entrepreneurs was processed with SPSS v.27 and STATA13 to produce descriptive statistics. Chi-square tests, factor analysis, reliability and structural equation modelling were performed on the primary data. For the qualitative data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 32 entrepreneurial coaches, business incubator managers and industry experts; the data was processed via ATLAS.ti version 23 for coding and thematic analysis. The primary themes and findings of the qualitative study are the entrepreneurial coaching needs of small businesses, critical success factors for entrepreneurial coaching in the South African setting, and features in the incubation programme that enable entrepreneurial coaching success. Contrary to the literature, the findings indicate that demographics and cultural intelligence are critical success factors in South Africa. Specifically, the coach’s ability to speak the coachee’s language improved cultural relatability, which is crucial in South Africa. The entrepreneurs/study participants reported the coach’s surface demographics, such as race, gender and age, as unimportant. Nevertheless, the coach’s industry experience was ranked high. The study results are consistent with Ken Wilber’s Integral Model. Entrepreneurial coaching outcomes are linked to the following four quadrants demonstrating statistical significance: entrepreneurial v self-efficacy, entrepreneurial resilience, being visionary and building relationships. The results confirm entrepreneurial coaching as a significant predictor of business growth and building relationships. Considering the literature, an entrepreneurial coach needs to bring more than their coaching skills into the coaching process, especially entrepreneurial experience, networks, diversity, cultural intelligence and empathy. Accordingly, it is recommended that entrepreneurial coaches understand entrepreneurs' needs in the South African context, narrowing these down further to the provincial location of their entrepreneur clients. Thus, the framework that emerged from this study is focussed on enabling business incubator managers to evaluate the coaching services received while providing input into the programme design and also consider critical success factors for entrepreneurial coaching from a programme perspective. Overall, a systems approach is advocated for the effective growth of entrepreneurs, encompassing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in which incubators operate, the community, entrepreneurial coaches, technical trainers, and entrepreneurs. This study calls for more research to investigate the efficacy of entrepreneurial coaching, its outcomes, and business growth. Longitudinal research is required to assess the long-term impact of entrepreneurial coaching on business growth after incubation. Future research should focus on the deficiencies and challenges in the competency of South African entrepreneurial coaches. Finally, qualitative approaches could be used to gain a more in-depth understanding of entrepreneurs' experiences with the entrepreneurial coaching process.