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This study investigates the use of social media in tourism SMMEs to widen their business networks to increase competitiveness.Aim: This study contributes to the debate on business networking among stakeholders within the tourism sector. Methods:To close the research gap, the current study employed stakeholder theory and survey data of 123 hospitality SMMEs to explore the influence of social media utilisation for business networking with stakeholders and its effect on business competitiveness.Results: Findings showed that the majority of tourism SMMEs used social media technologies to retain their customer base, solicit feedback from customers, assert their dominance in the market, maintain contact between their co-workers and share information. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between social media business networking and competitiveness of these firms. The study recommended that tourism SMMEs should create a policy framework for comprehensive stakeholder engagement that serves the interests of all individuals. Conclusion:To increase the competitiveness of such firms, SMMEs should incorporate social media into their formal internal and external information strategy.

Background: Despite numerous training programmes by the South African (SA) government equipping citizens with entrepreneurial skills to create businesses for economic development. The country still faces a high rate of liquidation of businesses leading to unemployment.Aim: This article mainly aimed to assess immigrant entrepreneurs’ contribution to entrepreneurial development in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality (MMM).Setting: The study focuses on the role that skilled immigrant entrepreneurs play in entrepreneurial development in MMM through Human Capital theory.Methods: Drawing on interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted empirical stance and qualitative approach. A total of 20 participants’ immigrant entrepreneurs and employees from small retailers in MMM were interviewed. Data collected were analysed using the Burnard’s (1991) stage-by-stage method of the semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was used to analyse data collected. Whilst thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data obtained from the face-to-face interviews.Results: Although immigrant entrepreneurs were using their resources to share expertise and experience, most of their employees were not willing to learn. Immigrant entrepreneurs considered government support as a valuable tool when seeking to understand their contribution to developing the citizens. Accordingly, the results demonstrated that entrepreneurial skills transfer via in-store training influenced local citizens’ entrepreneurial mindset and decision to start businesses. The findings also revealed that immigrant businesses might play a critical role in solving entrepreneurial development of SA as government funding was considered to be a tool for skills transfer and entrepreneurial growth.Conclusion: Whilst most studies investigated immigrant-citizen’s entrepreneurial skills transfer process, little attention was given to possible entrepreneurial development mechanisms through business collaboration. The study concludes that human capital in the form of skilled labour has a positive effect on entrepreneurial development. This informs policymakers to prioritise the upskilling of the workforce and contributes towards value-generating economic activities.

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