The impact of black economic empowerment (BEE) on South African businesses: Focusing on ten dimensions of business performance

South African businesses need to adopt and comply with certain legislative measures aimed at black economic empowerment (BEE). BEE was introduced by the current ANC government in a bid to overcome the economic legacy of apartheid and to broaden participation in the economy, especially by those perceived to have been previously excluded or denied access. The Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) has been tasked with overseeing the implementation of BEE, and for this purpose has created a special BEE unit to regulate compliance and administer BEE scorecards. In an empirical survey, conducted in March/April of 2010 among the top local South African businesses ranging from small, medium to large multinational companies, the perceptions, thoughts and anticipations of 500 individual managers on the impact of BEE on ten selected dimensions of business performance were sought. Alarmingly, most of the respondents disagreed with the notion that BEE compliance would improve the performance of the companies they worked for, specifically with regard to overall and international competitiveness; service excellence and client satisfaction; quality; productivity; entrepreneurial spirit and innovation; production performance; human development; staff morale, business ethics and transparency; sales and access to markets; and financial performance. These sentiments were expressed despite the fact that the majority of respondents indicated that they as individuals could stand to benefit if the companies they were employed in became BEE-compliant.