South African fast food franchise industry's use of project management, towards a franchise project management course

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The business format, franchising, can be defined as "the granting of a licence for a predetermined financial return by a franchising company (franchisor) to its franchisees. The grant entitles them to make use of a complete business package, including training, support and the corporate name (branding and logos). Thus enabling them (franchisees) to operate their own businesses to exactly the same standards and format as the other units in the franchise chain." (Grant 1985, p4 as cited by Altinay, L. 2004)Franchising as a business model can be seen in essence as a proven business model that is sold as a "best practices knowledge" model to franchisees. Although the "best practices" approach is at the core of franchising no formal methodology was found to exist to guide the development thereof. The lack of a formal methodology in this regard has given rise to various self-designed so-called "project management" approaches as found to be applied in the development of franchise outlets.This mini-thesis sets about testing the theoretical and practical integration of a formal project management approach, in fast food franchising market.Both from a theoretical and practical point of view it was found that theintegration of a formal project management methodology and franchising as abusiness model would improve the functionality of franchising as a whole. Bydeveloping a formal methodology in a course for the franchising model, bettercontrol over the limited scarce resources (money, time, quality and people) atits disposal can be obtained, allowing optimal growth through properdevelopment, planning, monitoring and delivering of business outlets.