Today, many socio-economic problems surround communities that are associated with community development. Entrepreneurship has taken a pioneering role in tackling these problems in poor communities, especially, social entrepreneurship (Barki et al., 2015). Whether they are individuals or charitable organisations, social entrepreneurs are recognised as a powerful change agent for developing communities (Dees, 1998). Social entrepreneurship acts as a bridge between businesses and traditional business (Barki et al., 2015). Besides transforming the market, the influence of social entrepreneurs is becoming more important for the world to overcome social challenges and provide sustainable and effective social innovation solutions (Sassmannshausen & Volkmann, 2013). Stakeholders need to be fully aware of the impact of social entrepreneurs in order to appreciate the value of the contribution they make.

According to Dunphy, Griffiths and Benn (2013), governance defines roles, responsibilities and accountability within an organization. Whilst Sisulu (2012) define governance as the act of establishing policies, through continuous monitoring of proper implementation, by executives in leading the governing body of an organization. Corporate governance, according to Mankins and Rogers (2010), is operationalized as the means of human development that is achieved from managing of social and economic resources by empowering others.

In the current political pluralism, corporate governance has been of critical importance (Reenen, 2011). It is an essential and crucial factor that is mainly used in maintenance of an active balance between equality in society and the need for order (Boyd, 2015). Other elements that come handy with corporate governance in the public sector include: having and maintaining a corporate framework that is well organized that allows citizens to make a contribution and come up with creative means for solving existing challenges, use of power that is accountable and maintaining and protecting human freedom and rights according to the law (Clarkson, 2015).

Corporate governance stipulates the responsibilities and rights to be shared amongst diverse members in a corporation, for example, the board of directors, executives, employees of the organization, the community, and other stakeholders, and exhibit the norms and procedures for community decision-making. Corporate governance helps the organization in coming up with the structure that assists in formulating their objectives, and the ways of accomplishing the set goals and monitoring performance (Fung, 2014). The goal of a good corporate governance system is to allow the management board the liberty to run the government/organization onward nonetheless to apply the liberty contained by a structure of effective accountability (Brown, 2017).

The study is meant to interrogate the possibility of developing a framework for enhancing community development by small and medium sizes businesses given the existence of several challenges faced by the SMEs. The focus of the study is establishing how corporate governance can be used as a tool to guide the operations for SMEs to achieve sustainable community development.