Small and medium enterprises sustainability and governance recently become a topical issue. Governance applicable to companies (corporate governance) had been questionable due to a plethora of scandals, ethics issues and corruption happening in companies. Therefore, applicability of corporate governance to small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry has been questioned. These challenges caused the study to explore humanistic management philosophy in governance with specific reference to the Port Shepstone minibus taxi industry in KwaZulu -Natal, South Africa. Humanistic management philosophy was put forward as an alternative to economicism philosophy in governance. The study wanted to establish the extent to which humanistic management strategy, humanistic management leadership, humanistic management ethics and humanistic management culture affect governance of small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry. These objectives were viewed using Ubuntu philosophy as a theoretical framework. The study adopted a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach advocated by post-positivists. A mixed method approach taps into the advantages of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather rich data which explained the phenomenon. The case study designed used enabled the study to do an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon on one industry (minibus taxis industry). The research methods used were questionnaires, observation and interviews to gather data. The data was gathered from minibus taxi operators. The integration of results from research methods generated a generalisation. The results revealed that humanistic management philosophy in governance of the minibus taxi industry was a challenge. The taxi operators, as owners of the business, were not implementing humanistic management leadership principles, humanistic management strategies, humanistic management ethics and humanistic management culture in governance. This affected their sustainability due to conflict with stakeholders. This contradicted the expectation of stakeholders who believe in African philosophy (Ubuntu). The governance of the small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry was based on economicism philosophy instead of humanistic management philosophy. Therefore, the study recommended a humanistic management philosophy in governance model to guide small and medium enterprises in their business governance.

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