We really need to talk about owner-managers and financial awareness!

ABSTRACT

This article explores a long-standing inefficiency in the enterprise creation and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sectors – the low level of financial skills in owner-managers. Such a discussion must also include the wholesale sub-contracting of financial skills from management in SMEs, particularly at the formative early stage of enterprise creation. This article will explore the aspects of financial skills that are relevant to owner-managers, then look at why they need those skills and how well they are served by trainers and educators, before examining the role of influencers such as state agencies and banks in creating a conducive environment. Finally, we will draw some brief conclusions as to how the SME sector would appear were all the players to take their roles more seriously.

KEYWORDS:

• SME
• finance
• financial perspective
• business models
• dolearnfinance.com

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jack Foley is an economist and trainer focused on helping entrepreneurs use simple financial techniques to avoid going into business with flawed business models. He has designed and delivered national training initiatives, developed and brought to market financial software applications and provided innovative training and advisory services to countless entrepreneurs and their advisers/educators over the past three decades. He is an engaging presenter/guest speaker at colleges and enterprise events such as Entrepreneurs' Day at the ICSB 2014 World Conference in Dublin. Recently he has worked on the development of a number of innovative active-learning websites such as www.dolearnfinance.com