Meeting the development needs of owner managed small enterprise: a discussion of the centrality of action learning

Abstract

This paper explores the role that action learning might play in micro and small enterprise development. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses upon the distinctive characteristics of smallness and ownership and their implication for management development processes in the owner managed firm. In particular the impact of personal values, ways of doing things and distinctive forms of learning are explored. The argument points to the emotional underpinning of the ways in which the organisation is developed and run. The challenges to action learning are then reviewed. The second part focuses upon the ‘institutional’ factors that stand in the way of effective approaches to owner manager learning and in particular how they impact on the way that knowledge is delivered and pedagogies applied by business education organisations to the small firm. It is argued that the pervasive corporatism of the approach does much to explain why owner managers are reluctant to pay for existing training and education offers. The barriers that confront action learning approaches are examined. Overall it is concluded that action learning is central to effective owner manager learning, that there are distinctive skill challenges for action learning facilitators but that there need to be major changes in institutional norms.

Keywords:

• owner-manager learning
• entrepreneurial pedagogy
• ways of doing
• small business development
• relationship learning

Notes

Although it does not seemingly explore the nature of the resource acquisition particularly knowledge.

A point first highlighted in the UK 1971 Report of The Bolton Committee of enquiry on Small Firms Cmnd 4811 HMSO London.

In a series of action research experiments were carried out at Durham and Leicester Universities to explore this concept.

For example the DUBS Growth Programme, which has been disseminated in a number of countries.

For several years the author was president of the National Levy Grant Appeals Tribunal set up government to deal with appeals from firms against the decisions of the Industrial Training Boards set up under the Industrial Training Act of 1975. It was his experience that 90% of appeals related to the failure, deliberate or otherwise, to conform to procedures as described in the text. They paid little attention to if and how the staff of the firms learned or, indeed, to their performance.

Levels of competence-based standards may be narrowly related to progression around a single role in an organisation. For example, inventory control and stock management can be organised as a separate competency with progression through levels. But the controller of inventory in a small firm may simultaneously be undertaking a wide range of other activities, for example, driving a fork lift truck to move stock around or supervising the loading/unloading of vehicles.

It is, for example, the experience of the author that when working with trainers or educators failure to end sessions at the appointed time will lead to adverse criticism. When working with entrepreneurs on the other hand there is no problem in this respect and often an articulated reluctance to stop a session when there is interesting discussion. A common reaction is ‘we do not work with breaks like this’.

A recent scan of the references sections of the four ‘top’ rated entrepreneurship and small business journals reveals not one ‘grey’ literature reference.

In a paper in 1983 the author described a number of, then, action earning focused small firm interventions including; project based programmes; workshop groups; company and/or self-audit analytical approaches; inter-firm comparison-based approaches; problem solving workshops; and group counselling approaches (Gibb 1983).

See a brief description of the work of the Industrial Training Boards and the Manpower Services Commission in the 1970s in Gibb (1997, 14–15).

The author has written several papers setting out the case for this and discussed this issue with many relevant agencies and small firm associations. Such schools would address all of the issues discussed in this paper including the criticisms of the business school model.