African American Small Business Owners’ Attitudes Toward Business Training

Abstract

The attitudes toward training courses are documented for the rapidly growing African American segment of small business owners. The study provides evidence supporting the training‐business creation model suggested by the Small Business Act and by Becker’s work on human capital. Over 700 responses to a mail survey were divided into African American small business owners and Caucasian American small business owners. The African American small business owners rated the training courses as significantly more important than the Caucasian American small business owners for all 23 of the areas tested. A matched sample was created from the data set to evaluate the idea that demographics such as type of business and number of employees may have influenced the results. The findings from the matched sample were consistent with the findings from the total sample. Various reasons for these unusually strong results are offered as well as directions for future research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Warren Martin

Warren Martin is a professor, Department of Management, Marketing and Industrial Distribution, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Barbara A. Wech

Barbara A. Wech is assistant professor, Department of Management, Marketing and Industrial Distribution, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

John Sandefur

John Sandefur is owner and manager, Computer Builders Warehouse, Hoover, Alabama. John is former director of the Alabama Small Business Development Consortium, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Ruming Pan

Ruming Pan is a Ph.D. student, Health Administration program, University of Alabama at Birmingham.