The impact of continuous training in small and medium enterprises: Lessons from an industrial case analysis

Abstract

In the current competitive environment, great emphasis is placed on the knowl- edge and skills of the workforce as important elements in achieving organizational goals. As this focus on employee skills has increased, so have organizational programs and initiatives to ensure that the training in place to develop those skills is not sporadic, but rather part of a continuous effort toward keeping employee skills up to date. It becomes fundamental, in this context, to understand such programs and evaluate their impact, both within companies and externally, in terms of their decision making and business results. This paper aims to do that, through a study of the work-related training practices of in- dustrial firms in the Northern-Spanish region of Asturias. In addition, it develops a new variable – training intensity – and examines its impact on the planning, execution and evaluation of training programs in these firms. Among other findings, our study confirms that training-intensive firms have a more defined strategic approach to the market and are generally more conscious of business competition than their non-training-intensive competitors. Implications for management are also presented.

Keywords:

• competitiveness
• industrial sector
• continuous training
• training investment and evaluation
• specific and generic training
• case analysis

JEL Classification:

• J24
• J31
• L11
• O31
• O47

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guillermo O. Pérez-Bustamante Ilander

Guillermo O. PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE ILANDER holds a PhD and is a Lecturer of Business Or- ganization at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Currently, he is the Director of Graduate Employability at the same university. He has been teaching Technology Management at the Business School since 1994. His research interests include technology and knowledge management and entrepreneurship. He has lectured as Visiting Professor in France, Portugal, Colombia, Argentina and Peru, as well as in several Spanish universities.

Carla S. E. Marques

Carla S. E. MARQUES is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Department of Economics, Sociology and Management, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal. In her PhD in Management Science (UTAD), she evaluated Portuguese industrial firms’ innovation strategies. She is the Coordinator of the ‘Innovation, Markets and Organization’ research group at UTAD’s Centre for Transdisciplinary Development Studies (CETRAD). Her research on innovation and entrepreneurship has been presented at numerous international conferences and published in in- ternational journals such as Service Business, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, and Management Research. She is a regular reviewer for the Ibero-American Academy of Manage- ment, USASBE Meeting, European Journal of Innovation Management, and International Journal of Management and Information Technology. Her research interests include innovation, management of change and entrepreneurship.

Marjan S. Jalali

Marjan S. JALALI is Assistant Professor at the ISCTE Business School of the University Institute of Lisbon, and researcher at the Business Research Center (BRU-IUL), Portugal. She holds a PhD in Management from the University of Sydney, Australia. She is editorial board member of the Global Business and Economics Review, managing editor of the International Journal of Management Science and Information Technology, and some of her works have been published nationally and internation- ally. Her research interests include multiple criteria decision analysis, strategic decision making and consumer behavior.

Fernando A. F. Ferreira

Fernando A. F. FERREIRA is Assistant Professor at the ISCTE Business School of the University Institute of Lisbon, and Adjunct Research Professor at the Fogelman College of Business and Eco- nomics of the University of Memphis, TN, USA. He holds a PhD in Quantitative Methods Applied to Economics and Management from the University of Algarve, Portugal. He is Section Editor of the Global Business and Economics Review and Editorial Board Member of several international journals. Some of his articles are published by ISI-listed journals such as Journal of the Operational Research Society, Management Decision, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, and International Journal of Strategic Property Management. He has practical experience as group facilitator and his research interests include multiple criteria decision analysis and integrated systems for performance measurement.