Management education in higher education institutions related to the needs of small business management

Abstract

The original objectives of the research were fourfold:
(i) to explore and to analyse the learning process of managers in small and medium sized enterprises (SME)
(ii) to examine the current theories regarding management education and training,
(iii) to investigate the current provision of management education programmes in Higher Education orientated towards entrepreneurship,
(iv) an evaluation of the effectiveness of the provision in the North West of England, building on the research above.
The primary sources of data for the research were collected in four stages:
(i) a pilot, structured questionnaire distributed to groups of respondents, in the North West of England, selected from the business schools, business and enterprise development people, a structured questionnaire distributed through the
channels in
(i), in addition to academics from business schools outside the region,
(iii) semi-structured personal interviews, again with respondents from the channels listed in (ii), both within the region and outside the region,
(iv) structured telephone and personal interviews with respondents selected from groups (ii) and (iii) above; respondents for this stage were chosen for their experience and/or expertise in the topic under study.
The findings of the research indicated that management development in small and medium sized enterprises should ideally be a process, a process which is tentatively linked to the development needs the participant through time and the development life cycle of the enterprise.
The research has also revealed different perspectives on management development, which appear to have some influence on the learning models applied by the individual business schools.
As a result of the research, the writer has been able to develop and postulate a model for SME management development, which links the development of individual SME managers with the development life cycle of the enterprise - taking account of the perspectives of management development, which the research identified.