文档介绍：Business, Management, Accountancy and Finance Conference, Cardiff, April 2009
Stream 2: Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
Discussion Paper
Evaluating the Use of Action Learning Sets to Facilitate Continuing Professional Development: a Pilot Study with Entrepreneurs and SME Owners in North East England
John Fenwick, Paul Leonard, Teresa Waring
Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University
1 Introduction
The importance of SMEs to the UK economy is overwhelming. Organizations employing less than 250 people make up % panies and account for 52% of turnover and % employment in the private sector (DTI, 2003). Within current economic conditions, it is imperative that the SME and munity is prepared for the future and is equipped to survive the recession and to develop their business thereafter.
There has been a focus in recent SME literature on management and leadership development (eg, Morrison, 2003; Perren and Grant, 2001). However, off-the-shelf management development programmes have limited relevance to the needs of SMEs. Entrepreneurs and small business owners arguably derive more benefit from a programme specifically tailored to their needs and their specific stage of growth.
In this paper, we propose for discussion some key issues arising from our current work with the owners of Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs) and single-person businesses in the