The Impact of Training and Enterprise Councils on the Provision of Small Business Support

Abstract

Training Enterprise Councils (TECs) were established in the early 1990s in a rush of government and public/private agency enthusiasm and, although the main thrust of the TEC initiative is concentrated on providing Vocational Education Training (VET), they also have a remit to administer and develop training and support for small businesses. To many commentators, their establishment represents an ambitious attempt to privatise and rationalise the ‘enterprise industry’ (e.g. Bennett et al, 1994: p151; Peck, 1991: p23; Meager, 1991: p6).Much of the recent research on the provision of enterprise support by TECs has focused on determining the effectiveness of that support through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) themselves (Richardson et al, 1993; Marshall et al, 1993; Goss and Jones, 1992; Haughton, 1993; Curran and Blackburn, 1994; Storey 1994). The contention of this paper is that this only shows one side of the story; to facilitate a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of enterprise support both the demand side (the small firms) and the supply side (training providers and TECs) need to be assessed. This is because the structure of provision has an explicit and implicit impact on the programmes and schemes in that it may affect the scope, duration and level of support.