Business Management Training Research Articles

GREENING OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT TRAINING IN GERMANY: TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY?

Germany provides a dynamic environmental policy context based on a comprehensive network of regulation and increasing use of market-based instruments. It is widely recognized in Germany that the ability of companies to respond positively to the business opportunities afforded by this depends to a large extent on the knowledge, understanding and skills of their management personnel. This has been identified as a major professional challenge by the providers of business management training in Germany. Evidence is presented for an effective process of liaison and co-operation between academic institutions, industrial companies and environmental policy-makers. The educational output of this process is described in terms of an integrated environmental business management curriculum model which is firmly embedded in current industrial and policy-making practice. This curriculum model is evaluated in terms of its ability to promote the German national economic interest and also in terms of its likely contribution to sustainable development in the German economy.

Business Education and Management Training in the Old and New East Central Europe

This paper focuses on business education and management training in the old and new East Central Europe-that is, in a historical perspective. Emphasis is given to social and cultural settings in which such learning and teaching take place. The paper investigates the structure, the conduct, and the performance of the business education 'industry' in the region. We conclude the essay with a series of specific recommendations.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY IN HEALTH CARE REFORM: A RESPONSE TO PATTERSON AND SCHERGER

(a) health care reform is inevitable, (b) con- sumers will have multiple choices in the health care market place. (c) marriage and family therapists (MFTs) need business and team management training. (d) training in cost effective forms of therapy is imponant, (e) therapists need to be well trained in diagnostic skills, and

Training and Development for Small Business Managers. Part Two: a procedure for identifying management development needs

ABSTRACT This is Part Two of a two‐part article, the first part having been published in The Vocational Aspect of Education, 44, pp. 211–231. Part One discussed the literature concerning small business management and its implications for the development of an instrument for identifying the training and development needs of small business managers. Part Two explains the assumptions underlying the instrument we have created before describing the instrument and its use in interviews and small group situations. The instrument is considered to be valid, but to require further validation trials and development.

RURAL RETAIL BUSINESS SURVIVAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPERS

The loss of retail businesses and sales in rural areas has been accelerating for many years. This study was conducted in 37 rural communities in Indiana, Iowa, and North Dakota that appeared to have better-than-average retail sales. The purpose of the study was to identify strategies, if any, that were employed by communities and individual businesses which contributed to viable retail districts. This study suggests several possible actions for community development practitioners involved in efforts to improve and sustain rural retail business communities. These actions include: the need to assist rural communities build a more diversified economic base, provide business management training and technical assistance, establish mechanisms to transfer established business operations to new owners, develop financing mechanisms for new or aspiring businesses, and assist rural communities to deal with change and plan for their futures.

Training and development for small business managers. Part One: a prologue — who are the small business managers?

ABSTRACT This is Part One of a two-part article concerned with the development and validation of an education, training and development needs assessment instrument for small business managers. Whilst there is a recognition of small owner-director forms of small businesses, the emphasis in the research has been upon the physically involved and active entrepreneurial, small business fraction of the middle class (Petite Bourgeolsie). Part One is concerned with defining the nature and significance of small businesses in economic and experiential terms, whilst Part Two describes the development and validation of the needs assessment instrument itself. The instrument is seen as being valid and reliable, and able to assist small business managers to articulate their training and development needs.

Are home‐based enterprises ‘worthwhile’? The informal sector with reference to social security

This article arises from a countrywide survey on ‘affordable social provision’. Since people's ability to provide for the contingencies in their lives usually depends on their involvement in the formal employment market, the question may be asked to what extent the increasing numbers of those not directly connected with the world of work can make provision for themselves. In order to determine that, the possibilities for the generation of income outside the formal market have to be established. In this article people's views on the economic viability of certain activities that can be undertaken at home are analysed. Making and selling of handiwork and clothing were largely seen as economically worthwhile, while services such as child minding, small‐scale removals, etc, were most often mentioned under the heading ‘worthwhile for other reasons’. Important predictors of the particular choice made were respondents' domicile — metropolitan or non‐metropolitan — the type of home tenure arrangements they had, where they had spent their childhood (rural area, town, etc) and education. The generally positive views of metropolitan dwellers may indicate high expectations regarding the potential of informal sector activities. Opportunities afforded by, for example, deregulation, more accessible credit advice on and training in business management, etc, could help to meet such expectations. Such opportunities could also promote income generation for those with tenuous or no links with the formal market

Business Size Composition and Management Training Needs of Countries in the Eastern Caribbean

Abstract. Size composition of Eastern Caribbean businesses was found to be bimodal. Very few businesses employed 10 to 50 people, most had either a larger or a smaller number. This unexpected result emerged from a survey to determine management training needs in the region. The survey included 134 face‐to‐face interviews with business people. Respondents gave several possible explanations for this unusual pattern; among those mentioned were historical factors, barriers to entry, and to access to credit; racial stereotypes, and status perceptions. Respondents described the microbusiness sector and types of management training and of education that would stimulate the growth of micro businesses in contrast to training that would improve performance at larger companies. Respondents felt that restructuring the business sector of each economy, in terms of product mix as well as size composition, would help stimulate economic growth in the region.

Management Development in Small and Medium‐sized Enterprises in Newfoundland and Labrador

Memorial University of Newfoundland, based in St. John's, is the single university in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Faculty of Business Administration is the largest concentration of resident business educational and management development expertise. In 1980, the Faculty established the Center for Management Development with the role to coordinate its non‐credit, continuing professional business educational and management training and development activities. The mandate of the Center is the development and delivery of continuing entrepreneurship and business management education programmes for the public, and for practising managers in business, government and other organisations in the province — it is to develop management in Newfoundland and Labrador. As part of the Faculty of Business Administration, the Center exists to provide management development offerings where they are most needed, and not solely on the basis of commercial profitability.

Social Work Leadership: A Missing Ingredient?

literature of organizational behavior and in business management training, but until recently it was essentially a non theme in social work training. A review of social work publications suggests that training for leadership is not stressed,1 al though the concept of leadership appears in the literature sporadically.2 Leadership is an important concept for any profession, both in the romantic vi sion that it suggests of bold new directions and in the pragmatic consequences that follow from its practice Although the term itself is not without ambiguity, social workers are unlikely to deny the value of the leadership role. The idea of leadership carries with it the idea of setting a pace or influencing others, and it is my as

United States Small Business Administration's Role in Small Business Training

Dr. George Solomon currently is a member of the staff of the Associate Administrator for Management Assistance and a member of the faculties of George Washington and Georgetown University in the United States. His major role is the development of new counselling and training programmes for small businesses and he is responsible for the formulation and administration of research studies designed to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the SBA's management assistance programmes. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors, International Council for Small Business. Mark Carney is a Management Analyst with the US Small Business Administration and served on the team which conducted the survey this article is based upon. The SBA, the leader and innovator in small business training and education in the United States, decided in the summer of 1983, to conduct a national overview on the "State of Small Business Training and Education". The intent of this examination was to determine the usefulness and relevance of current programmes and to develop new methods and ideas for meeting the ever-growing future challenges of small business management training and education. In order to accomplish this national study, a multifaceted training overview was developed by the staff of the Office of Management Assistance.

Practical intelligence in real-world pursuits: The role of tacit knowledge.

We carried out three experiments to examine the role of tacit knowledge (knowledge that usually is not openly expressed or taught) in intellectual competence in real-world pursuits. In Experiment 1, subjects were divided into three groups, whose 187 members differed in amounts of experience and formal training in academic psychology. Differences in tacit knowledge useful for managing oneself, others, and one's career were related to criterion measures of performance for both academic psychologists and psychology graduate students. In Experiment 2, the subjects were 127 individuals differing in amounts of experience and formal training in business management. Differences in tacit knowledge were related to criterion measures of performance for business managers. In Experiment 3, the results of the second experiment were cross-validated on a group of 29 bank managers for whom detailed performance evaluation information was available. Again, tacit knowledge differences were related to criterion measures of job performance. Tacit knowledge was not related to verbal intelligence as measured by a standard verbal reasoning test. We conclude that a comprehensive theory of practical intelligence in real-world pursuits will encompass general aptitudes, formal knowledge, and tacit knowledge that is used in managing oneself, others, and one's career. Consider two observations. First, with surprising frequency, individuals with histories of distinguished performance in formal schooling are only moderately successful in their occupations, and conversely, individuals who are highly successful in their occupations have unremarkable academic records. Second, many professionals report that much, if not most, of the learning that matters to their careers took place after completion of their formal training. Comparing the relations between performance on IQ tests, on the one hand, and performance in schooling and in real-world pursuits, on the other, suggests there may be more than a hint of truth in these observations. Whereas IQ test scores are moderately correlated (.4-.7) with various measures of

Simulation/Gaming in Third World Development Planning

Simulation/games have been widely used in many disciplines to represent the complexities of multiple decisions under conditions of uncertainty. They have been used in military training exercises for over 150 years, in business management training for over 30 years, and in urban planning for almost 20 years. Through deliberate abstraction of a problem to its basic elements, simula-tion games allow participants of widely varying backgrounds to gain an overview of problems that can clarify and broaden their perspective when they are faced with similar but more detailed issues in the real world. In addition to providing an overview, games also collapse time, enabling a player to see the effects of decisions over many years in the course of a few hours of play.

Redirecting Management Education and Training Resources -An Australian

Geoffrey Meredith is Professor, Accounting and Financial Management, Armidale N.S.W. Australia and Consultant, Financial Management Research Centre (which he founded in the 1970's) associated with that University. Financial support for his research into small business management education and training was provided by the Australian Government's Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission. The paper argues the case for a significant redirection of management education and training resources allocated to tertiary institutions, to meet the needs of small business owners and the multitude of multiplier agents associated with the small business sector in the community. Although the case for the redirection of resources is clearly recognised, implementing change is likely to be delayed due to problems associated with assembling qualified presenters and appropriate resource material for such programmes. The paper illustrates the redirection process in the Australian environment.

British Business Education Comes of Age

The state of the art in business education and management training in the UK has come a long way since the birth of American‐style business schools on our shores in the early 1960s and, with the completion of more than 100 management training courses by Britain's oldest business school this year, business education in Britain can be said to have come of age.

Application of Computer Simulation to the Teaching of Garden Center Management1

Abstract Probably 20% of the 1.9 million retail businesses in the United States are involved in some way with the sale of ornamental plants and garden supplies. According to the Small Business Administration, one-third of all businesses will be discontinued within 1 year of opening, 50% will be gone within 2 years, and two-thirds within 5 years. The largest single cause for this large number of closings even among established businesses is management inexperience and inaptitude (5). To successfully enter the retail nursery industry, horticulture students should have training and experience in general business management and specifically businesses engaged in selling nursery products and services. Unfortunately the typical student must try to grasp complex and somewhat abstract management concepts with little on-the-job experience.

The Value of Simulations and Games in the Teaching of Sciennce

Although games and simulations (in the broadest sense) have been played for amusement for thousands of years, the application of game and simulation techniques to education and training is a comparatively recent development. The use of games as a method of training was first developed for military purposes. Chess, which originates from the sixth century, was perhaps the first war game, but it was not until I798 that games involving the use of maps were used in military training (Thomas, I957). The techniques of war games have since been developed to an extremely high degree of realism and sophistication. It was over I50 years after their introduction into military training that the next major use for games and simulations was developed, namely in business management training. As in military applications, the techniques were used to bridge the gap between formal academic instruction and on-the-job training. In 1956, the American Management Association produced the first business game-a decision-making simulation exercise for potential executives (Riccardi, I957). Since then, the use of such techniques has spread rapidly throughout the western world, and a wide range of exercises, of various degrees of complexity, have been produced at all levels from school to in-service industrial training (Hart, I978). In 1962, gaming and simulation methods were introduced into teacher training, the early exercises taking the form of simulated teaching situations and problems in simulated schools (Hemphill, Griffiths & Frederiken, 1962; Kersh, 1962). Further developments quickly followed in other areas, particularly in the teaching of social studies, geography, international relations and urban development (Walford, 1968; van der Eyken, 1968; Taylor, I97I). During the last decade, however, the techniques have been used in an ever-increasing range of other subjects, including language training, mathematics, engineering and the sciences. It is in this last area that the authors have been working since I973. This article begins by explaining the potential role of games and simulations in science teaching, and then describes some of the exercises that have been developed by the authors. Finally, it explores the possible future role of the micro-computer, and particularly the ways in which the micro-computer and simulations can be used in distance learning.

The Faithful Nurse

T HE situation found in many hospitals illustrates very clearly the need for more training on the part of their superintendents. The education of a nurse or a physician gives an excellent background for understanding the medical functions and relationships of the hospital, but it provides little or no training in business management or in the financial and social relationships to the community upon which the ultimate success of a hospital often largely depends. In business management, lack of familiarity with purchasing, with even the elementary principles of accounting and financing, with the preparation and presentation of financial and statistical reports, are defects so commonly observed as to be characteristic, particularly in the smaller hospitals. Such defects, even though combined with the best intentions on the part of superintendent and board, spell waste of money. Men and women with business experience only are too often unable to grasp hospital policy, or to adapt business methods, as they must be adapted, to the network of medical, personal and community relations which surround them in the hospital.