Using a sample of some 300 small independent businesses, drawn from Central London, the paper examines how entrepreneurial behaviour affects business performance. It is argued that small businesses motivated by a desire to grow in terms of sales and/or employees and to survive in a dynamic and competitive environment need to be innovative. However, to what extent they will innovate successfully depends on their capacity to plan ahead, their capacity to innovate and their willingness to take risk. It is shown that entrepreneurial businesses are characterised by these competencies that allow them to innovate and thus develop and grow successfully. Not surprisingly, not all small businesses are equipped with these three competencies owing to their diverse array of strengths and weaknesses arising from the diversity in the managerial motives and aspirations of entrepreneurship. These results highlight the importance of the capacity to innovate and the capacity to plan ahead as strong predictors of small businesses’ performance.
The distinction between management of operational effectiveness and strategic management has been a core belief of much management literature. Operational management is concerned with the ongoing activities of the business in relation to existing products or services and in respect of existing markets. Strategic management, in contrast, is concerned with the future success of the business and may entail major changes in the benefits to be offered customers, in organizational capacity, and in competitive posture. The application of strategic management to small firms can be seen as posing particular challenges. This can be inferred from, for example, the organizational studies of Mintzberg (1979) who has argued that the typical owner-managers of small businesses, especially entrepreneurial ones, manage in quite a different way from the methods indicated by the strategic planning literature. Such businesses are governed, it is said, using more personal and arbitrary forms of control. However useful these arguments have been to the progress of understanding small businesses in the past, the time is fast approaching (and perhaps has arrived already) when this kind of argument is becoming fruitless and sterile. In this article it is assumed we now need to understand whether and how managers in small businesses have taken up the language and practice of planning and strategic analysis, and we need to understand with what results these have been taken up. At the heart of the article is the analysis of the results of a survey of owner-managers and other managers. The article is concluded with a look at the implications of the findings.
A trade union's constitution is intended to produce its leaders in a democratic and even-handed manner, but the reality for women is one of inequality. They remain almost invisible in senior positions in British unions. The social processes by which women do or do not progress in a union's career structure are investigated through a case study of SOGAT '82.This article examines the social processes through which women take on and sustain active trade union roles. It also investigates the problems in these processes with regard to the continuing absence of women from union leadership positions despite the growing numerical importance of women in the trade union movement [l].The list of putative causes of the underrepresentation of women in union leadership is a long one; patriarchal attitudes, inequality a t work, union rules on office holding, inconvenient times and locations of union meetings, unequal sharing of domestic responsibilities, loyalties divided between union and children, the lack of quality childcare provision, and so on[2]. Discussion of such barriers have not, however, provided an explanation of how women take on and sustain leadership roles.Using evidence collected from a case study of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades n The authors are all lecturers in industrial relations, trade union and urganisational studies at the Polytechnic of North London-Sue Ledwith, Fiona Colgan (who also both teach womens' studies) and Paul Joyce in the Business School and Mike Hayes in the School of Social Research.'82 (SOGAT '82), which in the 1980s was the largest British printing trade union, we have examined in some detail the major ways women moved into union leadership roles. We have also considered the ways in which women leaders related to the traditional structures and activities of their union.
A critical response to the present stage in the development of management education is presented. The concept of competence is evaluated and its utility assessed. In particular, the use of the term by the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) is thrown into critical focus and found to be pragmatically and conceptually flawed. Emphasizes the importance of addressing the approach actually adopted by the MCI and other agencies in the “reform” of vocational qualifications and argues that the MCI has been incorrectly criticized for attempting to impose a simplistic model of management. Considers the implications and argues that management educators and developers are faced with a dominant concept of “competence” which they find difficult to realize in their educational practice. Subjects the concept of competence to conceptual analysis in order to bring into focus the key analytical elements implicit in the term, assesses the MCI approach and offers alternative approaches which place the emphasis on those issues which are critical for achieving consensually desired enhancements in management education and development.
New Public Management and Governance have shaped the public sector in the last twenty years. Strategic management has become a standard tool for the public manager to create value and to shape the organization. In the light of growing complexity, standard models such as MBO or the Deming cycle are arriving at limits to describe what public service organizations must be able to accomplish in terms of performance and satisfaction of stakeholder expectations. Standard prescriptive literature suggests using iterative, step-by-step models which guide the manager though the strategic management cycle. Logical incrementalism however points towards a dynamic approach with tactical shifts and partial solutions using consciously structured flexibility. Based on logical incrementalism and existing literature, the researcher proposes using a "strategic triangle" with three management dimensions, combined with "tactical mapping", as a guiding and communication instrument for management and staff. The strategic triangle and logical incrementalism are tested by exploring a case study of a public service organization, the Training Center for Development Cooperation (V-EZ), which has formulated a new strategy in 2005. First findings indicate the strategic triangle and tactical mapping could prove useful in consulting, management and teaching, but must be validated by further research.
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