In this chapter we explore the relationship between small firms' growth orientation, their business planning efforts and the role the owner plays and whether or not formal HRM practices are used. Formal HRM practices are assessed in terms of whether they are written down, regularly applied or...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reality of financial and management accounting in a small group of small firms. Specifically, from the owner's perspective, an exploration is undertaken to see what financial information is collected, how it is used (or not) to make...

In recent years there has been a growing literature on human resource management (HRM) and smaller firms which has also encompassed firms that are growing and entrepreneurial. For example we have seen a special edition of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (Katz et aI., 2000), two of Human...

Education and training can enhance small business owner/managers' managerial skills and is known to be effective in reducing small business failure. Training plays an important role in the competitive success of firms as people who acquire appropriate skills are more productive based on output...

Whether HRM is perceived to be a ‘problem’ for smaller firms is explored in this paper usinglogistic regression. We analyse data from 523 responses to a survey of smaller firms in southeastMelbourne (Victoria, Australia), and consider the antecedents of a range of issues ofconcern reported...

In this paper we report a study of 10 Polish immigrant entrepreneurs operating inLeicester, UK. Like Ram, Theodorakopoulos and Jones (2008) we take a forms-ofcapitalapproach but use Bourdieu’s (1983) social, cultural and economic capitals asthe lens through which to explore their pathways to...

This paper investigates small business employers' willingness to participate in online training based on survey of 716 Western Australian small business employers. The results indicate that those small business employers with aspirations towards business growth and who are existing Internet...

The Coalition has said that exempting small business from unfair dismissal provisions in the 1996 (WRA) will create 53,000 new jobs in the small business sector. The purpose of this research note is to evaluate small business access to and use of unfair dismissal provision in the WRA. In doing...