What Role Did Management Practices Play in SME Growth Post-Recession?

Alex Bryson and John Forth

No 10042, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are known to contribute significantly to aggregate economic growth. However, little is known about the role played by management practices in SME growth since recession. We contribute to the literature on SME growth by analysing longitudinal administrative data on firms' employment and turnover, taken from the UK's Business Structure Database (BSD), with data on management practices collected in face-to-face interviews from the HR Managers and employees who were surveyed as part of the 2011 British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). We find off-the-job training is the only management practice that is robustly and significantly associated with higher employment growth, increased turnover, and a decline in closure probabilities, over the period 2011-2014. The findings suggest SME investment in off-the-job training is sub-optimal in Britain such that firms could benefit economically from increasing the amount of off-the-job training they offer to their non-managerial employees.

Keywords: training; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises; employment growth; HRM; sales; workplace closure; recession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 M12 M50 M53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-sbm
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Published - published as 'Management Practices and SME Performance' in: Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2019, 66 (4), 527 - 558

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Working Paper: What Role Did Management Practices Play in SME Growth Post-recession? (2016)
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