University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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SMEs, Training and Sustainability formed the main areas of investigation and this
Research sits at the confluence of these topics. This paper will present the results of
the literature review of SMEs and Training and Management Development (TMD)
and SMEs and Sustainability, but set against the context of an earlier Conceptual
framework by Tilley (1999b)
The Importance of SMES to UK Industry
For the purposes of this research, the European definition of an SME has been used:
the organisation must employ less than 250 employees; have an annual turnover of
less than €40million (approximately £35million); must have a balance sheet of less
than €27million (approximately £23million); and be independent (i.e. not owned as
to 25% or more of the capital or the voting rights by one other enterprise, or jointly
by several enterprises) (CEC, 1992). The main reason why this definition – and not
any of the other myriad definitions – is used is the context of this paper. This
concerns funded operations, such as the ISDB. In this case the funding body for the
ISDB is the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) and it too uses the
European definition.
The importance of SMEs to the UK economy is frequently mentioned in the
literature (inter alia Chaston and Baker, 1998; Tilley, 1999a; Tilley, 1999b; Netregs,
2003; Spence, 2004) and represent 99.9% of all UK enterprises (BERR, 2008). The
UK Government sees the small business sector as playing a very important part in
the economy (Keasey and Watson, 1993; Hilary, 2000; Johnston and Loader, 2003).
The SME sector diversifies a nation’s economic base, assists in employment creation,
promotes a healthy local control and accountability, provides a counterbalance to big
business, assists in the development and dissemination of new forms of technology
and caters for niche markets which larger enterprises ignore (Barrow, 1998; Culkin
and Smith, 2000; Beaver, 2002).
As far as their importance to the environment is concerned some estimates put the
contribution to ‘pollution’ as high as 70% (Hillary, 1999) due to a variety of reasons
such as using older machinery and technologies, lack of awareness of legislation and
of their own environmental impacts” (Hillary, 2000:11) and the nature of the
industries in which they operate: “leather-tanning, metal finishing, dry cleaning,
printing and dyeing, brewing, food processing, fish farming, textile manufacture etc”
(Hobbs, 2000:148).
They are an exceptionally wide and diverse sector of business and notoriously
difficult to reach. A consistent theme in the literature is that the sector is difficult to
engage with en masse due to its heterogeneous nature (Barber et al, 1989; Barrow,
1998; Fay, 2000; Devins and Johnson, 2003; Ammenberg and Hjelm, 2003).
Organisations such as the Government (on a national level) or Business Links (on a
local level) trying to reach the sector find it problematic as the sector is comprised of
organisations operating under fundamentally different conditions. Beaver
emphasises that “small firms are not an homogenous entity and to think otherwise is
both dangerous and naïve” (Beaver, 2002:6). Another key issue is that the SME
sector has such heterogeneity and disparate needs that it is futile to try to satisfy them
with programmes intended for larger organisations, yet this occurs frequently
(Wilson and Homan, 2004).