The impact of continuous training in small and medium enterprises: Lessons from an industrial case analysis

AbstractIn the current competitive environment, great emphasis is placed on the knowl- edge and skills of the workforce as important elements in achieving organizational goals. As this focus on employee skills has increased, so have organizational programs and initiatives to ensure that the training in place to develop those skills is not sporadic, but rather part of a continuous effort toward keeping employee skills up to date. It becomes fundamental, in this context, to understand such programs and evaluate their impact, both within companies and externally, in terms of their decision making and business results. This paper aims to do that, through a study of the work-related training practices of in- dustrial firms in the Northern-Spanish region of Asturias. In addition, it develops a new variable – training intensity – and examines its impact on the planning, execution and evaluation of training programs in these firms. Among other findings, our study confirms that training-intensive firms have a more...

[1]  Paul Mulholland,et al.  Supporting continuous learning in a large organization: the role of group and organizational perspectives. , 2005, Applied ergonomics.

[2]  S. Przytuła.  Human capital as a source of competitive advantage of East Asian corporations (Chinese and Japanese). Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wrocławiu = Research Papers of Wrocław University of Economics, 2011, Nr 191, s. 141-149 , 2011 .

[3]  Raymond A. Noe,et al.  Employee Training and Development , 2001 .

[4]  J. Barney.  Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage , 1991 .

[5]  Trond Hammervoll,et al.  Managing interaction for learning and value creation in exchange relationships , 2012 .

[6]  John Purcell,et al.  Best practice and best fit: chimera or cul‐de‐sac? , 1999 .

[7]  G. Becker,et al.  Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition , 1993 .

[8]  Raquel Sanz-Valle,et al.  Effects of training on business results1 , 2003 .

[9]  Mohammed Othman,et al.  Integrating workers' differences into workforce planning , 2012, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[10]  Mariana Iatagan,et al.  Continuous training of human resources – a solution to crisis going out , 2010 .

[11]  Xiaowei Luo,et al.  Continuous Learning: The Influence of National Institutional Logics on Training Attitudes , 2007, Organ. Sci..

[12]  María Magdalena Jiménez-Barrionuevo,et al.  Transformational Leadership Influence on Organizational Performance Through Organizational Learning and Innovation , 2012 .

[13]  J. Bruce Tracey,et al.  A contextual, flexibility‐based model of the HR‐firm performance relationship , 2012 .

[14]  David J. Collis,et al.  Competing on Resources: Strategy in the 1990s , 1999 .

[15]  Chih-Yun Wu,et al.  Does training facilitate SME's performance? , 2008 .

[16]  S. Akhtar,et al.  Strategic HRM practices and their impact on company performance in Chinese enterprises , 2008 .

[17]  Jeffrey H. Dyer,et al.  Human capital and learning as a source of sustainable competitive advantage , 2004 .

[18]  M. Rigby.  Spanish trade unions and the provision of continuous training , 2002 .

[19]  R. Blundell,et al.  Human capital investment: the returns from education and training to the individual, the firm and the economy , 2005 .

[20]  P. Neirotti,et al.  Why Do Firms Train? Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Training and Technological and Organizational Change , 2013 .

[21]  María Leticia Santos-Vijande,et al.  How organizational learning affects a firm's flexibility, competitive strategy, and performance☆ , 2012 .

[22]  Knowledge Society: Opportunities and Challenges , 2011 .

[23]  J. Finch,et al.  Resources prospectively: How actors mobilize resources in business settings , 2012 .

[24]  J. Zolkiewski,et al.  Managing resource interaction as a means to cope with technological change , 2012 .

[25]  Jay B. Barney,et al.  Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases , 2005 .

[26]  S. Voelpel,et al.  Managing the aging workforce:: Status quo and implications for the advancement of theory and practice , 2008 .

[27]  Katja Goerlitz.  Continuous Training and Wages – An Empirical Analysis Using a Comparison-Group Approach , 2010 .

[28]  Neharika Vohra,et al.  An exploration of factors predicting work alienation of knowledge workers , 2010 .

[29]  N. Foss.  The classical theory of production and the capabilities view of the firm , 1997 .

[30]  Eduardo Salas,et al.  What influences continuous employee development decisions , 2005 .

[31]  J. Barney,et al.  The resource-based view of the firm: Ten years after 1991 , 2001 .

[32]  Samuel T. Hunter,et al.  Hiring an innovative workforce: A necessary yet uniquely challenging endeavor , 2012 .

[33]  C. K. Strebq.  Managing the aging workforce: status quo and implications for the advancement of theory and practice , 2008 .

[34]  J. Veum,et al.  Sources of Training and Their Impact on Wages , 1995 .