Consultant–Client Relationships in UK SMEs

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 505-519
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Malone
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Client Relationships ◽  
Client Relationship ◽  
Business Support ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Uk

This article reports on research into the role and value of a particular type of business consultant: a UK government-sponsored Personal Business Adviser (PBA). While it is an occupation that is now defunct in the UK, the author argues that its abolition may have been premature. The roles of the PBA are identified and are found to be in line with emerging views of the consultant–client relationship that are more moderate than popular extremes. This finding has implications for consultancy practice: various elements of the PBA job have wider applicability and usefulness for small business support.

Street-Level Technocracy in UK Small Business Support: Business Links, Personal Business Advisers, and the Small Business Service

10.1068/c0112 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Mole
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Support Service ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Business Service ◽  
Business Policy ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Business Support ◽  
The Uk

The broad focus of this paper is the divergence of implemented policy from intended policy in UK small business support. The Small Business Service (SBS) is the United Kingdom's most recent attempt to provide coherent support for small business. With its structure of local franchisees and multiagency partnerships, the SBS is part of the United Kingdom's Modernising Government agenda, which aims to provide ‘joined-up’ and responsive public services. However, it is not always easy for policymakers to execute new plans in the form in which they were intended. Street-level bureaucracies develop where those who implement complex policies amend them to make them easier to apply in practice. This paper investigates the UK Business Links' Personal Business Adviser (PBA) service. The paper draws on data from a focus group often PBAs and subsequent survey of the 175 PBAs in England and Wales conducted in summer 1998. The experience and tacit knowledge of PBAs provides the expertise for a bespoke support service to small businesses. Business advisers have both technical expertise and closeness to delivery that confers the power to amend small business policy. This tacit knowledge confers powers akin to a ‘street-level technocracy’. Thus, policies that do not carry PBA support, such as targeting, are unlikely to be implemented effectively. A new approach to small business support has been formed from the difficulty in controlling PBAs through performance indicators, which appear to have distorted the intended policy, and the Modernising Government agenda. The new SBS devolves the operation, but not all control, of business advice from the national SBS to local Business Links. PBAs will play a major part in the network mode of governance of the new SBS franchisees.

scholarly journals Panorama view of Innovation in Brazilian Small Businesses

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Dantas Gonçalves ◽  
Hugo Henrique Roth Cardoso ◽  
Hélio Gomes de Carvalho ◽  
Gustavo Dambiski Gomes de Carvalho ◽  
Rosângela De Fátima Stankowitz
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Monitoring System ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Support Service ◽  
Management Model ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Client Relationship ◽  
Business Support

The ALI Program of the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE) has monitored over 150,000 small businesses throughout Brazil over the last few years. Within this setting, this article aims to demonstrate the panorama of innovation and management of Brazilian micro and small businesses (MSBs) that were in the initial phase of the ALI program. The data collected, between the years of 2015 and 2016, allowed to assess the average of points in each of the thirteen dimensions of the Innovation Radar (IR) and the eight dimensions of the Excellence Management Model (EMM). The analysis of the 21 dimensions was performed in a sample of 27,422 small businesses from all over Brazil, which was extracted from the Management and Monitoring System of the ALI - SistemAli Program of Sebrae. Regarding IR results, four dimensions stand out as their means are higher than the others: Brand (3.1), Platform (2.9), Offer (2.7), and Client Relationship (2.7). Besides, the results of the Excellence Management Model (EMM) show that Brazilian MSBs still need to improve, since no dimension evaluated has reached the average value of the scale.

Specialist infantry and defence engagement

2020 ◽  
pp. bmjmilitary-2020-001455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Blair Thomas Herron ◽  
K M Heil ◽  
D Reid
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Future ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Insight Into

In 2015, the UK government published the National Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) 2015, which laid out their vision for the future roles and structure of the UK Armed Forces. SDSR 2015 envisaged making broader use of the Armed Forces to support missions other than warfighting. One element of this would be to increase the scale and scope of defence engagement (DE) activities that the UK conducts overseas. DE activities traditionally involve the use of personnel and assets to help prevent conflict, build stability and gain influence with partner nations as part of a short-term training teams. This paper aimed to give an overview of the Specialist Infantry Group and its role in UK DE. It will explore the reasons why the SDSR 2015 recommended their formation as well as an insight into future tasks.

scholarly journals Rhetorical uses of precise numbers and semi-magical round numbers in political discourse about COVID-19: Examples from the government of the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 095792652110131
Author(s):  
Michael Billig
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
British Government ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Round Numbers ◽  
Magical Power ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

This paper examines how the British government has used statistics about COVID-19 for political ends. A distinction is made between precise and round numbers. Historically, using round numbers to estimate the spread of disease gave way in the 19th century to the sort precise, but not necessarily accurate, statistics that are now being used to record COVID-19. However, round numbers have continued to exert rhetorical, ‘semi-magical’ power by simultaneously conveying both quantity and quality. This is demonstrated in examples from the British government’s claims about COVID-19. The paper illustrates how senior members of the UK government use ‘good’ round numbers to frame their COVID-19 goals and to announce apparent achievements. These round numbers can provide political incentives to manipulate the production of precise number; again examples from the UK government are given.

scholarly journals Who shuns entrepreneurship journals? Why? And what should we do about it?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Business Schools ◽  
English Summary ◽  
Business Economics ◽  
Economics Journal ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Business Professors ◽  
The Uk

AbstractSome scholars assert that entrepreneurship has attained “considerable” legitimacy. Others assert that it “is still fighting” for complete acceptance. This study explores the question, extrapolating from studies of an “elite effect” in which the publications of the highest ranked schools differ from other research-intensive schools. The most elite business schools in the USA, but not the UK, are found to allocate significantly more publications to mathematically sophisticated “analytical” fields such as economics and finance, rather than entrepreneurship and other “managerial” fields. The US elites do not look down upon entrepreneurship as such. They look down upon journals that lack high mathematics content. Leading entrepreneurship journals, except Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ), are particularly lacking. The conclusion argues that SBEJ can help the field’s legitimacy, but that other journals should not imitate analytical paradigms.Plain English Summary Academic snobs shun entrepreneurship journals. A goal for snobs is to exhibit superiority over others. For business professors, one way to do this is with mathematically sophisticated, analytical publications. Entrepreneurship journals, Small Business Economics excepted, do this relatively infrequently. These journals focus on the lives, activities, and challenges of diverse entrepreneurs. In the USA, the most elite business schools, compared with not-quite elite business schools, allocate significantly more of their articles to the journals of analytical fields such as economics, and fewer to entrepreneurship journals. This pattern is not found in the UK, where elites may have other ways to signal superiority. These elites, who accommodate entrepreneurship researchers, could pioneer with outputs of both relevance and scholarly quality, through collaboration between their practice-based and research-based professors.

Academic engagement with small business and entrepreneurship: Towards a landscape of practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 095042222110344
Author(s):  
Oswald Jones
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Academic Engagement ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Business Research ◽  
Structural Funds ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Eu Structural Funds ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

Academic engagement with small business and entrepreneurship was facilitated by the availability of European Union (EU) funding, which also stimulated the emergence of a small business and entrepreneurship (SBE) ‘community of practice’. Gradually, the SBE community developed into a ‘landscape of practice’ as small business research moved towards maturity. Furthermore, the SBE landscape of practice has coalesced around three core concepts: entrepreneurial learning, social networks and social capital. EU funding was the catalyst for many SBE academics in the UK to engage with practitioners involved with starting and managing their own businesses. The UK’s exit from the EU will inevitably mean that universities will no longer have access to EU Structural Funds. This has major implications for the UK SBE community’s engagement with practice as well as for entrepreneurs and business owners who have benefitted from a range of programmes designed to improve the performance of smaller firms.

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