Learning in Small Business. CRLRA Discussion Paper Series.

An Australian study examined the relationship between current and past participation in education and training in small business and success or failure and how small businesses decide how to improve knowledge and skills. Telephone surveys were conducted with 181 small businesses in 4 industries in 3 metropolitan and 3 non-metropolitan regions. Findings indicated almost a third of the sample had an employee or owner attend a relevant course in the last 12 months; the largest group of courses attended were technical/production-related vocational education and training (VET); more than a third of the sample had undertaken on-the-job training; more than 80 percent found informal learning sources useful; about half had owners or employees with VET qualifications as their highest qualifications; owners' most common way of learning about their new business was experience or trial and error; successful owners were no more likely to have attended a course at the time they started in the businesses; there were few relationships between business success and recent participation in education and training; businesses that participated in on-the-job training were more likely to be successful; the most frequently given prompt for training was a general desire to improve efficiency; the most frequent reason for choosing a training or learning source was that it provided learning relevant to the business; and successful businesses were likely to be prompted to learn or train. (Contains 27 references.) (YLB)