GoogleTranslate Service


Policy, practice, economies and SMEs

October 24th, 2012 by Graham Attwell

I spent the morning looking at EU policy on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It was pretty hard going – after list of different measures together with endless reviews (mainly asserting how successful the policies had been followed by announcements of new measures to deal with the things that had not worked).

But policies are important – especially in education and training and in areas of economic and social policy where markets alone are clearly failing – although it is difficult to think of any area where markets are succeeding! One of our first tasks under the Learning Layers project which starts on the 1st of November will be to undertake a macro level review of the environment in which SMEs in Europe operate. This will be background research to help us develop a User Engagement Model and Guidelines for best practice to inform the work in developing technologies to support informal learning in the medical and building and construction sectors.

Here are a few things I found out.

SMEs are important

Ninety nine percent of all European businesses are SMEs. They provide two out of three of the private sector jobs, contribute to more than half of the total value-added created by businesses in the EU and account for 99.8 per cent of non-financial enterprises in 2012, which equates to 20.7 million businesses.

The definition of an SME is policy driven

The EU definition of an SME has changed three times in the last twenty or so years. The European Commission currently  classifies medium sized enterprises as having less than 250 employees and a turnover of less than Euro 50 million or a balance sheet total of less than Euro 42 million. Small enterprises have less than 50 employees and a turnover of less than Euro 10 million or a balance sheet total of less than Euro 10 million, whilst micro SMEs have less than 10 employees and a turnover of less than Euro 2 million or a balance sheet total of less than Euro 2 million.

In reality the definition is designed to allow or block access to funding and other support to different sized organisations. It does not have any particular research significance.

There is limited academic research into SMEs

Despite the obvious economic importance of SMEs there is surprisingly little economic research. And much of what research there is seems to be based on unproven assumptions about for instance employment generation potential or intrinsic innovation.

SMEs and regulation

EU policy has focused on vertical measures designed to address a particular market failure and horizontal measures to improve the business environment. In recent years there has been a major push to exempt micro-enterprises from EU legislation or introduce special regimes so as to minimise the regulatory burden on them. Yet it is in the German speaking countries – those with higher levels of labour market regulation – that SMEs have been most successful during the economic crisis. And conversely in countries like Latvia which have highly deregulated economies SMEs have done very badly in the recession.

Work based learning and apprenticeship

At an overall policy level the EU has stressed the need for higher levels of qualifications and education and training as important tot he growth and competitiveness of SMEs, whilst introducing a common qualification framework to promote mobility. Until recently it has paid little attention to work based learning or apprenticeship. But once more – and of course there is no proven causal link – it is in those countries with strong apprenticeship systems that SMEs have been most successful.

More to follow ….

 

 

Please follow and like us:

Comments are closed.

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    Social Media




    News Bites

    Cyborg patented?

    Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.

    Please follow and like us:


    Racial bias in algorithms

    From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter

    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.

    Please follow and like us:


    Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years

    Via The Canary.

    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.

    Please follow and like us:


    Quality Training

    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.

    Please follow and like us:


    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.

      Please follow and like us:
  • Twitter

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Categories