Thesis - Veni, Vidi, Ego Scripsit

From the first page of my first chapter:

This thesis has been the culmination of several years of progressive research that has touched on subjects including Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) owner/manager profiling (Ref, 2005), conceptual learning  in SMEs (Ref, 2006)  and auto/biographical methodology in researching SMEs (Ref, 2007). Of necessity, this thesis draws on these research findings  but will also explore the relationship and usefulness of socially constructed paradigms of learning and cognitive paradigms of learning, in Micro and very Small Enterprises (MvSEs).

Crossing boundaries of education , management and social science, this research seeks to understand how MvSE managers learn to be managers and the implications of that for future entrepreneurs, educators and policy makers.  It considers and discusses issues of the nature of learning that enables individuals to be good entrepreneurs, including:

·         the role of society in understanding learning in an MvSE

·         the uses of cognitive paradigms in understanding learning in an MvSE

·         the relationship between discontinuity, reflection and resilience in an entrepreneurial setting

·         the context of current entrepreneur learning provision in the UK and its impact upon owner/managers of small businesses

It will be shown that small business entrepreneurs have a substantial experience of unexpected events, or discontinuity, and that this promotes a particular kind of learning which is likely to be more operational than strategic,  more practical than theoretical, adaptive rather than fixed and provides for a high degree of resilience.  Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the nature of this kind of learning has specific implications for formal learning in the small business that are not currently being addressed, with implications for business resilience and survival.