دانلود رایگان مقاله آموزش ابتکار فردی برای صاحبان کسب و کار کوچک

abstract

Research shows that personal initiative is important for small business owners' success (Frese, 2009). An intervention study in Germany evaluated a 3-day personal initiative intervention program for small scale business owners. This intervention consisted of a training that taught a proactive, self-starting approach to planning, innovation, time management and goal-setting and the ability to overcome barriers. A before-and-after design was used for the training group (N¼36); the dependent variable was employment growth which we also measured in a comparison group (N¼97). Measures were ascertained before the intervention, directly afterwards and 1 year after the training. We found positive changes after the training and the participants of the training group employed about 20% more employees after the training than before or than existed in the comparison group. Positive effects occurred on all four of Kirkpatrick's (1975) evaluation levels: reaction, learning, behavior-based, and success measures.

7. Discussion

The training showed a uniform pattern of improvement. Moreover this effect appears for the four levels of training effectiveness (Kirkpatrick, 1975): Reaction, learning, behavioral and marginally significantly so for success measures. The use of a non-random control group allowed us to control for possible effects of history and maturation (Cook et al., 1990); thus general changes in the business environment and the economy or the effects of longer experience of running a business were controlled with our design, as these effects would have influenced both the training and the comparison groups in the same way. The most important success variable (increase in number of employees) was significantly different from T1 and was significantly different in its growth from the comparison group.