Management & Leadership in UK SMEs: Witness Testimonies from the World of Entrepreneurs and SME Managers

L.J. Perren and P Grant

The entrepreneur and manager testimonies that are reported here provide an important component of the Council’s work in this area. So often it seems that entrepreneurs and managers themselves are left without a voice at academic conferences, intermediary groups and other policy forums. Indeed, they often appear to be viewed by academics and policy-makers as no more than job generating cogs in an economic machine. The Council wishes to avoid this trap by ensuring that entrepreneurs and managers have a central role in any recommendations for management and leadership in SMEs. The aim of the research is to explore how entrepreneurs and their staff develop management and leadership abilities and to elicit their views of how things could be improved in the future. This report presents an analysis of twenty-one entrepreneurial witness testimonies and nine managerial witness testimonies.