CIMR hosts Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Roundtable

Adoption of management practices such as IT systems and strategic management improve productivity and performance by boosting employee motivation and enhancing entrepreneurial behaviour in organisations. Strong leadership and management skills are essential for embedding these productivity-enhancing practices.

The Business Productivity Team at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) are looking to understand which management and leadership skills are associated with adopting key management practices and what types of curriculum result in the development of these skills.

This is building on the findings of the Business Productivity Review, announced in November. This includes actions being taken forward such as closer working with intermediaries, the development of a Small Business Leadership Programme, Management Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and peer to peer networks.  These programmes aim to give small business leaders the time, the tools and the capabilities to identify and exploit knowledge that will support their business development.

Hosted by CIMR, this workshop brought together senior academics from UK business schools and business growth experts, including representatives from Be the Business and the Chartered Management Institute.

Among the issues addressed in the discussion were the current barriers to SME leaders accessing support; learnings to be taken from successful international initiatives such as Innovation Norway; the kinds of problems and opportunities that the programme might support SME leaders to explore; and the need for a logical, research-informed framework for skills development.