Relevance of Small Business Courses to Management Needs
通过调查小企业主/经理对各项商业活动的实际重视程度，并与主流教材内容对比，评估小企业课程的现实相关性，为课程修订提供依据。
RELEVANCE OF SMALL BUSINESS COURSES TO MANAGEMENT NEEDS Colleges and universities are an important source of training for small businesses, and interest in small business courses is growing rapidly. One of the goals of collegiate small business curricula is to provide students with an understanding of how to manage the various functions of the firm in order to help them compete in the workplace. The purpose of this article is to assess the real world relevance of these curricula. One way to assess the relevance of small business courses is to survey small business owner/managers about the perceived practical importance of various business activities, and then to compare the survey findings to the current topical emphasis in leading texts. In this way we can evaluate the relevance of small business curricula to the actual activities of the owner/manager. The importance of this study lies in its potential for providing information that will enable us to revise small business courses and seminars to correspond more closely to the needs and perceptions of owner/managers. Two key assumptions underlie this study. First, a representative sample of textbooks is assumed; it consists of ten leading small business management texts listed in table 1. The average percentage of total pages devoted to various topics in these texts is presented in the tables that follow. These data are used for comparative purposes. The text selection is based on the best-selling texts as reported by various publishers. Second, the amount of space, as measured by pages allotted to an individual text topic, is assumed to reflect the level of course emphasis placed on the topic. Textbook coverage as a proxy for course emphasis may not always reflect educational practices, but it was the least ambiguous, most complete, and most convenient measure available. A survey of course syllabi and/or interviews with instructors would be better proxies, but time and budget considerations dictated the choice of the textbook proxy as a sufficiently reliable substitute. The study is presented in three parts. The discussion in each part ties survey findings to the space devoted to related topics in leading texts in order to compare and contrast practical emphasis with academic emphasis. The first section describes the survey method and respondents. The second section presents the results and a discussion of the business activities of survey respondents in four key categories and several sub-activities within each major category. The final section presents a summary and conclusions. SAMPLE AND METHOD In May of 1986, a questionnaire was mailed to the owner, partner, or key manager of 800 small businesses with annual sales between $200,000 and $4,000,000 and with a fairly equal representation of business types. The mailing list was obtained from the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and represents small businesses in the Pacific Northwest. Because respondents were guaranteed anonymity, individual respondent firms could not be identified by name. Included in the questionnaire were 19 closed-end questions. Five questions sought to profile both the respondent and the firm. The remaining 14 questions sought information on the relative importance of several business activities in the small firm. This method is similar to that utilized by Gitman and Maxwell. One hundred and seventy-eight usable responses were received; a 22 percent response rate. The responses were nearly evenly divided among the different business types (manufacturing, retail/wholesale, and service). Respondents performing a specialized function (e.g., sales manager, comptroller) were eliminated from the sample. The responding firms employ an average of 21 full-time people and have been in business an average of 12 years. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The respondents' opinion about four major business activities--selling and marketing, production, finance and accounting, and management--were obtained to assess the relative importance of these activities. …