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Becoming self-employed has appeal to both genders. For many women, balancing work and family is a key motivator. However, businesses owned and operated by women are often very small, with limited turnover. This potentially can have disastrous consequences when these women come to retire, unless a solid retirement savings strategy has been considered. The purpose of this paper is to outline many of the issues and implications of a lack of research in this area.

Data were collected from 201 small business owners via a convenience sample derived from various databases. The survey was completed on-line and analysed using SPSS.

Many self-employed women in Australia have neither enough savings for their retirement, or an actual retirement plan. This is exacerbated by the lack of regulation requiring mandatory contributions into a superannuation (personal pension) fund by small business owners, unlike pay as you go employees, whose employers must contribute a certain about on their behalf.

Middle-to-older aged women are the biggest cohort of homeless people in Australia. This is likely to grow as self-employed Baby Boomers stop working and find they do not have sufficient personal financial resources to fund their retirement.

Whereas there is much written about gender and small business ownership, as well as retirement and savings planning, these two areas have not been researched before in Australia. Yet it is an issue for the majority of small business owners, particularly women.

In a highly competitive globalised environment, the innovation behaviour of employees plays a key role in the economic viability and competitive advantage of organisations. In this context, developing the understanding of innovation work behaviour is important for the field of individual innovation and this is the focus of the study. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Data were collected using a survey from 549 employees in organisations operating in four major business centres in South Africa.

On-the-job embeddedness was positively and significantly related to innovation behaviours by employees in organisations operating in diverse industries. Consistent with the view that small organisations have a “behavioural” innovation advantage over larger organisations, the size of the organisation moderated the positive relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and innovation behaviours. On-the-job embeddedness was more positively related to innovation behaviours in small organisations than in larger organisations.

Employees who are highly embedded in their jobs (but not necessarily their communities) are more likely to enact innovation behaviours than employees who are not similarly embedded. Human resource management professionals and line managers can potentially foster employee innovation behaviours through adopting strategies aimed at positively influencing the fit, links and sacrifice dimensions of on-the-job embeddedness.

The study contributes to theoretical and empirical expansion of job embeddedness (JE) by examining: how work and non-work forces that attach employees to their organisations influence their propensity to enact innovation behaviours; and how organisation size moderates the relationship between JE and innovation behaviours. The results will help managers who wish to foster innovation.

Drawing on social network and social capital literature, this study aims to explore how digital entrepreneurs utilize social networks to build their entrepreneurial capability, creating and developing business ventures in a digitally networked society.

The study takes a qualitative approach, interviewing 35 digital entrepreneurs with businesses operating across multiple industry sectors in Western Australia.

The findings suggest that structural social capital provides a key resource with groups of relational contacts who facilitate in building entrepreneur capability, the venture and customer markets. Relational social capital provides a foundation of trust between entrepreneurs and social network members that is strategically important for digital entrepreneurship (DE). Cognitive social capital provides mechanisms to form relationships based on shared values across social networks.

The study produces early evidence that in a multiplexed networking world, social capital accrual and use online is different from that of off-line. More empirical studies are needed to understand the complexity of the changing nature of online and off-line social networks, the consequential social capital and their interdependence in DE.

This is an exploratory qualitative study using a limited sample of 35 Australian digital entrepreneurs to explore the impact of social network interaction on digital entrepreneurs and their ventures, with the purpose of stimulating a social network approach when studying DE. This study confirms the critical importance of entrepreneurial social networks in the digital age and provides empirical evidence that online networks foster business development, while off-line networks feed self-development.

The study contributes to current research on DE as a dedicated new research stream of entrepreneurship. Specifically, the study contributes to a greater understanding of how digital entrepreneurs leverage social networks in today's digitally connected society.

There is an absence of research examining job embeddedness in SMEs. Results of job embeddedness studies may not apply to SMEs, because the process of managing a SME differs from that of the large firm. The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between on-the-job embeddedness, as well as each of its sub-dimensions, and turnover intentions; and group cohesion, on-the-job embeddedness and turnover intentions.

Data were collected from 147 employees in SMEs located in Perth, Western Australia and 350 employees from SMEs operating in four business centres in South Africa. After invariance testing, data from the two countries were combined to increase statistical power of the analysis.

On-the-job embeddedness and each sub-dimension were negatively related to turnover intentions. Group cohesion was positively related to composite on-the-job embeddedness. Findings suggest that while group cohesion on its own does not reduce turnover intentions, it does contribute to development of on-the-job embeddedness that, in turn, reduces turnover intentions.

Future research should control for the effects of external influences on turnover intentions. Findings imply that managerial actions related to antecedents of group cohesion could foster the on-the-job embeddedness of employees.

This study is perhaps the first that tests the operation of on-the-job embeddedness in SMEs located in two countries. The conceptual arguments for links between each of the sub-dimensions of on-the-job embeddedness and turnover intentions are based on distinctive characteristics of SMEs and can serve as a theoretical foundation for future research on embeddedness in SMEs.

There is strong and growing evidence of the importance of leadership and management factors influence on employee engagement and discretionary effort. However, the problem is that there has been limited recent effort to review where research gaps exit and provide a direction to guide future research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated perspective on the influence of leadership and management factors on employee engagement and discretionary effort.

The review of the literature includes empirical research and case studies related to employee engagement and discretionary effort from various databases such as Business Premier, Cambridge University Press, JSTOR, Springer, Emerald, Wiley, ProQuest and ISI Web of Science. Supporting material was also accessed from reference books regarding similar concepts and theories.

The review provides a current view of the key topics, identifies three key research gaps, suggests a refined, up-to-date definition of both employee engagement and discretionary effort, and proposes a conceptual framework to inform future research. In doing so, it offers new directions for progressing studies on these critical workplace practices and behaviours particularly the inclusion of national culture as a moderating variable when investigating or implementing employee engagement and discretionary effort strategies.

Findings are based on existing literature and require empirical testing. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research and this review aims to organise, describe and appraise the current literature with a view to gaining a critical perspective for the benefit of researchers.

The reason often cited for the poor relationship between small businesses and their uptake of vocational education and training is that small business owner‐managers claim that they are too busy to engage in training or any type of learning activity and that most training is of little value to them. The aim of the research is to examine the relationship between these factors.

Using qualitative research methods the study collected data of the knowledge, attitudes and needs of small business owner‐managers, both before and after participation in a training program.

This study has indicated that small business owners are interested in skills development and training opportunities, provided that they are directly applicable to the current situation in their business, and as long as the delivery process is carefully structured in terms of location, time of day, and length of session.

The success of a human resource management training program offers both an incentive for other educators to continue to pursue small business participation and useful guidelines for the implementation and the development of new programs for the small business sector.

The approach taken in this research has offered important insights into the value of training and how it is evaluated by small business owner‐managers. This is important as owner managers are the primary decision makers about whether or not training takes place.

The purpose of this paper is to make the case that owner-managers of small businesses should consider using strength-based coaching as a key element of their performance management and learning and development endeavours because small businesses are potentially well-suited to this type of developmental intervention.

In making the case, we draw on literature primarily in four areas: performance management, positive psychology, strength-based management and small business management. The case for adopting strength-based coaching is also underpinned by the practical insights of an experienced small business manager.

The informal internal organisation found in most small businesses makes the small business context potentially well-suited to strength-based coaching. In particular, the informal characteristic of small businesses promotes close working relationships between owner-managers and employees and broadly defines work roles. Such a work context is conducive to strength-based coaching that involves owner-managers capitalising on the unique abilities of each employee by redefining work roles to fit employees’ strengths.

Using strength-based coaching to align employees’ strengths with the work of the small business should have positive effects on the key variables of individual and collective performance and ultimately business results. These variables of performance are employee ability, motivation and opportunity to perform.

After database searching, it seems that there is no previous work that has examined the potential efficacy of strength-based coaching in a small business context. The paper has value for small business managers who are seeking practical guidance on how to improve their current approaches to both managing employee performance and fostering the learning and development of the staff.

Academic approaches to the challenge of enhancing sustainability in research in university contexts illustrate that universities are affected by the very same values and socio-ecological issues they set out to address, making transformation difficult at every level. A theoretical and practical framework designed to facilitate cultural transformation is therefore necessary for conceptualising the problem and delineating possible strategies to enhance sustainability in research. Organisational change is also required, possibly on a university-by-university basis, where cross-institutional learning may be possible with personal behaviours that enhance collaboration across disciplinary and administrative divides.

This paper contends that action research, in particular, community action research (CAR), offers the best approach to this task because it focusses on learning and change, and these are both essential to cultural transformation. A case study from a university in Western Australia is used to demonstrate this approach.

The case study analysis shows some evidence for the presence of knowledge for organisational transformation, and that future monitoring cycles will be needed to detect the extent of the change.

The paper introduces CAR as an approach to advance the change for sustainability in higher education and discusses some of the implications for universities who are looking to incorporate sustainability as a major part of their culture.

The purpose of this paper is to show that most small business owner‐managers are technically competent in their area of business activity however they do not always have equal managerial competence. For example, deficiency in human resource management competence may lead to difficulties in attracting, retaining or leading staff. These factors are critical to businesses that aspire to any kind of growth. Part of the problem relates to a lack of participation by small business owner‐mangers in formal management skills development due to the perceived time and financial costs required. Therefore a new approach to training and learning is needed, one which overcomes the barriers and takes education to the small business community.

A community based education (CBE) approach is examined to determine whether this design is effective in addressing the reported barriers to training faced by small business owner‐managers.

Evaluation of the CBE approach has shown that when small business owner‐managers participate in a dedicated management skills program, important gains are made that contribute to their personal and business development. These benefits can have lasting effects both on the business and the community in which it operates.

Small business is an important sector for both economic and social outcomes. Without sufficient management competencies small businesses are more likely to fail. Therefore, the development of an approach to management training that can both engage small business owner‐managers and achieve positive benefits for the individual, and the business is of enormous value. This research provides evidence of an approach that has achieved these goals.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of factors that impinge on managerial decision‐making processes regarding employee access to structured training and development (T&D) opportunities that are at least partially funded by the firm.

Semi‐structured interviews incorporating the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) were conducted with 14 managers of medium‐sized enterprises based in Perth, Western Australia. The interviews explored decisions managers have actually made regarding employee access to T&D and yielded 42 useable critical incidents that served as the unit of analysis.

There were three key findings: first, employee access to T&D was initiated primarily by managers; employees did not exhibit developmental proactivity. Regulatory requirements and performance deficits were the main factors triggering T&D. Second, decisions regarding employee access to T&D were influenced by a wider range of factors than the decision making factors that commonly feature in literature that discusses “barriers” to T&D in SMEs. Third, decision makers tended to neglect the evaluation phase of the decision making process and engaged in post‐decisional justification.

The study holds a number of lessons that are based on an analysis of the authors' experiences of using the CIT. The lessons are potentially important for researchers who will be using the technique to study similar topics in the years ahead.

This study addresses the lack of research into factors that affect managers' decisions when they consider providing employee access to firm‐sponsored structured T&D opportunities. It also assesses the effectiveness of the CIT as a tool for studying managerial decision‐making processes regarding employee access to T&D opportunities.