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Using Gibson and Tarrant's (2010) resilience triangle model, this study explores how small northwest Himalayan organisations respond to contextual challenges and opportunities and embed sustainability strategies in the organisations' operational values.

A qualitative exploratory design through individual and group interviews with owner-managers and employees was held in five small northwest Himalayan organisations.

The findings reveal multiple contextual challenges facing small organisations in northwest Himalayas, including ecological conditions, remoteness, underdeveloped infrastructure and human competencies. The investigated organisations respond to these challenges through reactive and innovation-based services like eco-tourism, conservation and educational initiatives. The organisations engage communities through participatory and educational activities. Owner-managers adjust the respective vision and mission statements, train employees on sustainability values and lobby the government on policy changes to embed sustainability strategies. Some organisations invest in resources and capabilities and others in process capabilities.

Small organisations can improve how the organisations predict contextual issues by developing the organisations' process capabilities, specifically by creating practical tools with parameters relevant to ecological conditions. These organisations can set the tools through participatory actions with the broader communities to ensure the (un)intended consequences of environmental issues are considered. Furthermore, improvements in process and human capabilities will provide new approaches to raising business opportunities, especially in post-pandemic business environments.

This study develops a framework that enhances the understanding of how process capabilities, leadership, people and knowledge capabilities are critical to developing and embedding sustainability strategies in small organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to study human resource development (HRD) and organisational learning issues in a small expert organisation.

This is a qualitative single case study conducted in one Finnish SME. It is part of an ongoing study. It is descriptive in nature and the aim is to find out whether the existing HRD and OL practices are relevant and appropriate in the small context.

The results reveal that small organisations do consider HRD to be an issue, even though it may not be as visible or official as in larger companies. The HRD, OL or strategy issues merge into the territory of just one man. The case organisation represents the small firm sector very well.

Current literature has established that the models designed for larger organisations are not directly applicable to the small context. Future research should concentrate on finding out what model SMEs use for the development of human resources. This study cannot be generalised because, at this point, it is a single case study.

From the SME perspective, the paper suggests that there is a lot a small organisation can do in terms of human resource practices, even without vast resources.

The paper examines the HRD and OL issue from a practical point of view.

This paper investigates the differences between staffing methods used in small and large organisations in north Cyprus. Possible reasons for small organisations preferring some methods over others are discussed, along with the general problems small firms face in recruiting employees. Our survey results show that small organisations are more likely to rely on informal methods of recruitment, but no significant relationship was found between the choice of recruitment method and human resource management outcomes such as employee turnover rate.

The purpose of this paper is to examine practices of and differences between small and large organizations as they relate to the training of sales managers.

Utilizing a survey approach, data were collected from a sample of sales managers and trainers employed by firms across the USA. Analysis was conducted between “small” and “large” organizations based on sales force size.

While many similarities do exist between small and large firms' sales manager training practices, some significant differences also exist in terms of teaching approaches, types of instructors, training locations, methods, and content utilized. Results of the current study exhibit both similarities and differences as compared to results of sales manager training practices found in earlier studies.

The study was based on a sample of sales managers and trainers employed by firms within the USA. Sales manager training practices could differ due to cultural differences, the industry the firm competes in, and other factors.

First, sales manager training activities show more similarities than differences between small and large firms. Second, internet‐based training methods are becoming prevalent in large firms while still struggling for acceptance in smaller ones. Third, no one type of instructor is viewed as being highly effective in either small or large firms. Fourth, senior management must support and encourage positive behavioral changes associated with sales manager training or else efforts will fail.

The current study answers the call for research to identify contemporary sales manager training practices, building upon results of previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how firm size impacts pension workforce coverage with a particular focus on automatic enrolment (AE) to pension plans in small organisations.

The paper examines the alignment of government AE interests with those of small employers, their employees and pension providers to better understand how firm size impacts pension workforce coverage.

The alignment of interests between stakeholders (government, pension providers, employers and employees) differs between large and small organisations, and empirical findings from large organisations cannot be assumed to apply in small organisations.

The paper calls attention to the need for future empirical research and identifies a number of research questions for further analysis to examine how AE impacts pension participation in small organisations and advance the field.

The policy of automatically enroling employees into occupational pension plans, recently legislated for all eligible workers in the UK and under consideration in the USA and Ireland, was developed from research conducted in a small number of large organisations. Pension coverage is particularly inadequate for the large number of employees working in small organisations (1–49 employees). However, little research attention has been focussed on pensions in small organisations with pension policy makers assuming that legislated AE will work as effectively in small organisations as it did in large organisations. This paper addresses this gap in the field.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

The topic of management training and development (MTD) in small businesses is relatively under‐researched, and an increased understanding of the factors influencing the purchase of MTD by small businesses is needed. Therefore, a survey of 551 small businesses in the Midlands region of the UK sought to: identify influences on MTD investment and preferred MTD activities; and establish whether small businesses perceive a link between investment in MTD and business success. Interviews were also conducted with 12 organisations. Results show that the organisational characteristics of ownership, size, number of managers and family management have a significant influence on MTD investment. Of the sample organisations, 85 per cent considered investment in MTD to be linked to business success and 80 per cent of organisations engaged in some form of MTD. However, promoters of MTD to small businesses need to recognise that organisations in this sector are not homogeneous and desire customised training.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether consumers’ attitude toward sporting goods retailers depends on who engages in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and where CSR takes place. The study aims to replicate previous findings on football teams (Kulczycki and Koenigstorfer, 2016) for for-profit sporting goods retailers by looking at how organization size and proximity of the supported cause to the retailers’ headquarters interact with consumers’ motive attributions for CSR (philanthropic vs profit).

In total, 200 participants took part in the experimental study. The study applied a between-participant design manipulating both the proximity of the supported social cause (local vs distant CSR) and the size of the organization (small- vs large-sized organization) and measured perceived motives for CSR as independent variables. Attitude toward retailers was the dependent variable.

The results of regression analyses showed that perceived philanthropic motives increased attitude toward retailers. This relationship became stronger for large-sized sporting goods retailers, in particular when they engaged in CSR activities at distant locations. For small-sized retailers, the proximity of CSR did not impact on the relationship between motive attribution and attitude toward the retailer.

Large-sized retailers are encouraged to take particular care that consumers perceive CSR activities as philanthropy-driven, especially when supporting social causes at distant locations.

The study replicates previous findings and shows that not only for sports teams, but also for sporting good retailers, CSR can increase consumer attitudes even when the consumer population at the organization headquarters’ location does not directly benefit from CSR.

Extends previously published work which discussed a survey of senior executives in 682 organizations and concluded that commitment to ISO 9000 implementation left considerable room for improvement. Reviews the peculiar ISO 9000 implementation difficulties of small organizations as reported in the literature elsewhere. Provides further analysis of the previous survey data, especially the attitudes and behaviours of senior executives, revealing differences in ISO 9000 implementation practice associated with organization size, sector and country of ownership, based loosely on the work of Argyris comparing espoused behaviours with behaviours in use. Small organizations are shown to have particular problems in terms of understanding the purpose of ISO 9000, methods of measuring its business impact, and knowledge of where the potential benefits might lie. While not using consultants any more often, small organizations do permit them to write more of their system documentation. Conversely, small organizations have a greater tendency to subject the whole organization to the scope of the standard, yet they are less likely to go beyond ISO 9000 to TQM. Sectorally, textiles, general manufacturing and engineering show most positive orientation to ISO 9000, with retailing and services least. Concludes that small organizations should assess themselves against these findings to ensure that a comparative lack of resources is not merely an excuse for lack of resolve.

There are significant differences in terms of resources and expertise available between small and medium enterprises and large organisations. These differences may be significant for assessing and attaining alignment between IT (information technology) and business strategies. Thus this paper aims primarily to identify whether the differences between small, medium and large enterprises have an impact on the way they perceive strategic alignment.

Based on data collected from 104 participants, five attributes are ranked for each of the following alignment factors: communication, competency/value measurement, governance, partnership, architecture and scope, and skills. This paper reviews and compares their relevance according to organisational size (SMEs and large organisations) and planning integration strategies (independent, sequential and simultaneous).

The results from this survey suggest that, when ranking these factors, there are not significant differences among SME and large organisations. It was found, however, that the ranking of these factors has a positive correlation with the degree of IT/business planning integration applied in the organisation.

This study contributes to an understanding of the complex dynamic of aligning IT with business objectives and the implications for SMEs where few models have been tested. The results suggest that SMEs and large organisations perceived alignment in a similar way, however, there are significant differences in the way SMEs and large organisations implement their planning integrations strategies.

Although current studies in alignment have not explored in much detail the differences between large and small organisations most of the theories around alignment can be applied to small and medium organisations with more confidence. Additionally, the analysis strongly suggests that companies following a simultaneous planning integration can improve the chances to make better use of IT, and thus attain better levels of alignment.

This study contributes towards the study of alignment in SMEs, which is currently not very much explored. It also raises awareness about the importance of developing IT and business strategies together.