Developing an Adaptive Design of Financial Training for uptake in Small Enterprises

Caulfield, Paul (2025) Developing an Adaptive Design of Financial Training for uptake in Small Enterprises. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

The research’s overall aim was to investigate whether a methodical training development process could improve the uptake of financial management training aimed at non-specialists working in small enterprises.

Invitations were issued to non-financial specialist members of small enterprises to take part in financial management training and provide relevant feedback over an extended period on the impact of the training. The training course was adapted and developed in later versions through an iterative adaptive process based on feedback, resulting in a successive approximation training model that improved uptake of the training programme’s key learning aims. The feedback process allowed a grounded methodical approach to find recurrent themes and match these with key underlying theories that are associated with training development and management accounting applicability. These relevant theories were incorporated into the build process to aid the improvement of the uptake of the training.

The research concludes that when a successive approximation of a financial management training model is developed using an adaptive iterative design process, the result will be that the subsequent financial training will enhance self-assessments of financial competency. Furthermore, there will be improved adoption of the training when key applicable theories are incorporated into the model design maximising the effectiveness of the financial management training aimed at small enterprises.

This research is informative as it contributes to the process needed to build a perceived effective financial management training programme for non-finance specialists working in small enterprises.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 22 May 2025 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Small Enterprise, Financial Training, Iterative Constructionist Design, Contingency Theory, Absorptive Capacity Theory.
Subjects:	CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-04 - management studies CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-07 - finance
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > College of Business, Digital Transformation & Entrepreneurship
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	30 Jun 2025 07:56
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2025 07:56
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16451