Towards a healthy high street: developing mentoring schemes for smaller retailers
Abstract
The small‐ to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) retailing sector in the UK is facing challenging times. In order to help the sector meet these challenges a number of initiatives have been set up primarily with the intention to train, develop and support SME retailers through these times of change. Nevertheless, although a number of schemes exist at the European, national, regional and local levels, their ability to engage with the sector and facilitate change is questionable. Many of the training schemes and advice services are just not perceived by SME retailers to be relevant to their needs. In this paper, we suggest that a practical alternative to many of the structured and formal approaches currently on offer is that of mentoring. By reviewing the literature pertaining to the method and by presenting SME applications of mentoring we develop a framework for mentoring in the SME retail sector.
Keywords
Citation
Hudson‐Davies, R., Parker, C. and Byrom, J. (2002), "Towards a healthy high street: developing mentoring schemes for smaller retailers", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 34 No. 7, pp. 248-255. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197850210447237
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited