In Australia, family businesses account for a significant portion of the Australian economy, comprising over two thirds of Australian companies, and employing over half of the workforce (Featherstone 2005). A significant number of businesses are also small, constituting more than 90 per cent of businesses in the private non-agricultural sector, and providing work for over 3 million people (Australian Bureau Statistics (ABS) 2001). Yet the academic literature has accorded little attention to management development in small family businesses. This lack of research is surprising given the role of training in creating a more highly skilled labour force upon which organisations can draw to increase their competitiveness. Given recent government policy regarding the identification and encouragement of high growth small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a significant gap in the extant literature is any reliable evidence concerning possible linkages between business growth and management development. The recent availability of data from Australia’s Business Longitudinal Survey (BLS) provides a promising new opportunity to fill the gaps identified.

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast management training and development initiatives in family and non-family SMEs that have embarked upon different growth development pathways. Manufacturing SMEs are the focus of this study, as over 99 per cent of all businesses in the manufacturing sector are SMEs according to generally accepted definitions (ABS 1996). Moreover, the performance of the Australian manufacturing sector has been a major preoccupation of policy-makers and government departments dealing with industry and trade, having been characterised as non-competitive by international standards (Pappas, Carter, Evans & Koop/Telesis, 1990). The significance of the SME sector to the Australian economy, together with the central role that manufacturing inevitably plays in economic success, strongly suggests the importance of increasing our understanding of management training and development in Australian manufacturing family and non-family SMEs.