New management practices and enterprise training in Australia

The widespread implementation of new management practices (NMPs) in industrialised countries has had a significant impact on employee training. Examines five NMPs: the learning organisation; total quality management; lean production/high performance work organisations; teamworking; and business process re-engineering. Focuses on the relationship between organisational change and training at the enterprise level. The research identified important findings in six key areas: small business; the use of the vocational education and training system; the importance of the individual; the nature of training; the importance of behavioural skills; and organisational change. The study confirmed that workplace change is a major driver of improved training provision in enterprises. It showed unambiguously that most NMPs are associated with higher levels of training. The integration of training with business strategy was found to be the most important factor in driving training across a wide range of training activities and appears to lead to an across the board boost to enterprise training in all its forms.