Systems theory and the common‐sense view of advisers

UK Business Link provides bespoke advice to small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) through business advisers. The Small Business Service’s consultation paper, “Integrating the business support infrastructure for SMEs”, advocated “customer‐driven, not supply‐led” publicly funded business support, where personal business advisers (PBA) signpost the company to advice. Advisers must assess their client’s needs using their business experience, which results in the advisers developing heuristics (or “rules‐of‐thumb”) to understand the essential components of the flourishing firm. The paper contends that an inductive methodology can uncover advisers’ heuristics, developed to derive a practical “model” of success. In total, 29 business advisers participated in individual semi‐structured interviews and a focus group of ten public sector business advisers provided a qualitative element of the research. The model borrows concepts from systems theory to conceptually represent how practical business advisers view the world of the small firm manager. This suggests that there is a tension between the focus of business advisers on a “closed” system of management, whereas owner‐managers concentrate on a more concrete open system of sales, cash and production.