Barriers to e-Learning in SMEs — Are they Still There?

Abstract

Facing pressure from an increasingly competitive business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises SMEs are called upon to implement e-Learning strategies to support their organizational training and developmental efforts. The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers and constraints SMEs experience when they want to use e-Learning and to determine, through a multiple case study, if the barriers to e-Learning actually experienced by SMEs in Atlantic Canada are the same as those that larger organizations are experiencing, and if they remain the same after all these years. Another purpose of this study is to present different approaches, such as the need to develop an e-Learning culture in Atlantic Canada and Canada in general, to create greater awareness and promotion of e-Learning, to determine an overall learning strategy to upgrade the technological skills of the employees and the SMEs, that can assist SMEs in surmounting the barriers they face when they want to use eLearning.Keywords: Barriers, constraints, e-Learning, SMEs, training, . IntroductionSmall and medium-sized enterprises SMEs are considered a source of economic growth and are seen as a key sector for creating employment in many countries around the world. Consequently, training and learning are considered critical to SMEs growth in many countries. To this end, references [ , ] consider that in knowledge-based economies, a firm s investment in training and updating its employees skills is a key element of its growth. However, SMEs do not provide sufficient training mainly because they cannot spare time for employees to © 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.attend external training programs and because internal training is too expensive. Therefore, SMEs should logically turn to e-Learning to provide training as the benefits associated with it are supposed to solve these problems. But the logic is not working. SMEs have not rushed to embrace e-Learning in order to train their employees. Why? What are the barriers and constraints they face?In Canada, particularly Atlantic Canada, SMEs have played an important role in the economic development in various ways and their contribution towards a healthy economy has been recognized. They are defined as businesses having fewer than employees and they represent the majority of businesses [ ]. They are the fastest growing segment of the economy, and are considered the foundation of economic development [ -]. Due to their great flexibility and adaptability, they represent the economy sector that creates the most employment [ , ] and they remain critical to the economic prosperity of the region as in other parts of the world [see, for example, -]. Yet, despite their great contribution to the region s economy, there are very few studie...

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