ABSTRACT
Middle managers (and higher) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) mostly have become managers primarily due to their technical competence. Many of them, depending on their qualifications, have learned to organize technical and work processes or how to manage financial transactions. However, many have not learned, at least not in a systematic way, how to organize the people who cooperate in doing this work, and many of them have not learned at all how to organize working and learning processes as an integrated approach of coping with continuously changing market, technological, organizational and social conditions. Normally, such managers in SMEs perform several functions, have little time, and their companies frequently cannot or do not want to afford systematic training for management and leadership. This chapter presents an integrated approach of (training for) leadership, working and learning in SMEs. It has been developed over a timespan of several years, and certain aspects of this approach have been applied in various contexts before.
