Owners of small businesses: Learning stances and self-development of management skills

The notion of taking a stance on learning within the broader process of self-development of management skills by small business owners was explored. Learning stance is defined as an individual's altitude reward learning and is an important bur little-explored component of the ''who'' within the process of management self-development. Four different learning stances based on prior work of Miles and Snow, prospector, analyzer, defender, and reactor, were identified and their relationships to self-development of management discussed.