Learning in SMEs

This Special Issue of Human Resource Development International (HRDI) is devoted to Learning in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Having set up a stream for this vital,but often ignored, area at the University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD) Conference in 2017, I was delighted when then HRDI Editor, Professor Carole Elliott, asked me if I would guest-edit this Special Issue – and even more delighted when Professor David Gray (University of Greenwich) accepted my invitation to be my co-guest-editor. David and I agreed that this would continue the work which we started with our Human Resource Development Quarterly editorial (Short and Gray 2018) which called for more research into Learning in SMEs – and wider dissemination of such research. Unfortunately, David’s illness and subsequent untimely death curtailed much of his work on this Special Issue, but his guiding hand in the early days was invaluable and therefore this Special Issue is dedicated to his memory, as is the Learning in SMEs stream at UFHRD, which was made into a standing stream in his honour this year. Consequently, although I have written this editorial, I frequently use the word ‘we’ to indicate that I believe this editorial is written very much as David intended.