Training as a factor of business excellence

Purpose: Adopting a specific strategy is sometimes the key to the survival of companies. Given the increasing interest on the part of the companies to have the best strategy that allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors, the aim of this empirical work is to study the relationship that exists between training and business results.

Design/methodology/approach: The empirical set of this paper is comprised by a survey applied to 381 large organizations in Catalonia region during the time frame of 2066-2007. At one hand, the survey allowed identifying the independent (training) variables, and at other, the dependent variables (economical) were obtained from Sabi Data Base and from the “Fomento de la Producción” Magazine.

Findings: According to data obtained, it is possible to consider training as an additional strategic tool that should be used by companies to improve their performance outcomes.

Originality/value: Taking into account that the literature review only demonstrates studies linking training and results such as total shareholder return, productivity, higher quality of customer services, reduced staff turnover, organizational performance, growth on the staff wages, etc., therefore, the key value of the paper rely at one hand on providing an analysis of the impact of training on billing and at other, on the use of the Model of Industrial Economy as part of the theoretical framework for the causal model development.