INDIGENOUS CONTRACTORS PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF TOPICS FOR CONTRACTOR TRAINING IN NIGERIA

Provision of training is prominent among other initiatives to enhance domestic contractors' performance and contributions to economic growth in developing countries, Unfortunately, efforts in this respect are o nly marginally successful, The literature on small-medium sized enterp rises (SMEs) indicate that owner-managers' personal characteristics an d factors relating to their organisations as well as the training prog rammes on offer influence their perceptions of importance of training, training needs and preferred delivery systems, Little effort was made in the past to train Nigerian indigenous contractors, This paper repo rts an exploratory study on contractors' perceptions of the importance of topics for training programmes to improve indigenous contractors' performance, part of a larger questionnaire survey of contractor train ing and development needs in south-west Nigeria, The majority of the r espondents were trained construction professionals under forty five ye ars old with previous work experience in the industry prior to establi shing construction contracting business, The subject categories percei ved as most important in descending order of importance are accounting and financial management, entrepreneurial studies and project managem ent, Responses were analysed on the basis of certain personal and orga nisational factors, no statistical difference was observed in the perc eptions of the sample in most instances. These findings provide insigh ts into topics that will make training attractive to contractors in th e region. The paper concludes that programmes to improve indigenous co nstruction capacity in developing countries should promote entrepreneu rial and managerial skills in construction education so that graduates are encouraged to consider self-employment or business ownership as a lternative to career aspirations in employment, Thus trained indigenou s professionals are better prepared as future owner-managers of constr uction enterprises, However, the findings cannot be generalised to oth er parts of the country due to the limitations of the study, Potential differences in personal and organisational characteristics imply diff erences in needs and preferences, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd, All r ights reserved.