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The purpose of this paper is to improve assessment and feedback processes in the training practices of very small firms, thereby improving the firms' human capital.

The paper reviews research and practice on effective assessment and feedback.

Based on this paper, human resources are increasingly seen as a potential source of sustained competitive advantage, and well‐trained workers can boost the performance of even very small firms. Hence, a method is provided which very small firms can use to create and implement a structured assessment tool that builds on observation of critical incidents to illustrate the differences between poor, average, and good performance.

The paper shows that readers can use the provided tools to assess and improve employee performance, thereby enhancing their firm's competitive position.

This paper can be used by very small firms to evaluate employee performance and provide employees with both positive and constructive feedback. Additionally, suggestions are provided that allow these firms to use this feedback to effectively set employee performance goals and action plans.

This study, based on our analysis of survey data from 1,242 partners and employees of a U.S. national public accounting firm, examines the impact on psychological well-being from the moderating effects of flexibility and role clarity on work-home conflict experienced by public accountants. Most prior research in public accounting deals with the antecedents and consequences of role stress and primarily focuses on job outcomes of turnover intentions and job satisfaction as dependent variables. Public accounting firms have responded to stressors with worker-friendly policies, largely by introducing flexibility and clarity in their organizational culture. Using a multi-disciplinary research model, we analyze the causal relationships of flexibility and clarity as moderators of the bi-directional nature of work-home conflict (work interference with home and home interference with work) on psychological well-being. Our study finds that perceptions of flexibility and role clarity drawn from a career position in public accounting can mitigate role conflict between work and home environments and contribute to enhanced psychological well-being. We also find that certain relationships described in the model are moderated by family status and age, but not by gender. Results of our study have implications to both individual public accountants and to their firms.

Self-employment is presented as enabling people to better balance their work and family roles but research on its effectiveness is equivocal. We collected survey data from 280 self- and organizationally-employed certified public accountants and conducted a multivariate analysis comparing positive spillover and conflict between the two groups.The self-employed reported less work-to-family conflict with no differences with respect to family-to-work conflict or positive spillovers. However, there were different patterns between male and female subsamples: self-employed males experienced less conflict and more positive spillover than male employees, whereas self-employed females had less of one form of conflict but more of the other.