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  • 1
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Pathways to Profits : Identifying Separate Channels of Small Firm Growth through Business Training (2016)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource (69 p)
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Parallel Title: Erscheint auch als Anderson, Stephen J Pathways to Profits: Identifying Separate Channels of Small Firm Growth through Business Training
    Abstract: This paper identifies separate and unique pathways to profits among small businesses in South Africa that are exposed to marketing or finance training in a randomized control study. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to firm owners who ex ante have less exposure to different business contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, entrepreneurs who have been running more established businesses prior to training benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-7774
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
    Library Location Call Number Volume/Issue/Year Availability
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    Online Resource
    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 2
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Improving business practices and the boundary of the entrepreneur : a randomized experiment comparing training, consulting, insourcing and outsourcing (2020)
    [Washington, DC, USA] : World Bank Group, Development Economics, Development Research Group
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource (circa 86 Seiten) , Illustrationen
    Series Statement: Policy research working paper 9502
    Series Statement: Policy research working paper
    Parallel Title: Erscheint auch als Print Version: Anderson, Stephen J Improving Business Practices and the Boundary of the Entrepreneur: A Randomized Experiment Comparing Training, Consulting, Insourcing and Outsourcing
    Keywords: Business Support Programs ; Business Practices ; Firm Growth ; Entrepreneurship ; Boundary of the Entrepreneur ; Boundary of the Firm ; Insourcing ; Outsourcing ; Business Services Marketplace ; Graue Literatur
    Abstract: Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many business support programs is to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through classroom-based training or personalized consulting. However, rather than requiring the entrepreneur to be a jack-of-all-trades, an alternative is to move beyond the boundary of the entrepreneur and link firms to these skills in a marketplace through insourcing workers with functional expertise or outsourcing tasks to professional specialists. A randomized experiment in Nigeria tests the relative effectiveness of these four different approaches to improving business practices. Insourcing and outsourcing both dominate business training; and do at least as well as business consulting at one-half of the cost. Moving beyond the entrepreneurial boundary enables firms to use higher quality digital marketing practices, innovate more, and achieve greater sales and profits growth over a two-year horizon
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-9502
    URL: lizenzpflichtig
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
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    Online Resource
    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 3
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    What Prevents More Small Firms from Using Professional Business Services? : An Information and Quality-Rating Experiment in Nigeria (2021)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource (31 pages)
    Parallel Title: Erscheint auch als Print Version: Anderson, Stephen J What Prevents More Small Firms from Using Professional Business Services? An Information and Quality-Rating Experiment in Nigeria
    Abstract: Why do more small firms in developing countries not use the market for professional business services like accounting, marketing, and human resource specialists? Two key reasons may be that firms lack information about the availability of these services, and that they struggle to distinguish the quality of good versus bad providers. A brand recognition exercise finds that most small firms are unaware of most providers in this market, and a survey of service providers reveals that they largely rely on word-of-mouth and informal reputation mechanisms for acquiring customers. This study set up a business services marketplace that contains information about the different providers present in the market and used mystery shopper visits to develop a quality ratings system. A randomized experiment with more than 1,000 firms provided access to this marketplace to the treatment group and randomized whether firms received just information or also quality ratings. The provision of quality ratings information shifts small firms' preferences over which provider they would like to use, increasing the average quality rating of their preferred providers by 0.2 to 0.4 ratings points out of 5. However, neither the provision of information nor these quality ratings had any significant impact on the likelihood that small firms go on to hire a business service provider over the subsequent six months. The results suggest that alleviating information frictions alone is insufficient to increase usage of professional business services
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-9614
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
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    Online Resource
    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 4
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Measuring the unmeasured : combining technology and behavioral insights to improve measurement of business outcomes (2019)
    Washington, DC, USA : World Bank Group, Development Economics, Development Research Group
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource (circa 49 Seiten) , Illustrationen
    Series Statement: Policy research working paper 8836
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Series Statement: Policy research working paper
    Parallel Title: Erscheint auch als Anderson, Stephen J Measuring the Unmeasured: Combining Technology and Behavioral Insights to Improve Measurement of Business Outcomes
    Keywords: Graue Literatur
    Abstract: Business survey outcomes for micro and small firms are notoriously noisy, with multiple sources of measurement and recall error. This paper introduces a new survey methodology that combines automatic consistency checks of electronic data collection with triangulation and dynamic adjustment to arrive at more precise estimates of business performance. The methodology uses insights from behavioral science to lower the cognitive cost of initial recall and establishes salient and relevant anchors to allow for dynamic triangulation and adjustment toward a final estimate. The validity of this method is field tested against traditional performance measures as well as administrative data across three emerging markets: Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda. The results show significant upward adjustment from traditional measures for both sales and profits, a lower coefficient of variation in the cross-section, and higher autocorrelation in panel data. Comparisons with administrative data further confirm a higher correlation and closer magnitude relative to traditional measures. This research reconciles recommendations for increased attention to survey design with a method to leverage electronic survey technology beyond consistency checks
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-8836
    URL: Volltext  (lizenzpflichtig)
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
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    Online Resource
    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
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