Assessing the effectiveness of business support services in England: evidence from a theory based evaluation

In England, publicly supported advisory services for small firms are organised primarily through the Business Link (BL) network. Based on the programme theory underlying this business support services we develop four propositions and test these empirically using data from a new survey of over 3,000 English small firms. Our empirical results provide a broad validation of the programme theory underlying BL assistance for small firms in England during 2003, and more limited support for its effectiveness. More specifically, we find strong support for the value of BL operators maintaining a high profile as a way of boosting take-up. We also find some support for the approach to market segmentation adopted by BL allowing more intensive assistance to be targeted on younger firms and those with limited liability status. In terms of the outcomes of BL support, and allowing for issues of sample selection, we find no significant effects on growth from ‘other’ assistance but do find positive and significant employment growth effects from intensive assistance. This provides partial support for the programme theory assertion that BL support will lead to improvements in business growth performance and stronger support for the proposition that there would be differential outcomes from intensive and other assistance. The positive employment growth outcomes identified here from intensive assistance, even allowing for sample selection, suggest something of an improvement in the effectiveness of the BL network since the late 1990s

Employment and SMEs during crises

The persistent increasing duration of unemployment has become an issue during economic crises. Although lay-offs at large firms normally make headlines during crises, we still know little about the potential impact of firm size on adjustment behavior in a crisis. We studied effects of firm size on employment growth during economic slowdowns using a rich microeconomic database for the 1988-2007 period in Portuguese manufacturing industry. The results show that economic downturns affect firm growth negatively. This negative effect is found to be higher for larger firms, both during and immediately following crisis periods. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) emerge as potential stabilizers in downturn periods. However, larger firms seem to be able to quickly recover from downturn periods. Our results contribute to the scarce literature and to the understanding of the Portuguese case, where many SMEs secure most jobs. These first results may be useful, because SMEs play a determinant role in other European Union economies

Did firm age, experience, and access to finance count? SME performance after the global financial crisis

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper examines the relationships between firm age and entrepreneurs experience on SME performance after the 2008/09 global financial crisis. We find that in general the crisis had a long-lasting scarring effect on the SME sector, but there is evidence of some recovery in performance. Interestingly, the well-established, and negative, firm age-growth relationship still holds, but entrepreneurial experience did not have any substantive effects on small business performance. Our findings suggest that the severity of the crisis meant that previous entrepreneur experiences had little value in this unique and uncertain environment. However, young firms still accounted for a disproportionately high share of growth, especially among the fastest growing firms