Improving Business Practices and the Boundary of the Entrepreneur: A Randomized Experiment Comparing Training, Consulting, Insourcing, and Outsourcing

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anderson, Stephen J.; McKenzie, David
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; The World Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/717044
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 157-209
• 关键词: management-practices; FIRMS; ORGANIZATION; inference

摘要

Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for growth. A standard approach is to train the entrepreneur in these skills. However, rather than requiring entrepreneurs to learn everything, an alternative is to move beyond the boundary of the entrepreneur and link firms to these skills in a marketplace through insourcing workers or outsourcing tasks to professionals. We conducted a randomized experiment in Nigeria to test the relative effectiveness of these different approaches in improving business practices. Insourcing and outsourcing both dominate business training and do at least as well as business consulting at half the cost.