Journal Articles

Using Contribution Analysis to evaluate small & medium enterprise support policy

---

This research illustrates a pragmatic approach to evaluating the small and medium sized
enterprise policy support in small or intermediate N research situations. A public interest
perspective is taken. The suggested approach is most appropriate in settings where, for a
variety of reasons, a study is unable to meet the requirements of a true experimental design
(e.g. random assignment, establishment of counterfactuals, control groups, random samples,
etc.). This approach will deliver findings on the contribution of the multiple factors influencing a
result and will show whether the implicit theory of change for the policy under evaluation
makes the expected contribution to the observed result and in what way. The Contribution
Analysis finds that the theory of change for the policy under analysis was not verified in the
study period. The outputs and outcomes of the analysis broadly support this conclusion.
Moreover, the study finds that the primary limiting factor on profitable small and medium sized
enterprise growth was the ‘limited endowments of managerial resources’ (Penrose, 1959) to
manage the value-adding growth process and the lack of ‘well thought out, well managed
projects’ (Walsh, 1985) and not lack of access to equity finance as surmised by policymakers.
Whilst Ireland is used as the case example in the study, there are significant lessons for policy
evaluators in other late-developing states and in regions with policy autonomy in the enterprise
domain.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Evaluation

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2016

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

13563890

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2016; pp. 129–148

Subject(s)

Evaluation
Contribution analysis
Firm growth
SME policy support

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment