A business and financial literacy programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina showed no effect on business survival but appeared to have some limited effects on improving participant's business practices.
In this meta-analysis what particularly stands out is the effect of microcredit on female empowerment. With respect to entrepreneurship and economic development outcomes, microcredit appears to have the most value in deprived contexts, but overall, results are highly dependent on context.
A laboratory experiment with undergraduate students in a US university explores the effects of intergroup competition and changes in group membership on creativity and collaboration.
This experiment, replicating the selection environment of competitive jobs, suggests that the gender gap could be due in part to men's overconfidence, and men's preferences for performing in competition. Further implications include that a surplus of low-performing men may too often self-select into these jobs while too many high-performing women do not.
Entrepreneurship programmes have a strong positive effect on youths, particularly on labour-market activities and business-practice outcomes, and improve business knowledge and practice, particularly for existing entrepreneurs. However, there is no evidence that this translates into improved business performance and increased income.
Field experiments have the potential to provide unambiguous causal evidence on innovation topics while simultaneously assisting organisations with their innovation.
In the context of a lab experiment intended to mimick market entry decisions, overconfidence leads to the neglect of the quality of competition. When post-entry payoffs are based on individual abilities, individuals tend to overestimate their chances of relative success and enter more frequently. Surprisingly, overconfidence is even stronger when individuals' self-select into the experimental sessions knowing their success will depend partly on their skill.
In the context of a call centre, behavioural heterogeneity observed through employees shirking when reduced monitoring is introduced has important implications for the design and management of reward systems. Management needs to balance monitoring strategies needed to regulate opportunistic employees with strategies needed to sustain the motivation of the substantial fraction of employees disinclined to shirk.
In the context of a semiconductor factory in Israel, experimenting with different types of incentives yielded results that provide some guidance for organisations trying to motivate their employees, showing that incentives of small magnitude can motivate employees to perform better at low or insignificant cost. Also, simply allowing employees to choose their preferred form of incentive can neutralize the possible negative effect of cash bonuses on intrinsic motivation.
In the context of a major consumer credit company in a department where employees conduct measurable and relatively low-complexity tasks, there were significant differences between the effects on performance of routine pay for performance and the O.B. Mod.-administered money. This points to the importance of theory-based, systematic application procedures. Supervisors can quickly be trained in the steps of behavioural management, and can effectively implement them quickly to obtain positive performance results.
