Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary Indian weaving firms are visited again nine years after a randomized experiment that changed their management practices. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Indian weaving firms are visited again nine years after a randomized experiment that changed their management practices. While about half of the practices adopted in the original experimental plants had been dropped, there was still a large and significant gap in practices between the treatment and control plants, suggesting lasting impacts of effective management interventions. Few practices had spread across the firms in the study, but many had spread within firms. Managerial turnover and the lack of director time were two of the most cited reasons for the drop in management practices, highlighting the importance of key employees.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://www.jstor.org/stable/26909451 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question What is the long-run performance impact of the original management interventions? Sample Trial population and sample selection Between November 2011 and January 2012 an in-person survey was run of textile firms around Mumbai with 100 to 1,000 employees, using the Ministry of Commercial Affairs registry of firms plus a combination of industry lists, internet searches, and referrals as a sample frame. The main purpose of this survey was to benchmark the management practices of the experimental sample against the industry as a whole. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Initial diagnostic: For a month, a consulting firm evaluates the current management practices and makes recommendations for change. The evaluation focuses on 38 standard business practices encompassing a range of basic manufacturing principles that are standard in almost all US, European and Japanese firms. Those practices can be grouped into five areas: factory operations, quality control, inventory, human resources and sales. Implementation of recommendations: For a period of four months, a consultant works with the firm management to put recommended management practices into place and fine-tune them so that employees can readily carry them out. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method The intervention focused on a set of 38 management practices that are standard in American, European, and Japanese manufacturing firms and that can be grouped into five broad areas: factory operations, quality control, inventory control, human resources management, and sales and orders management. Each practice was measured as a binary indicator of the adoption or nonadoption of the practice. A general pattern at baseline was that plants recorded a variety of information (often on paper sheets) but had no systems in place to monitor these records or use them in decisions. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Firm performance, employment, Looms, looms/employe, plant size, management practices.</p> Results <p>Over the long run, although firms dropped some of the previously adopted new practices, the positive effects of the implementation support scheme persisted, with adoption in the supported firms being 20 percentage points higher. Seven years after the end of the intervention, firms that had received support to implement the recommendations were more likely to be exporting and to use more modern looms. Seven years after the end of the intervention, firms that had received support to implement the recommendations had a similar number of looms as those that only received the initial diagnosis but had cut the number of employees by a quarter, with a resulting productivity (looms/employee) increase of 26.7 per cent. Good management practices also spread to non-intervened plants of the same firms to provide long-term adoption levels similar to those of the intervention plants. Firms that received the full package were more likely to be using consultancy services seven years after the end of the intervention and to have implemented better management practices in areas such as marketing not targeted by the programme.</p> Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Bloom, N., Mahajan, A., McKenzie, D., & Roberts, J., 2020. Do management interventions last? evidence from India. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 12(2), 198-219. Citation for use in academic references
