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 A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Differences in management quality are an important contributor to productivity differences across countries. A key question is then how to best improve poor management in developing countries. We test two different approaches to improving management in Colombian auto parts firms. The first uses intensive and expensive one-on-one consulting, while the second draws on agricultural extension approaches to provide consulting to small groups of firms at approximately one-third of the cost of the individual approach. Both approaches lead to improvements in management practices of a similar magnitude (8-10 percentage points), so that the new group-based approach dominates on a cost-benefit basis. Moreover, we find some evidence that the group-based intervention led to increases in firm size over the next 1.5 years, including a statistically significant increase in employment, while the impacts on firm outcomes are smaller and statistically insignificant for the individual consulting. The results point to the potential of group-based approaches as a pathway to scaling up management improvements. </p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdab005 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 Does the increased employment in the group treated firms come from the changed composition of the labor force in these firm? Sample Trial population and sample selection Public announcement of the program was made in April 2012. Firms were also informed of the program through the car manufacturers such as Sofasa, General Motors, and Busscar.To be eligible firms had to be legally registered, in business for at least two years, be a first or second-tier supplier to the automobile industry, and be located in one of four areas: the departments of Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Valle del Cauca, and the Eje Cafetero (Coffee Axis). The firms were told the program would offer assistance in improving production practices in order to improve profitability, productivity and competitiveness, and that the program would not require any payment by the firms, but that they would need to commit time and effort of their workforce to supply information required and to implement suggestions made. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method While the random assignment was able to achieve balance on most baseline variables, there are a couple of imbalances.For example, the control group is more likely to be in metal products than either treatment group and starts with lower labor productivity. Baseline data were collected from the application form and diagnostic phase and cover firm characteristics in 2013. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Business and employment outcomes.</p> Results Intervention costs The group treatment cost US$10,500 per firm for the intervention stage, compared to US$28,950 per firm for the individual treatment. Cost benefit ratio Reference Iacovone, L., Maloney, W., & McKenzie, D. (2022). Improving management with individual and group-based consulting: Results from a randomized experiment in Colombia. The Review of Economic Studies, 89(1), 346-371. Citation for use in academic references
