This paper provides a large scale analysis of the influence of location on the extent of use and impact of external advice and collaboration on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Britain. The analysis indicates that for private sector advisors (accountants, consultants etc) and collaboration with suppliers and customers, the intensity of use does not vary significantly with location in most cases. Only the input of business friends and relatives is strongly locationally constrained. EU Structural Fund status of an area also has few major effects on use of private sector advice. However, the impact of external advice, and the extent of local collaboration between similar firms, is influenced by location, with impact generally increasing with the size of business concentration, density and closeness to a business centre; i.e. there are positive effects of urban location and agglomeration economies. For public sector support agencies (such as the Small Business Service Business Link, TECs/LECs, enterprise agencies, and also chambers of commerce) the reverse is generally true. Levels of use are locationally influenced but impact is not.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Find related papers by JEL classification: M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups L80 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - General L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: