Entrepreneurship Trainings and Human Capital Endowment: When Learning from External Sources Does (Not) Increase Performance

Storz Cornelia (), Amoncio Egbert () and Ramachandran Rajesh ()
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Storz Cornelia: Faculty of Economics and Business, 9173 Goethe University Frankfurt , Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 4, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Amoncio Egbert: Faculty of Economics and Business, 9173 Goethe University Frankfurt , Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 4, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Ramachandran Rajesh: Department of Economics, School of Business, 65210 Monash University Malaysia , 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, 33-64

Abstract: Bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) entrepreneurs have few resources to draw on besides their human capital. We analyze the effects of a training program teaching lean management to BoP entrepreneurs in Zambia by comparing its performance effects across individuals with high and low levels of specific human capital. We find that participation in the entrepreneurship training program positively affects management practices related to lean management as well as cost reduction for all training participants. The program, however, has no uniform effect on profits. The effect is positive only for entrepreneurs equipped with specific human capital. Moreover, we observe that this effect is in particular strong for entrepreneurs with vocational education compared to work experience. This suggests that the value of entrepreneurship training programs is contingent on human-capital endowment and calls into question existing notions of what it means to offer such programs.

Keywords: randomized experiment; learning; management training; necessity entrepreneurs; emerging markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1515/erj-2023-0186

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