The business plan as a project: an evaluation of its predictive capability for business success

Rafael Fernández-Guerrero, Lorenzo Revuelto-Taboada and Virginia Simón-Moya

The Service Industries Journal, 2012, vol. 32, issue 15, 2399-2420

Abstract: Although there is extensive research aimed at identifying the main success factors for new ventures, efforts directed at evaluating the real effect of the existence and quality of a business plan on a firm's survival chances have been limited. This study attempts to fill this gap by analyzing to what extent the quality of a business plan, measured according to its economic, financial and organizational viability, constitutes a good predictor of business survival; and how other variables related to the characteristics of the entrepreneur and the business can affect the predictive capability of the model under consideration. Hypotheses are tested using data collected from 2142 service firms. The results show that none of the three variables that evaluate business plan quality (economic, financial and organizational viability) seems to have a determining influence on survival chances. Adding essential characteristics related to the entrepreneur and the business (education and training, experience, kind of motivation, number of employees and start-up capital) does little to increase the model's predictive capabilities.

Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02642069.2012.677830 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:servic:v:32:y:2012:i:15:p:2399-2420

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FSIJ20

DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2012.677830

Access Statistics for this article

The Service Industries Journal is currently edited by Eileen Bridges, Professor Domingo Ribeiro, Ronald Goldsmith, Barry Howcroft and Youjae Yi

More articles in The Service Industries Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().