Business Enterprise in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Abstract

The Finance For Business (FFB) programme operated by Highlands and Islands Enterprise through its network of local enterprise companies is a good example of a package of support designed to stimulate business enterprise, company investment and economic development in predominantly rural areas. During recent years governments in Western Europe and North America have devoted more resources to this type of policy and the need for evaluation of such programmes has increased. The European Commission has been particularly active in encouraging research and the dissemination of good practice. This article examines some of the important conceptual and measurement problems which are relevant to this area of evaluation and uses the FFB programme as a case study with which to illustrate how a cost benefit evaluation drawing on survey-based approaches can be undertaken. In so doing it demonstrates how it is possible to compare the costs and benefits of such programmes and provide Value For Money (VFM) performance indicators which allow meaningful comparison to be made across programmes. The article concludes by pointing to some of the strengths and weaknesses of existing evaluation approaches and makes recommendations as to where further research might usefully be undertaken.