The Multiple Effects of Business Planning on New Venture Performance

We investigate the multiple effects of writing a business plan prior to start-up on new venture performance. We argue that the impact of business plans depends on the purpose for and circumstances in which they are being used. We offer an empirical methodology which can account for these multiple effects while disentangling real impact effects from selection effects. We apply this to English data where we find that business plans promote employment growth. This is found to be due to the impact of the plan and not selection effects. Copyright (c) 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.