Business Advisers' Impact on SMEs
从委托代理视角，基于对英国商业链接政策中个人商业顾问的访谈和调查，分析了顾问与中小企业客户之间的激励和关系，发现商业链接顾问的建议对中小企业的影响可能不如会计师和律师。
The broad focus of this article concerns the UK Business Link policy to target business advice to small and medium-sized firms. This policy, which operated between 1993-9, encouraged Business Link to provide advice to firms with the potential to grow. The article considers the targeted policy from the perspective of the Business Link personal business adviser (PBA). Overall, from a principal-agent perspective, the article examines the incentives and relationships between various business advisers and their SME (small to medium-sized enterprise) clients to explain the impact of business advice. The article draws on a qualitative-quantitative study of business advice conducted by the author. Twenty-nine business advisers participated in individual semi-structured interviews and a focus group of ten public sector business advisers provided the qualitative element of the research. A survey of 175 Business Link personal business advisers (PBAs) provided the quantitative element to the research. The article suggests that Business Link PBAs' advice is likely to impact less on SMEs than that of accountants and solicitors simply because of the basis of their relationship.