EVALUATING ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAMMES OBJECTIVES AND MEASUREMENT DILEMMAS

The manifestation of entrepreneurship is new business ventures that may be organised within or outside existing firms. Governments in all countries in the industrial world attempt to encourage entrepreneurship as an instrument to renew and strengthen their economy. Many of these governments evaluate their policies by monitoring results of the programmes. This paper examines the evaluation of an ongoing entrepreneurial support programme in Norway. The evaluation of the programme demonstrates that inconsistent and ambiguous goals complicate the measurements that are required for the evaluation. Further complications arise from the fact that some goals are specified in quantitative, others in qualitative terms. Finally, the evaluation draws attention to the significance of the incubation period between cause and effect. Such problems indicate that however precise quantitative measures appear to be when presented in statistical table or graphs, caution is necessary when the measurements are used to assess the effects of programmes and activities.