Critical Evaluation of Business Support in Wales
Researchers: Frances Hines (Alumni), Diego Vazquez (project manager), Lara Hopkinson (Alumni) and Renee van Baar (Alumni)
Background
During the last two decades, environmental business support has become an important aspect of business support in general in the UK. In the 1990s, a number of strategies, policies and initiatives aimed to address the environmental responsibilities of the business community and, stimulated with a range of funding approaches, resulted in a number of environmental business support organisations being set up. The newly arisen organisations offered a wide range of support, but suffered from criticism about the non-integrated and loosely connected infrastructure it had formed. Other criticisms were a variety in the quality and the spatial coverage of the services, leading to high competition in certain areas and poor provision in others.
Wales showed evidence of these weaknesses, yet it received a substantial amount of funding. As a result of several issues arising from the provision of environmental business support of Wales, a new approach was developed to try and provide a more coherent and coordinated framework and delivery mechanism by which the provision of support could be more effectively targeted, and seen more economically and environmentally efficient and which could be more easily evaluated against a range of targets and indicators being developed both within the Welsh Assembly Government, and externally.
Publications
- Cordeiro, J , Sarkis, J, Vazquez Brust, D, and Dijkshorn, J. “Estimates and Correlates of Technical Efficiency of Solid Waste Management by Welsh SMEs: A Stochastic Frontier Approach”, Journal of the Operational Research Society,
- Vazquez D and Hines, F (2007) ‘A survey of Business Needs and Views on Environmental Business Support’, BRASS, Welsh Assembly Government Report , Vazquez D and Lopez, S , ‘An spatial analysis of Environmental Business Support and Infrastructure in Wales, Welsh Assembly Government Report,
- Vazquez, D, Hines F, and Van Baar ,R. and Pointing, C. (2007) ‘Critical Evaluation of Sustainable Funding in Wales: Environment Wales”, Welsh Assembly Government, May 2007,
- Vazquez, D, Hines F, Van Baar ,R. and Pointing, C. (2007) ‘Critical Evaluation of Sustainable Funding in Wales: the Sustainable Development Fund’, Welsh Assembly Government, May 2007,
- Vazquez, D, Hines F and Van Baar ,R. (2006) ‘The BRASS Model for Evaluation of Sustainability, Efficiency and Effectiveness of Public Policies and Programmers’, BRASS/Welsh Assembly Government,
- Vazquez, D, and Hines, F. (2006) ‘Green Dragon: A Welsh Environmental Management System’, BRASS/Welsh Assembly Government
Partners and Funding
BRASS gratefully acknowledge the funding of a number of organisations for this project - the Welsh Assembly Government and the Environment Agency (Wales) in particular.
