Sustained Impacts of Kaizen Training

We conducted a randomized controlled trial of short-term management training for small manufacturers in two study sites in Vietnam and collected follow-up data repeatedly for two years to assess longer-term impacts than the existing studies of management training. Our training programs introduced participants to Kaizen, a common-sense approach to production management. In both sites, many participants started to recognize the importance of learning about management and improved their management skills. The impacts on management skills were statistically significant two years after the programs. Our results suggest that the training program increased participants’ value added in one of the two study sites, likely because they learned how to eliminate wastes in production.Emerging State ProjectJEL Classification Codes: L2, M1, O1http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/sonobe_tetsushi

Willingness to Pay for Managerial Training: A Case from the Knitwear Industry in Northern Vietnam

経済学 / EconomicsManagerial capital has received attention in recent years as one of the major determinants for enterprise productivity, growth, and longevity. While recent empirical studies make it clear that training intervention can improve the management level, it remains unclear why the managers had not made efforts to obtain these basic knowledge. To test the hypothesis that the reason lies in low valuation for obtaining knowledge, we conduct experimental training programs for the managers of SMEs in a knitwear cluster in rural town in Vietnam. We find that the demand for these trainings was indeed low prior to trainings, but increased greatly with own learning experience, and that those with a higher prior demand tended to benefit more from the training. We also examine the spill-over effects from their peers and find their heterogeneous impacts across the types of trainings conducted.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/sonobe_tetsushi