Tipovi hrvatskih poduzetnika, strategije i percipirane granice rasta
Croatian Entrepreneur Types, Business Strategies and Perceived Limits of Growth

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents empirical data about Croatia’s small and medium enterprises obtained by a mail questionnaire between October of 2008 and February of 2009 (N = 213), and aims to identify the entrepreneurs of survival and entrepreneurs of growth and their respective business strategies over the last five years. Although the variables used did not cover the totality of the all real-life business strategies within the observed types of enterprises, they revealed three important strategies in these two enterprise types. These are: a) the strategy of targeted personnel education and employment of new managers; b) the strategy of improvement of product/service quality; and c) the strategy of conquering foreign markets, based mostly on new business alliances with enterprises abroad. This research did not corroborate the starting hypothesis that Croatian micro, small and medium enterprises see their business success only by following some of the local versions of the market “niche” strategy. Due to the current economic and financial crisis, former growth strategies have been transformed into different recession strategies, and it remains to be seen how different enterprise types will survive under the new economic conditions. Another important factor is that the present crisis warns that the previous type of economic development in Croatia (prevailing of the trade, financial and service sectors over production) does not offer new perspectives for the long-term growth of small and medium enterprises.

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