Perception of non-financial risk determinants in SMEs in Visegrad countries

Abstract

Research background: The identification of risks and their management is a key task of strategic management. The right and early identification of risk sources can help companies to survive not only during a crisis period. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) underestimate the necessity to analyze risks and implement the enterprise risk management (ERM). Purpose of the article: The primary aim of the contribution is to identify the most important non-financial risks and their causes in the V4 countries and to analyze the perception of these risks by SME owners. Methods: The results are based on the survey conducted in 2018. The valid questionnaire of 1781 owners of SMEs from four countries was evaluated and analyzed to fulfil the main objective. The statistical hypotheses were con-firmed through statistical methods such as Z-score and Chi-square test. The SPSS Statistics was used for data evaluation. Findings & Value added: The results can be interesting not only for research organizations investigating the development of SMEs, but also for state institutions or private agencies seeking to adapt national support for SMEs. It was discovered that the entrepreneur’s country is the most important factor for the perception of the sources of safety risk, legal risk, and other business risks. There are differences in managers’ perception in case of other risk sources (corruption and clientelism) between entrepreneurs from the Czech Republic and other countries of the Visegrad Group. The SMEs’ country of origin is an important factor for the evaluation of the source of non-financial risks (safety risk, legal risk and other business risks). Differences in the perception of safe-ty risk sources between entrepreneurs from the Czech Republic and Poland were confirmed. More than 25% of SMEs in the Visegrad Group perceive frequent changes of the legal regulation as a legal risk.