Purpose: The aim of this article is an attempt to prove the hypothesis, that one of the key obstacles for growth of Polish SMEs is a lack of management succession, understood as the employment of a professional management team and/or allowing for an external investor. Design/methodology/approach: In this article the authors used external studies, industry reports and data published by domestic and international statistical offices and financial institutions. In order to draw conclusions, the authors used the comparative analysis of available statistical data and case studies of five Polish companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Findings: Findings include: 1. characteristics of the SME sector and its importance for the Polish economy, 2. explaining the role of management succession in the growth of the company and identifying barriers to this process, 3. indicating relationship between size/success of the company and presence of professional management and corporate governance, 4. presenting the impact of institutional environment on management succession, 5. showing the relationship between success of selected Polish companies and their management succession model. Research limitations/implications: The space of management succession in Polish companies has never been a subject to any comprehensive research neither in the theoretical, nor in statistical dimension. To better understand the actual scope, forms, limitations and effects of the succession, the authors made an empirical research based on a representative sample of 200 Polish SMEs. Findings from this research will be published in a separate paper. Practical implications: The authors see the practical effects of sharing the results of this research mainly in the possibility of changing the skeptical behavior of Polish entrepreneurs towards management succession. Originality/value: The originality of the article results from the multifaceted approach to the research problem, which has no equivalent in the domestic literature. It is important for management practitioners and for setting directions for further research.
University spin-offs have idiosyncratic strengths in comparison to other new firms. However, evidence also shows that Polish university spin-offs have a low survival rate, and only a small percent of them grow into sustainable businesses. The purpose of this paper is to carry out an empirical study to determine the nature of barriers to the growth of Polish university spin-offs, in order to address the two major research questions considered by this paper: what are the major barriers to growth, and which combinations of these barriers have the greatest impact on the performance of the university spin-offs under study? Firstly, this paper attempts to explore these research questions through a literature review and pilot interviews, based on which a questionnaire was developed. Secondly, this study attempts to address the research questions through a fuzzy-set-theoretic approach by using a software package, such as fs/QCA- fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. This paper identifies six key groups of barriers to the growth of university spin-offs in Poland, namely financial, competence, psychological, organizational, informational and formal barriers. Moreover, four alternative configurations of key groups of barriers to the growth of spin-offs that lead to low performance among the organizations examined are distinguished using fs/QCA. This problem is interesting not only from a scientific, but also a practical, point of view, pointing out the need for increased attention, not only from academic entrepreneurs themselves, but also for greater effort from universities and the government to cultivate university spin-offs. Most importantly, simultaneous action in all of these directions is necessary. The continuation of such research is also important, which will consider, on the one hand, a larger sample of firms, and, on the other hand, the results achieved so far and their re-conceptualization.
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W świetle wyników z przeprowadzonych badań, istnieje wiele uwarunkowań rozwoju małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw. Istniejące bariery są: z jednej strony wynikiem polityki państwa, z drugiej - konsekwencją ograniczoności zasobów będących w posiadaniu przedsiębiorstw. Najsilniejszą barierę rozwoju małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw mogą stanowić zewnętrzne uwarunkowania, chociażby z uwzględnienia faktu stosunkowo krótkiego okresu funkcjonowania firmy na rynku i ograniczonego dostępu do zewnętrznych źródeł finansowania, będących w okresie czasowej dekoniunktury czynnikami negatywnie wpływającymi na funkcjonowanie małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw.
EN
In this paper the problems of small and medium business have been presented. The work has been concerned on the field of cost and financial boundaries. Some positive and negative factors related to the business development have been selected and described.
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