Doing Business in Serbia: Key Corporate Stakeholders

Abstract

Research Question: The aim of this empirical research paper is to determine key corporate stakeholders in the Republic of Serbia. Motivation: Serbia belongs to the group of emerging economies striving to adopt market economy management practices. Stakeholders occupy an important position in the strategic business planning process. So far, research on corporate stakeholders in Serbia is scarce, and does not provide enough data on this, for strategic business planning and strategic management, important topic. Hence, the motivation for such a study determining the significance and role of certain corporate stakeholder groups for companies operating in Serbia has arisen. Investigating this issue can show, and thus help Serbian managers, how to improve and/or redirect their strategic business decisions, and subjects they are aimed at, thus increasing the potential for making better strategic business plans, developing better business strategies, which will secure better business performance results. Idea: The idea of the research is to examine the perceptions and attitudes of managers of business organizations operating in the Republic of Serbia in relation to selected relevant corporate stakeholder groups, and using investigated perceptions and attitudes of managers to evaluate the degree of significance and impact of selected relevant corporate stakeholders in the business life of the Republic of Serbia. Data: Empirical research was conducted on a sample of 107 respondents, managers of business organizations operating in the territory of the Republic of Serbia, randomly selected from publicly available databases of business organizations, public associations and media in Serbia, using Computer Assisted Web Interview - CAWI technique. Tools: Analysis of the data was conducted in SPSS v20.0 statistical tool. Data analysis in this study consisted of descriptive statistics. Univariate analysis was used through the analysis of frequency tables and individual ranking statistics. Nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis and post hoc Mann Whitney U test were used to test the significance of differences. Findings: Findings of the research have shown that, respectively, customers and owners hold leading positions among surveyed corporate stakeholders in Serbia, successively followed by suppliers, managers, government institutions, employees, investors, distributors, competitors, community as a whole, media, local community, vulnerable groups, and, lastly, with the lowest significance, NGOs. Service organizations proved to be the most sensitive to corporate stakeholders issue, and commercial organizations the least. Contribution: The main contribution of this paper is a systematic analysis of the stakeholder issue, and quantitative key corporate stakeholder identification in the Republic of Serbia.