From research: Risk management in small and medium enterprises

Do SME’s risk management capabilities influence their export intentions? SMEs are generally more vulnerable to obstacles to export due to their lack of financial assets and human resources. Such obstacles are typically difficult-to-control external risk as financial, legal and market risks. Exposure to those risks might reduce SMEs’ export intentions if risk management capabilities are lacking.

A paper published by dr. M. ERBEN and dr. M. KUDĚJ et al. in International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal analyzed questionnaires-gathered data from 1 221 SMEs from Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary using the Binary Logistic Regression Test. Results show that financial risk management does not affect SMEs’ export intentions no matter the country of their origin while legal and market risk management capabilities influence depends on the country of origin due to institutional factors.

The study further states that the absence of financial risk management’s influence on SMEs’ export intentions is due to operating in countries with stable financial environment. However, positive influence of legal risk management on export intentions only applies on Czech SMEs. Authors suggest that the reason behind this might stem from business environment quality including efficiency of property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity, business freedom, and government efficiency indicators.

Furthermore, positive influence of market risk management on export intentions only applies to Hungarian SMEs, which might relate to differently perceived corruption levels in sample countries. Read further at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11365-024-00978-2