Succession in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Slovenia

Abstract

On the basis of information from various national studies in the EU it is estimated that an increasing number of small and medium-sized enterprises will face changes of owners-managers in the coming years. The main objective of the study, based on the sample of Slovenian small and medium-sized enterprises, was to find out how Slovenian owners-managers are preparing the management and ownership succession.The results indicate that one fifth of the surveyed ownersmanagers are preparing the transfer of management and/or ownership in the next five years. More than one fifth of those owners-managers, who are not preparing the transfer of management and/or ownership, share the opinion that “succession planning is not necessary”. As the succession planning is one of the main factors of the succession effectiveness, raising the owners’-managers’ awareness of the importance to start preparations and succession planning should be one of important measures of entrepreneurship policy. Key words: succession, succession planning, successor, small and mediumsized enterprises, family enterprise