(Nowy Sacz School of Business – National-Louis University, 2015) Lisowska, Renata
The paper aims to identify external determinants of the development of small
and medium-sized enterprises and assess their impact on the functioning of these
entities in Poland. Meeting this objective required: identifying determinants of the
development of SMEs, determining the current development situation of the surveyed
enterprises and examining the impact of external determinants on the development of
SMEs. The implementation of the above-presented goals was based on the following
assumptions: (i) the current situation of the surveyed enterprises is determined with
the use of quantitative indicators (turnover volume, number of employees, market
share, profit levels) (ii) the analysis of external determinants encompasses three
components of the environment: the macro-environment, the meso-environment
and the micro-environment, (iii) in each analysed area there are separate analyses
conducted for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, enabling greater precision
in the identification of external determinants of development for each category of
businesses.