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ScienceDirect Procedia Economics and Finance 34 (2015) 437 – 444

Business Economics and Management 2015 Conference, BEM2015

Entrepreneurial Environment in Slovakia: Multi-Perspective Comparison with Innovation-Driven Economies Marian Holienkaa* a

Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Management, Odbojarov 10, Bratislava 820 05, Slovakia

Abstract Entrepreneurial environment is a phenomenon that substantially influences quantity and quality of entrepreneurial activity in an economy. In order to create favorable conditions where individuals and groups of individuals can flourish their entrepreneurial efforts, policy makers need to know the absolute as well as comparative strengths and weaknesses in the relevant international context. In order to answer this question, we have executed a comprehensive multi-perspective analysis (using data from seven international initiatives) of entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia. Building on the institutional theory, we examined its regulative, normative, cognitive and conducive dimensions. To obtain the contextual picture, we compared Slovakia with group of innovation-driven economies that serve as a relevant and desirable benchmark for our country. Our findings suggest that Slovakia lacks especially in conducive dimension (particularly important for innovative entrepreneurship) as well as in several regulatory aspects, while we exhibit comparatively favorable levels of certain cognitive and normative attributes (such as selfconfidence, network or uncertainty avoidance). © 2015 2016 The TheAuthors. Authors.Published PublishedbybyElsevier ElsevierB.V. B.V. © This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of BEM2015. Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of BEM2015 Keywords: entrepreneurial environment; insitutions; comparison; Slovakia; innovation-driven economies

1. Introduction Slovakia is a country that has routed its development towards building a functioning market economy and joining the group of most developed economies in the world. Vital entrepreneurial sector operating in favorable environment is one of the main preconditions in such effort. Huge changes have been implemented to reach this goal in last two decades, and certain results have been gradually achieved. However, various international initiatives and

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +421-2-50-117-627; fax: +421-2-50-117-527. E-mail address: [email protected]

2212-5671 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of BEM2015 doi:10.1016/S2212-5671(15)01652-4

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Marian Holienka / Procedia Economics and Finance 34 (2015) 437 – 444

ratings (e.g. IBRD/The World Bank, 2014; Pilkova et al., 2014; Schwab, 2014) still point out on considerable gaps in quality of entrepreneurial conditions between Slovakia and the most developed countries. Also, there are frequent voices appearing among domestic stakeholders (e.g. Mrva and Stachova, 2014; Okruhlica, 2013; Subertova, 2013; Pilkova and Rehak, 2013; Pilkova and Kovacicova, 2013) who stress some serious problems inhibiting the development of entrepreneurial activities in our economy. Even though according to the latest World Economic Forum classification Slovakia belongs to the most developed group labelled as innovation-driven economies (Schwab, 2014), our entrepreneurial environment still lacks in certain important attributes. In order to effectively address this issue, entrepreneurship policy makers need to be aware of absolute as well as comparative strengths and weaknesses in the relevant international context. Such comparison has to be comprehensive, and it needs to be done based on relevant benchmark data. Therefore, the main research question of our paper is to perform a multiperspective comparison of entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia with innovation-driven economies and, according to its results, to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the entrepreneurial environment in our country. Entrepreneurial activity in each economy is substantially influenced by the environment in which it is supposed to evolve and flourish (Stenholm et al., 2013; Papula and Papulova, 2013). Even the individual-level drivers that affect individual involvement in entrepreneurial activities are in an immediate interaction with economic or sociocultural environmental factors (Krueger et al., 2000). According to Baumol’s rules of game concept (Baumol, 1990), the role of entrepreneurial environment lies not only in influencing the quantitative aspect of entrepreneurial activity, but especially in determining its qualitative allocation. Baumol’s theory is based on a hypothesis that it is not the supply of entrepreneurs or the nature of their goals, but the set of rules (i.e. the entrepreneurial environment and its particular factors) what dictates the ultimate effect on the economy via allocation of entrepreneurial resources. Entrepreneurship research (e.g. Sobel, 2008) already provided empirical evidence confirming the Baumol’s concept, proving the importance of entrepreneurial environment factors in shaping the entrepreneurial activity. The current understanding of entrepreneurial environment concept and mechanism of its effects on entrepreneurial activity increasingly builds on the institutional theory. Institutional theory is traditionally concerned with how individuals, groups or organizations better secure their positions and legitimacy by conforming to the rules of institutional environment (Bruton et al., 2010). It introduces the relatively wide concept of institutions that according to North (1990) represent the humanly devised constraints that shape human action, i.e. the rules of the game in a society. The term “institutions” includes any form of human created constraint (that gained the character of rules or that are considered to be given and obvious) shaping human interaction (Alvarez et al., 2011). In simple words, institutions form behavior and interactions of individuals as well as groups and organizations. Their influence directs the organizational or individual behavior to achieve legitimacy and survive in the environment rather than to pursue sole efficiency-seeking focus (Bruton et al., 2010). One of the individual and organizational interactions shaped by institutions is also the entrepreneurial activity. Thus, this mechanism explains the principle how and why entrepreneurial environment is an important factor influencing both quantity as well as quality of entrepreneurial activities within an economy. Institutional theory with its issue-specific nature and comprehensive scope on factors shaping human actions offers the appropriate base to understand the entrepreneurial environment concept. Unlike approaches emphasizing the internal perspective or sole focus on efficiency it also accounts for social forces as drivers of individual and organizational action (Barley and Tolbert, 1997), and unlike approaches considering culture as the dominant factor (e.g. Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner in Gal and Janigova, 2010) it broadens attention to the entire scope of potential influences shaping entrepreneurial actions and their nature (Busenitz et al., 2000). Institutional circumstances have been classified, with particular regard to entrepreneurship, into three so called institutional pillars: regulative, cognitive and normative institutions (Scott, 1995; Kostova 1997; Busenitz et al., 2000). Later, Stenholm et al. (2013) introduced the “fourth institutional pillar” - a conducive pillar that is particularly important for high-impact, innovative and growth-oriented entrepreneurship. First, the regulative pillar reflects the existing laws and rules that promote certain types of behavior and restrict others. In particular, this dimension covers, for example, the nature of rules adopted and their enforcement, the influence of regulations on the level of risk involved in business formation and start (Baumol and Strom, 2007) or the level of access to resources (Busenitz et al., 2000). Second, the cognitive pillar reflects the cognitive structures and social knowledge shared by the people in the


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environment shaping the ways in which they select and interpret information. The most important influences affecting entrepreneurial activity covered by this dimension are mainly perceptions of uncertainty and attitudes toward risk (Dickson and Weaver, 2008), opportunity recognition (Ozgen and Baron, 2007; Arenius and Minniti, 2005) and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Krueger et al., 2000; Busenitz et al., 2000). Third, the normative pillar consists of social norms, values, beliefs and assumptions that are socially shared and carried by individuals and are related to their behavior. While values bound the discourse on desired goals or standards, norms detail the means for pursuing particular objectives (Scott, 1995). In the entrepreneurial context, norms and values form e.g. social desirability of entrepreneurship as a career choice (Krueger et al., 2000), orientation on industrial progress (Casson, 2003), public attention to successful entrepreneurs (Lounsburry and Glynn, 2001), uncertainty avoidance (Bowen and De Clercq, 2008) or level of individualism (Dickson and Weaver, 2008), hence affecting entrepreneurial activity. Finally, the conducive pillar measures country’s capability to support high-impact entrepreneurship, and clarifies the relation between institutions and type of opportunities that are exploited in a country. It covers conditions essential for new innovations and knowledge-driven growth, such as “feeder” industries and institutions for such type of entrepreneurship (e.g. R&D-intensive, high-tech or technology industries, educational institutions etc.), skilled workforce, sophisticated markets (including financial market) or quality high-education institutions (Stenholm et al., 2013). In our attempt to analyze the entrepreneurial environment in the context of the most developed economies, a hypothetical institutional profile of an economy would have to include (in line with the about mentioned theoretical groundings) four dimensions, based on the four institutional pillars affecting quantity and quality of entrepreneurial activity. Namely, we would consider regulative, cognitive, normative and conducive dimensions. Furthermore, each of the dimension would be defined by a set of certain specific attributes, based on the nature of the particular dimension as described above. The institutional profile of an economy is visualized as a conceptual framework on Figure 1 below. Regulative dimension x Business freedom x Starting a business x Property rights x Gov. policies and regulation

Conducive dimension x New tech. availability x VC availability x University-business coll. x R&D and R&D transfer

Entrepreneurial activity (quantity & quality)

Cognitive dimension x Opportunity perception x Self-confidence x Networks x Corruption perception

Normative dimension x Status of entrepreneurs x Media attention x Cultural and social norms x Uncertainty avoidance

Fig. 1. Institutional profile of an economy in relation to entrepreneurship.

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In our conceptual framework, regulative dimension is composed by attributes characterizing regulations related to business entry, property rights and regulatory burdens linked with operating a business. Cognitive dimension reflects cognitive abilities within a society related to opportunities, skills or network. Moreover, it includes the cognition of corruption as an inhibitor of free and equal market efforts. Normative dimension covers the key societal norms, values and cultural attributes related to entrepreneurship. Finally, conducive dimension characterizes the attributes important for evolution and development of high-impact innovative entrepreneurial efforts, including R&D issues, technologies, universities or financing. The operationalization of this institutional profile for the purpose of our analysis is described in the following chapter. 2. Material and methods 2.1. Sample Our research sample comprised of 29 countries - Slovakia as the main aim of our analysis, and 28 selected countries classified by World Economic Forum as innovation-driven economies (Schwab, 2014). The benchmark countries were selected according to data availability, with Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data availability as the only sampling criterion. Despite the convenience sampling approach, our analysis inluded 29 out of total 37 innovation-driven economies covered by World Economic Forum, which represents 78.4% coverage. For list of countries included in the analysis see Appendix A. 2.2. Data and variables In order to execute a multi-perspective comparison of entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia with innovationdriven economies, we have used data from seven different international initiatives. Namely, those were Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), Doing Business (DB), Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), Index of Economic Freedom (IEF), Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Global Innovation Index (GII) and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions. To ensure the robustness of our findings, where possible, we used the values for the last three available consecutive years (2012 to 2014) and averaged the indicator values for this time period. Following the theory of institutions, we have used the obtained data to construct the institutional profiles of Slovakia and innovation-driven economies. The profiles comprised of regulative, cognitive, normative and conducive dimensions, operationalized as described below. The regulative dimension of the institutional profile was operationalized using the five variables. First, the indicator assessing the business freedom (IEF) captures the overall burden of regulation as well as the efficiency of government in the regulatory process (The Heritage Foundation, 2015). Second, starting a business indicator (DB) evaluates procedures, time, cost and paid-in minimum capital to start a company (IBRD/The World Bank, 2014). Third, property rights index (IEF) assesses the ability of individuals to accumulate private property, secured by clear laws that are fully enforced by the state (The Heritage Foundation, 2015). Fourth, government policies (bureaucracy, taxes) indicator (GEM) evaluates the extent to which public policies support entrepreneurship by imposing taxes and regulations that are either size-neutral of encourage new businesses and SMEs (Singer et al., 2015). Finally, the burden of government regulation indicator (GCR) assesses to what extent complying with governmental administrative requirements is burdensome for businesses (Schwab, 2014). The cognitive dimension of the country’s institutional profile was operationalized through four variables. Three of them have been taken from GEM indicators originating from the adult population survey. Particularly, the indicators capture the share of adult population perceiving good opportunities to start a new business, the percentage of those who believe to have knowledge, skill and experience required to start a new business, and the percentage of adults personally knowing someone who had recently started a business (Singer et al., 2015). The fourth indicator, an overall corruption perception index (taken from CPI) is a composite index assessing how a country’s public sector is perceived to be corrupted (Transparency International, 2014). The normative dimension of the institutional profile is operationalized using four variables. Two of them are based on GEM adult population survey indicators, and measure the perceived high level of status and respect for

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those successful at starting a new business, and the perceived frequent attention devoted by public media to stories about successful new businesses. Third indicator is based on GEM national expert survey, where it assesses the extent to which social and cultural norms encourage or allow actions leading to new business methods or activities that can potentially increase personal wealth and income (Singer et al., 2015). Fourth indicator (taken from Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions) evaluates the level of uncertainty avoidance as a part of the national culture (Hofstede, 2001). Last but not least, the operationalization of the conducive dimension is done using five variables. First three of them are the indicators from GCR assessing the levels of overall availability of new technologies in the country, easiness for entrepreneurs with innovative but risky projects to find venture capital, and collaboration between businesses and universities on research and development (Schwab, 2014). Fourth, R&D transfer indicator (GEM national expert survey) evaluates the extent to which national research and development will lead to new commercial opportunities and is available to SMEs (Singer et al., 2015). Finally research and development indicator (GII) is a composite indicator within the human capital and research framework, assessing the headcount of researchers, gross expenditures on R&D and top three universities ranking score (Dutta et al., 2014). 2.3. Analysis The multi-perspective analysis of entrepreneurial environment was based on three main steps. First, we have harmonized the heterogeneous set of indicators in order to enable their combination and common interpretation. Since the variables used in our analysis were of different nature (i.e. score, percentage, rank, etc.), we have normalized them to 0 to 1 interval, where 0 indicates the worst evaluation and 1 indicates the best evaluation among the analysed set of countries. Second, we have constructed the hypothetical institutional profiles composed from the above mentioned indicators for Slovakia and for innovation-driven economies. The benchmark profile of innovation-driven economies was constructed by averaging the values of respective indicators achieved by the 28 analysed innovation-driven countries. Third, we have compared the profile of Slovak entrepreneurial environment with the innovation-driven benchmark and searched for common patterns as well as for main differences in terms of our both strengths and weaknesses of our country. The descriptive statistics analysis and visualisation was performed in MS Excel 2010. 3. Results and Discussion Our results on comparison of entrepreneurial environment institutional profiles between Slovakia and innovationdriven countries are presented in Table 1 and visualized in Figure 2 below. Table 1. Evaluation of institutional profile components in Slovakia and innovation-driven economies. Regulative dimension

SK

INNO

Conducive dimension

SK

INNO

Business freedom

0.244

0.639

New tech. availability

0.088

0.669

Starting a business

0.314

0.490

VC availability

0.332

0.517

Property rights

0.194

0.713

University-business coll.

0.109

0.655

Gov. policies (bur., taxes)

0.219

0.429

R&D Transfer

0.000

0.398

Burden of gov. regulation

0.132

0.441

Research & development

0.229

0.659

Cognitive dimension

SK

INNO

Normative dimension

SK

INNO

Opportunity perception

0.201

0.516

Status of entrepreneurs

0.357

0.504

Self-confidence

0.629

0.477

Media attention

0.370

0.464

Networks

0.923

0.549

Cultural and social norms

0.000

0.374

Corruption perception

0.177

0.632

Uncertainty avoidance

0.533

0.416

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r&dgii

busfreed 1,000

startbus

0,800

r&dtransf

propright

0,600

unicoll

govpol

0,400 0,200

ntechavail

govreg INNO

0,000

SK nbstatus

vcavail

nbmedia

cpi

uncavoid

knowent cultnorm

suskill

opport Fig. 2. Comparison of institutional profiles between Slovakia and innovation-driven economies.

As can be seen from results presented in Table 1 and visualized on Figure 2, the hypothetical institutional profile of Slovakia substantially differs from average profile of innovation-driven countries. In most cases the evaluation of individual components was considerably lower for Slovakia, while we outperformed the innovation-driven economies only in few cases. If we look at the particular dimensions and their components, the worst results for Slovakia (in terms of our lacking behind the innovation-driven economies) can be observed in case of conducive dimension. Especially, the greatest relative weaknesses for Slovakia are the low overall availability of new technologies and low collaboration between universities and business sector. Also, Slovakia is the worst evaluated country among the innovation-driven economies when it comes to the transfer of research and development to business activities. The evaluation of regulative dimension also shows comparatively unfavorable situation for Slovakia. Especially, fields of property rights, overall burden of regulation and efficiency of government in the regulatory process (i.e. business freedom), and compliance with government administrative requirements (i.e. burden of government regulation) lack the most behind the innovation-driven economies. The evaluation of normative dimension does not reach the average of innovative economies either, but the overall difference is smaller than in the two previously described dimensions. As for the particular components of this pillar, uncertainty avoidance in Slovakia was lower (and therefore more positively evaluated) than the average of innovation-driven economies. On contrary, the overall evaluation of social and cultural norms towards entrepreneurship was significantly worse, and even the worst among all innovationdriven economies covered by our analysis. Finally, the overall assessment of cognitive dimension indicates that situation in Slovakia is very close to the benchmark average of innovation-driven economies. Particularly interesting are the levels of self-confidence about having necessary entrepreneurial skills, as well as intensity of entrepreneurial network (i.e. knowing someone who had recently started a business), where Slovakia clearly outperforms the innovation-driven economies. On the other hand, perception of entrepreneurial opportunities as well as perception of corruption both significantly lack behind the benchmark values. Generally, our findings do not shed a positive light on the entrepreneurial environment in our country. On one hand we see a high human potential, i.e. the entrepreneurial capacity, due to above average cognitive attributes (especially self-confidence and networking) or relatively lower uncertainty avoidance. On the other hand, there is a very poor support from other dimensions, especially regulative dimension and conducive dimension. Thus, we face a serious danger that entrepreneurial capacity in our economy will not be guided the desired way towards productive


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behavior (as suggested by Baumol, 1990) and sophisticated, innovative and high-impact activities (Stenholm et al., 2013). Instead, such unfavorable composition may lead considerable part of enterprising efforts to unproductive or even destructive behavior, or prevent individuals with enterprising potential from its realization in independent business activities. These findings correspond with results of other studies and evaluations regarding not only the environment itself, but also the entrepreneurial activity. For example, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor results for Slovakia show that our entrepreneurs lack in internationalization, active innovation or growth prospects, and that relatively high entrepreneurial activity goes hand in hand with high drop-out rates (Pilkova et al., 2014). Also, as suggested by GEM results, there is uneven inclusivity of different disadvantaged groups, particularly seniors, in entrepreneurial activity (Pilkova et al., 2012). GEM results also continually highlight the absolutely as well as comparatively unfavorable state of most of entrepreneurial conditions in our country (Pilkova et al., 2014). Accordingly, the Business Environment Index prepared regularly by the Business Alliance of Slovakia has also been showing gradual decline of entrepreneurial environment quality since 2011, with most problematic issues belonging to legal and regulatory framework. Also, reports by Slovak Business Agency (e.g. SBA, 2014) have been pointing out the frequent changes in legislation and regulatory burdens as particularly problematic for Slovak entrepreneurs and SMEs. Especially regarding to university-business collaboration and R&D transfer, empirical studies (e.g. Kascak and Pilkova, 2014; Russev and Kovacicova, 2010) prove gaps in universities’ performance, especially in poor adoption of entrepreneurial university philosophy among our universities. Summing up, the results of our analysis complement the existing body of knowledge in two ways. First, we contribute to the robustness of voices stressing the need for changes in certain areas related to entrepreneurship in Slovakia. Second, our findings point out the particularly problematic areas in comparison with most developed economies, that require special attention of policy makers to accomplish the journey of Slovakia to the group of most developed economies with vital entrepreneurial ecosystem. 4. Conclusion The multi-perspective comparison of entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia with innovation-driven economies provided findings on both relative strengths and weaknesses of our country. Unfortunately, the findings suggest that the weaknesses considerably prevail over the strengths. Slovakia shows relative strengths especially in certain cognitive and normative attributes, namely self-confidence, network and uncertainty avoidance. Such factors positively influence the quantity of entrepreneurial capacity in the country. On the contrary, especially negative is the evaluation of conducive dimension. Since this dimension is particularly important for development of innovative and high-impact entrepreneurial activities, such findings put negative prospects for Slovakia for guiding the entrepreneurial capacity towards this highly productive direction. Also, negatively evaluated regulatory dimension may act as an inhibitor of productive entrepreneurship, and lead some enterprising efforts to rather unproductive or even destructive directions. Therefore, policy makers should address the above mentioned weaknesses and capitalize upon the identified strengths, in order to foster quantity, but especially the qualitative allocation of entrepreneurial capacity in the country.

Appendix A. List of innovation-driven economies included in the analysis USA, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Canada, Portugal, Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Taiwan, Qatar, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago.

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