Competitiveness of Hungarian Small and Medium Enterprises Along Their Lifecycle

The lifecycle model of Adizes is a widely used model for determining the different development – or evolution – stages of enterprises. The different lifecycle stages may be differentiated even in the smallest companies, and the observations and experiences given by the model may be used in analyses before making plans and even it can be a practical tool for managers in the decision-making process. Our paper focuses on the Hungarian SMEs and the specifications of the original Adizes model in the Hungarian circumstances. In our research we examined that whether the managers of enterprises have different attitudes and behaviour in different lifecycle stages (i.e. in different level of development), what are the most important motivations and driving forces for their decisions in the specific stages. According to our assumptions, the lifecycle stages of the enterprises may also affect their financial performance. For answering our questions we conducted an overall survey among Hungarian SMEs. The base of the primary research was based on the data of an on-line survey conducted in 2012. The survey was fulfilled by hundreds of top managers. The data were processed and analysed by different statistical methods using SPSS programme. Firstly the financial performance of the enterprises was analysed according to the results of their balance sheet, by which we determined four main categories depending on their business success. Our results proved that the profitability of the enterprises is strongly influenced by their lifecycle stage and the growing process is also determined by the age of the enterprise.