The Role of Serbian Higher Business Education in Overcoming the Challenges of SME Managers

In this exploratory study, in-depth interviews with Serbian managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were conducted to identify their main work-related challenges and the extent to which formal higher business education has helped them to overcome these challenges. Serbian SME managers find the main challenges to be related to HR- and marketing-related issues, followed by country-specific problems, such as dealing with bureaucracy, difficulties in obtaining financial resources, and coping with delayed payments. They see considerable deficits in the current system of higher business education, specifically referring to a lack of practice-oriented teaching methods and insufficient cooperation between the universities and the business sector.