Flash Eurobarometer 196 (Observatory)

Attitudes of small and medium-sized enterprises on business performance, globalisation, competition, innovation, and labour market.<br>Topics: 1. Information about the company: independent or part of national or international group, number of employees in 2005 and 2006, expected development of the number of employees in 2007; main activity of the company; total turnover in 2005; expected turnover in 2006; expected development of turnover in 2007; belonging to crafts sector.

2. Constraints on business performance: encountered problems in the last two years: limited access to finance, too expensive labour force, lack of skilled labour, problems with implementing new technology, problems with implementing new organisational forms, lack of quality management, problems with administrative regulations, infrastructure, customers’ purchasing power; development of encountered problems in the last two years; assumed causes for decreased constraints due to regulations; appropriateness of governmental regulations for businesses; number of working days spent this year to comply with information requirements contained in legislation; importance of each of the following issues for the enterprise’s ability to do business in the European Union: no more border controls, same currency in all member states, hire workers from other EU countries, single market legislation; benefit for own enterprise due to replacement of national regulations by EU standards.

3. Globalisation: turnover generated by exports in 2005; expected turnover from exports in 2006 and 2007; expected increase of exports in 2007 compared to 2006 (in percent); main country of destination for exports; main obstacles to exporting; percentage of inputs purchased abroad; percentage of total turnover created in: foreign subsidiaries, joint ventures abroad; countries with subsidiaries or retail outlets; reasons for having subsidiaries or joint ventures abroad; impact of foreign subsidiaries or joint ventures on employment in the own country.

4. Competition: development of competition within the enterprise’s markets; enterprise’s reactions to tighter competition; annual amount of marketing costs.

5. Innovation: percentage of the company’s turnover due to innovative goods and services introduced in the last two years; main obstacles for innovation activities in the last two years; use of environmental management system or similar.

6. Labour market: geographic origin of existing labour force: enterprise’s region, from own country but other region, other EU countries, non-EU countries; main approach of recruiting specialized personnel: public labour market institutions, private labour market institutions, newspaper, private contacts, spontaneous applications; main recruiting problem; job vacancies in 2006 not filled in; educational attainment level of employees (in percent): postgraduate exam, higher education institution diploma, final secondary school exam.

Additionally coded was: respondent ID; language of the interview; interviewer ID; country; date of interview; time of the beginning of the interview; duration of the interview; region; NACE-Code; weighting factor.