Risk management practices in German SMEs: an empirical investigation

Thomas Henschel

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2006, vol. 3, issue 5, 554-571

Abstract: This paper reports the current risk management practices in German Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) (so-called German 'Mittelstand'). In particular, it studies possible relationships between risk management and business planning activities. Additionally, it determines to what extent the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is used, for the general purpose of performance measurement and especially for the purpose of risk management. The enquiry was carried out by means of a postal questionnaire. The results show that in German SMEs the handling of risks is strongly concentrated on owner–managers. Risk management is carried out in a rather rudimentary way. Only a few SMEs have established a comprehensive business planning system, and the link between their risk management and their business planning in most SMEs is not well developed. But a sound risk management requires an elaborate business planning, together with a direct mapping of risk figures into the planning system. In general, the BSC was met open-minded, but its use for risk management is mentioned by only a few enterprises. This investigation is a first step of a larger empirical approach to risk management practices in German SMEs.

Keywords: risk management; small to medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; long-term business planning; balanced scorecard; Germany; questionnaire; performance measurement. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=10543 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:3:y:2006:i:5:p:554-571

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().