Identifikace faktorů a forem odchodu podnikatele-zakladatele z firmy

Czech economic depends on small and medium enterprises that represent 99.84 % of all active Czech enterprises. Every single region in the Czech Republic is strongly interconnected with SMEs. Every entrepreneurial subject similarly to every person has its parent the founder that set up, managed and developed the business. Despite the enormous progress the humans have made one thing we cannot change and that is the simple time going by and with it related growing old and mortality of humans. There always comes the time in the life of every business founder to leave their business. Further existence of the business unit depends on what exit path the entrepreneur-founder chooses and how he handles this process. Its further existence is the key for the stability of economics and influences the inhabitants' welfare in the region, the business unit comes from. The enterprise can lose or earn much when the founder leaves. The leadership change is a huge intervention in functioning enterprise, and becomes a milestone in its next existence. The European Commission's Directorate General Enterprise and Industry stated that "Approximately one third of European enterprises will need to be transferred to the next generation in the coming 10 years. This means that an average of 610 000 small and medium-sized enterprises will be changing hands each year, potentially affecting 2.4 million jobs." Considering this I carried out the first research among the Czech entrepreneurs about their exit from their businesses so far. Based on this research I can state that the question of entrepreneurial exit is topical for interviewees. More than a half of respondents applied themselves to this question more or less, however only 30 % of them are prepared for the entrepreneur's exit and have a prepared plan. Next 30 % of respondents' firms are endangered by sudden incident because they have no plan for the case of the entrepreneur's exit. One half of interviewees that have already thought about heir exit would like to leave their business in a 5-year-horrizons. Whether the entrepreneur addresses his entrepreneurial exit or not depends mainly on his age, time spent by building the business and the number of employees. The entrepreneurs are attached to their businesses and they retire only reluctantly. The least of interviewees (only 2 % of entrepreneurs) would choose the complete transfer to another family member, i. e. not only passing the manager's post but also the whole ownership share. On the contrary most of the respondents would like to keep at least some ownership share and pass only the control over the firm. Some of the exit path factors are the entrepreneur's age, motivation to set up the business, current situation and expected future progress of the firm, and engagement of other family members within the business. All interviewees that had clear plan of their entrepreneurial exit and would choose passing the business to other family member were pushed into starting the business. When the respondents perceived the current business situation as positive they preferred such exit path that their business would survive. At the same time they would not choose business liquidation when they expected positive further development of the firm. Out of 14 respondents that would like to pass the control to their family member, 65 % stated that other family members were engaged in the business. The higher the age of the entrepreneur the higher the probability that the leaving entrepreneur will pass their business to their family member in some way.