Crisis Management, in Family Enterprises, from a Personnel Management Perspective

Abstract

This study examines the impact of crisis, on family businesses, caused by the global financial crisis of 2008 and the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of measures on the economy and the management of family businesses is being examined, with a focus on preparation and implementation of measures related to family enterprises during this period. The subject of our research was to find out what kind of personnel measures were implemented by the management of family enterprises in order to mitigate the negative impact of crisis situations and retaining the employees working for family businesses. The attention is addressed to measures taken during the global financial crisis and the crisis caused by COVID-19. The research is based on relevant data of empirical surveys in order to find out what impact the above-mentioned crises had on the entrepreneurial activity and management of these types of enterprises. The first phase of the research was conducted in January-May 2018 (306 responses were obtained), while the second phase was concluded in February-June 2022, where we obtained 289 responses from the management of family enterprises. The software “Statistica” was used to evaluate the research results. In addition to classical statistical methods, I also applied a statistical method for data categorization, and the method of descriptive statistics. Spearmen and Cramer’s correlation coefficient was used in the case of ordinal data. The metrics were calculated by using Pearson’s coefficient. The result of the conducted surveys provided information about the impact of economic crises on entrepreneurial activity of family business. It has become clear what kind of measures these businesses introduced in addition to economic and financial measures. Family enterprises were forced to implement changes in organization and management, remuneration system, work requirements, employment policy, as well as in employee motivation. Further important data of the findings were the differences detected in the examined periods in terms of the degree of negative impact on introduced measured during the crisis in order to mitigate the negative influence on employment in family enterprises.