EVALUATING THE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT GOAL OF ALBANIAN SMES

Nowadays, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly being recognized as a vital part of a country's economy. Albania is a country in transition and after the communist era, has been on a difficult path to overcome many social, political and economic difficulties. The country is pursuing aggressively its agenda for European integration. Albania, same as the rest of Europe, has understood the importance of entrepreneurship in the further development of the national economy. However, Albania, in contrast to other countries in the Western Balkans region, has done little to develop the entrepreneurial stance. The main aim of this study was to investigate if Albanian companies plan in advance their business actions and at what level; also, to analyze their business development goal and the whether they are informed about the financing methods of the specific areas they would prefer to develop. The instrument used was a questionnaire of 50 items and the participants where Albanian organizations (N = 163) from different sectors of the economy. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Findings show that the three main areas in which Albanian companies intend to develop their business are: (i) Increase annual turnover by opening new markets; (ii) Develop and market new products/ services; (iii) To develop staffing skills. Anyway, the interest to invest and to develop seems to vary widely based on the sector. One of the limitations of this study includes the fact that questionnaire is self-evaluative and the veracity of their responses is questionable.