Creating favourable conditions for SMEs – A comparative study of the rural municipalities’ scope of action in Central Europe
How can municipalities in Central Europe create favourable conditions for local business? What and how can municipalities learn from each other? How can each individual in the local area contribute? What requirements have to be met before know-how can successfully be transferred on a communal level? To answer all these questions, we discuss the manifold opportunities, restrictions and prerequisites of establishing favourable conditions for small and medium enterprises in rural municipalities in Central Europe. First, we derive suggestions for successful intervention measures for municipality development from data collected in 65 intensive research interviews with parties involved (mayors, opposition councillors, entrepreneurs and representatives of citizens’ initiatives) from 18 municipalities across Austria. In the next step, it is established which measures – under which conditions – are suitable for know-how transfer to transition countries in East Central Europe bordering Austria (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia) and which barriers have to be overcome. For this purpose, 2,000 questionnaires were disseminated and 61 qualitative interviews conducted in these four countries. The analysis results in 17 theses. We draw implications and discuss the findings against a broader background.