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A high proportion of early stage entrepreneurs in total entrepreneurial
activity in Slovakia can be considered less stable with a lower quality. The
high proportion of entrepreneurs whose motivation to start a business is
based on necessity contributes to this negative trend.
x
Entrepreneurial activity of employees
(EEA or intrapreneurship) in
Slovakia in 2013 expressed lower values for all indicators compared to 2012.
On the other hand, average values of EEA in European countries were very
similar to the last year. Slovak values are beneath the European average. The
reason for such lag can be deduced from the fact that large firms in Slovakia
are owned by foreign entities, and the creative activities occur mostly in their
headquarters, whereas in Slovakia there is little to no room for internal
innovation. Another explanation, emanating from small and medium-sized
companies operating in Slovakia may be generally lower focus of these
companies on innovative activity.
x
In 2013 a specifically examined topic within the GEM was
the issues of
entrepreneurs’ satisfaction with life (well-being)
, studied from three
perspectives: subjective satisfaction with life, balance between work and
personal life and work satisfaction. The results showed that the Slovaks are
generally dissatisfied with their lives while established entrepreneurs and
women in early stage entrepreneurial activity are moderately satisfied
thereby improving the overall state. An interesting finding in this regard is
that those entrepreneurs, whose motive for starting a business was
identification of business opportunity, are most satisfied with their lives and
entrepreneurs whose motivation was necessity belong to the least satisfied
with their life. Thus, they are more dissatisfied than non-entrepreneurs.
These findings in Slovakia are in line with the European and global trends
identified by GEM. According to the survey on the balance between personal
and professional life, Slovaks viewed the balance between their personal and
professional lives negatively, and thus as an imbalance. It is interesting to
note that the Slovak entrepreneurs in the early-stage entrepreneurial activity
are equally negativistic in the studied area as the entrepreneurs in other V5
countries. However, Slovak women entrepreneurs assess this balance more
positively compared to V5 countries, and are closer to the European average.
Most negative attitudes had those early-stage entrepreneurs whose main
motive to start a business was necessity. They had even more negative
attitudes toward the work-life balance than the general population and even
non-entrepreneurs. International comparison also shows that Slovakia is
among the worst countries, when assessing this balance, which indirectly
demonstrate the difficulty of entrepreneurship in our conditions. Another
interesting fact is that the highest balance between work and personal life
was reached by the countries from South America and minimum values in
work life balance, belong to Asian countries. Regarding the assessment of
work satisfaction, Slovaks are generally dissatisfied. Again the least satisfied
are those early-stage entrepreneurs, whose motive for doing business is