Impacts of entrepreneurs’ stress and family members on SMEs’ business success in Serbian family-owned firms

Abstract

This paper focuses on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Serbia, with a special emphasis on family-owned businesses. The main goal of this research is to analyze family business owners' perception of stress caused by high levels of responsibility and flexible working hours, as well as to analyze the influence of family member employees on the success of a company. This research has confirmed that high levels of responsibility and flexible working hours do not represent important factors for giving up on starting a business. Furthermore, owners perceive these two stressors as "positive" stress. The second important result of this study is that a large number of family member employees, and unclear hierarchy between them, can endanger a company's success in terms of annual income and annual turnover.