Firms are driving forces of economic and social development; therefore it is important to understand what is their primary goal or purpose. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, the paper presents baseline theoretical concepts on the firms' purposes. Secondly, the paper presents the results of the empirical study in Slovenia with which we tried to determine how firms' purposes are perceived by their managers and how they see their responsibility to owners and other stakeholders. The empirical study was based on a survey that was sent to the management of 1400 Slovenian mediumsized and big companies, of which about one third responded. The survey questionnaire was pre-tested through interviewing five top managers in five Slovenian firms with different ownership structure. On the basis of the empirical study it is possible to conclude that, on average, Slovenian firms put the interests of all stakeholders before the interests of only shareholders. So it seems that the majority of managers follow the stakeholder approach in the governance model.

The article studies the relationship between ownership structure and performance of the Slovenian join stock companies, with special focus on the comparison of performance of state-and privately-owned joint stock companies and ownership concentration. The empirical analysis employs firm-level annual financial reports data and data on ownership structure of all Slovenian join stock companies for the 2005-2017 period. Using panel regression analyses we find that Slovenian state-owned joint stock companies are less profitable than their privately-owned counterparts. In contrast, we do not observe statistically significant relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance. The empirical findings point on the need of further actions in improvement of corporate governance of state-owned firms in Slovenia.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between business process management (BPM) and company performance. The research focuses on the instrumental aspect of core business processes and its controlling activities in small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) to identify the relationship to company performance. Design/methodology/approach The results presented in this paper are based on a survey of Slovene SMEs. A questionnaire was distributed to 3007 SMEs via e-mail and a response rate of 5.42% was achieved. The financial data of companies over a six year period as derived from the publicly available financial reports of SMEs along with an industry-specific financial risk measure and other financial data were used for the company risk-adjusted performance measures of relative residual income (ROE-r) and risk-adjusted ROE (ROE-a) calculation. Findings The results show that instrumental aspects of core business process controlling activities are related to risk-adjusted company performance measures ROE-r and ROE-a. Companies with lower ROE-r and ROE-a have been perceived to be more focused on the instrumental aspect of BPM. Presumably due to the small sample, the results of a non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test did not statistically confirm the developed hypothesis: “the instrumental aspect of controlling as a core process management activity has a statistically significant impact on company risk-adjusted performance measures such as ROE-r and ROE-a.” Despite this, the results show a possible negative correlation between risk-adjusted performance measures and BPM, which opens possibilities for further research. Research limitations/implications The main limitation of the purposed study model is that the paper have studied only control activities of core business processes and relate it to company risk-adjusted performance measures. The study has been limited by the SME sample and the use of a survey as a research instrument. An additional limitation of the research is the degree of reliability implied by the assumptions of the models used to estimate the required return on equity and risk. Results concern investors, managers and practitioners to start BPM improvement initiatives, to set BPM priority measures and to set priority management decisions and further actions. Originality/value This paper presents the unique findings from an investigation of the instrumental aspects of BPM practices and their relationship to company risk-adjusted performance measures in SMEs. This paper developed a measurement instrument for measuring the instrumental aspects of BPM use. An additional original contribution is the use of company risk-adjusted performance measures such as ROE-r and ROE-a, which take into account the required profitability of companies in different industries according to the risk and allows comparable results of companies from different industries. The approach is innovative and interesting as regards researching the factors that affect the profitability of companies that operate in different industries.

This paper tackles the question of fiscal sustainability in current times

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The paper analyses the productivity change of a balanced panel of 1915 European banks during the 2013–2018 post-crisis period. To study productivity changes, the paper applies the non-parametric output-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach and the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). The total productivity change estimated by the MPI is further decomposed into technical efficiency change and technological change. The overall MPI estimates show a modest increase in the productivity of banks in half of the EU countries. Further decomposition of the MPI indicates that the productivity growth was mainly a result of technological improvement, which was particularly high among the new EU member states, whereas there was a significant drop in technical efficiency. The productivity growth was higher among banks in the non-euro area and among savings banks. The practical implications drawn from the paper are that European banks should further develop their business models to rationalize the costs and increase their operational efficiency and stimulate the adoption of fintech solutions and technological development so as to enhance their productivity.