Financial literacy in SME business activity in Poland

Abstract

Summary: Globalisation, dynamic development of financial markets and modern financial products caused that SME firms have at their disposal a wide array of financial instruments. New financial services create wider possibilities but at the same time lead to a necessity of upgrading financial knowledge of SME owners or staff responsible for financial management of the enterprise. The article aims at determining financial literacy of the persons responsible for the realization of financial policy in firms of the SME sector, but also an identification of factors determining and diversifying this level. The main source of data used for the analysis and inference was information elicited through the Author's own investigations conducted in 2011 on a group of 150 enterprises from the SME sector. Summary statistical measures and nonparametric (χ 2 ) test were used to realize the work objection. As results from conducted investigations, the level of knowledge and financial skills of SME employees depends on the gender, age and education but also on the period of employment/conducting economic activity. Men, aged under 34 years of age, possessing higher education and employees with the longest employment period revealed a higher level of financial literacy. It has been noticed that firms managed by persons revealing a higher level of financial literacy more often use the innovative financial services, e.g. leasing or factoring.

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Financial Literacy Level of Hotel Employees

“…Farklı milliyetlerdeki otel çalışanlarının eğitimleri ile finansal okuryazarlık düzeyleri arasında fark olup olmadığının incelendiği H5 test sonuçlarına göre her iki milliyette de farklılıklar görülmüştür. Önceki çalışmalar ile örtüşen bu sonuca göre, yüksek düzeyde eğitim seviyesine sahip otel çalışanları ile düşük düzeyde eğitime sahip otel çalışanları arasında farklılık olduğundan söz edilebilir (Agarwalla vd., 2015;Szafrańska ve Matysik-Pejas, 2012). Bu sonuçla beraber Türk çalışanların finansal okuryazarlık konusunda eğitim almamasına karşılık konuya ilişkin algılarının yüksek olarak belirlenmesi (H6), finansal okuryazarlık konusundaki eğitim gerekliliğini desteklemektedir.…”