Abstract:

Awareness of the importance and role of individual corporate functions in creation of a corporate strategy is one of the fundamental preconditions for development of an efficient and sustainable corporate strategy. A corporate strategy is influenced by the sector and size of an enterprise. This paper relates the size category (micro and small enterprises, medium enterprises and large enterprises) to the importance of tested functions. The tested functions included economy, marketing, sales, technologies, innovations and corporate culture. The survey covered a group of 456 business entities from the entire Czech Republic (from which 83 were large, 124 medium and 249 were micro and small enterprises) and it used statistical tests (one-tailed one-sample test of proportions and interval estimation) to determine which function has the biggest influence on implementation of a strategy of a business entity or which seems to have the biggest influence based on the performed statistical tests. The obtained results have confirmed a special position of the economic function for all the size categories of the enterprises and, with the exception of corporate culture, also significant appreciation of all corporate functions in the category of large enterprises. The small and medium enterprises fail to sufficiently appreciate the technological and innovation functions, as well as marketing and sales. The obtained results suggest the need to further investigate effects of corporate functions on creation of a corporate strategy and, in case of shortcomings, to systematically address the issue in corporate practice.