Sustainability of Previously Fast Growing Estonian Companies Under Economic Recession

Sustainability of previously fast growing Estonian companies under economic recession

During the recent five years lots of enterprises in various fields have grown more than average that is more than 20% per annum. Nowadays, when the world is seized by economical crisis, more and more actual is getting a question, which of those rapidly grown enterprises have stayed running and how sustainable they are. There have been done some studies about what industrial sector enterprises have suffered most from the crisis but the research about which rapidly grown enterprises proceeded successfully working and which experienced a failure.

Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to investigate how many enterprises that grew fast during the economic boom proceed to work up till now and are sustainable in the future as well and how many of them collapsed. Sustainability measure is enterprise`s overdue tax debt. In addition to this, the aim is also to research what industrial sectors are successful and what have suffered from crisis most.

During the research it became clear that rapidly grown enterprises are usually small, because in 2009 98% of enterprises in Estonia were small companies. What is more, they are more flexible to market changes and react faster than big corporations. Despite this, small firms usually have a lot of problems: lack of finances, lack of management skills and lack of qualified staff. What is more, during the rapid growth the small enterprise faces more difficulties such as inability to reorganize a management and to perform the new appeared tasks to keep the firm`s growth. Also the problem is to find new qualified staff, because during the boom there is usually a lack of staff, especially skilled.

In order to continue growing or survive, the small enterprise not only has to perform an excellent management such as personal approach to customers and innovation, but it has also to manage finances and especially to manage and to predict the cash...