These activities aim to examine changes in the degree of digitalization of enterprises during the pandemic, analyze the relationship between the degree of digitalization and the resilience or vulnerability of enterprises, and identify the drivers and barriers to digitalization while examining the impact of them on the degree of digitalization.
The participants of the phenomenological research, a total of 45 of them, will be entrepreneurs, or more precisely, directors or presidents of management boards of active companies in the Republic of Croatia with the main activity within the manufacturing industry and the trade and tourism sectors, which belong to the category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. As a prerequisite for conducting qualitative research, an in-depth interview guide has been designed.
At the same time, data was collected for quantitative research on secondary data, which would detect vulnerabilities or resilience of Croatian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in selected activities, identify the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on investment and financing strategies, and vulnerability/resilience in the context of indirect impact on the security and profitability of companies.
The project, which started on the 18th of December 2023, is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ), under the number IP-2022-10-6703, in the amount of 119,449.81 euros, and the estimated implementation period is 4 years, i.e. until the 17th of December 2027.
