Specifics of Business Consulting Services Used by Small and Medium Enterprises in a Transition Economy

Abstract

The role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is very important in every European country. At the same time, there are numerous barriers that limit SME possibilities to grow. The variety of these barriers is rather big, and the number of offered solutions is also large. This article concentrates just on one of them: use of professional assistance of business consultants. This is critically important in transition economies, where traditions of using services of business consultants are very limited. The article analyses how use of various consulting services influenced SMEs’ growth in terms of their sales and number of employees. This analysis allows indicating types of business consulting services that influenced growth of enterprises more than others. In some instances, differences between decisions of small (up to 50 employees) and medium (50-249 employees) companies are observed and analysed. The research is performed on the basis of a survey that was carried out for a long period of time, and included more than 300 Lithuanian companies.