Success factors for new businesses in Austria and the Czech Republic

Abstract

New business start-ups play a significant role in maintaining as well as creating a functional market economy. However, as the business environment differs in established and emerging market economies, it seems appropriate to examine whether start-up success factors also differ in this context. This paper presents a comparative analysis of success factors for start-ups in early development stages in the traditional market economy of Austria versus the emerging market economy of the Czech Republic. The comparison uses binary logistic regression analysis and is based on an Austrian sample of 296 new businesses from 1998 and a Czech sample of 459 new businesses from 2000. This analysis reveals that the composition of significant success predictors differs in the two samples in question. In Austria, success in the early development stage can mainly be predicted on the basis of start-up process characteristics as well as two aspects of the entrepreneur's personal environment, while personal characteristics, personality traits and resources have no significant impact. In the Czech Republic, on the other hand, characteristics of the start-up process are also important, but in a different composition than in Austria. In addition, one aspect related to personality (i.e. need for achievement) as well as start-up resources play an important role in predicting entrepreneurial success in the Czech sample. As a result, the results support the hypothesis of the cultural embeddedness of entrepreneurship.