SURVEY RESEARCH ON CROATIAN ENTERPRISES’ PRAXIS OF PREDICTING THE CHANGES IN BUSINESS MAKING AND BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Large number of changes in short time has become part of the modern business making for most of the firms. Correct prediction of the changes in business environment and firm’s business making has become more and more important for the firm’s management. Prediction was defi ned as impact estimation of external and internal factors to the future business making of the firm with the usage of qualitative methods based on the subjective estimation. Goals of the paper were: (1) to present methods of predicting the business environment and firm’s business making, and (2) to estimate which prediction methods and in what ways were used in Croatian large and middle-sized firms. Survey based on Croatian enterprises sample revealed that Croatian large and middle-sized firms in most of the cases used to make predictions of changes by their own staff, with the usage of external information sources, market research and subjective estimation. The difference between firms based on their ownership was found. Private firms used to make different foresight of business making compared to public firms and firms with mixed private-public ownership.