PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM AND MARKET ORIENTATION OF SMES: PRELIMINARY QUALITATIVE STUDY

This paper presents the results of our preliminary qualitative study focused on performance measurement and reward systems of Czech SMEs and how these systems support market orientation of those companies. Based on in-depth interviews with managers of five companies we found out that marketing managers in SMEs tend to use "hard" indicators of company performance, whereas they ignore "soft" ones. Furthermore, the reward system used by SMEs supports their short-term orientation. Moreover, this study also points out that SMEs do not systematically monitor the activities of competition on the market and do not connect this information into neither short-term nor long-term company strategy. Last but not least, we found differences in objective setting between companies with and without a foreign mother company. Whereas companies with foreign mother company prepare their strategy and expected results in advance, companies without foreign mother company assess performance according to the last period. All of these findings denote that the level of market orientation of Czech companies is far from optimal, and that the performance measurement and reward systems do not support market orientation.