Small and medium-sized enterprises' approach to design management

Abstract

This paper focuses on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Design Management, especially the relationship between design management and business prosperity. The study is based on quantitative research conducted in January 2019. The main issues were transformed into research questions, which were further evaluated into several hypotheses; these were statistically tested. The results suggest that (as expected) there is a correlation between well-managed design management and business prosperity. The results were analyzed across company size with regard to B2B/B2C/B2G. The limitation of the research results lies mainly in a limited number of samples only from the Czech economy. The research did not examine the term "business prosperity" in depth. Sometimes prosperity is seen as increasing profits, sales, market share, or brand value. The originality of the paper lies in the uniqueness of the research and the possibility of utilization of its results for other economies similar to that of the Czech Republic. © 2022 Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos. All rights reserved.