STRATEGIC THINKING IN MACEDONIAN FAMILY BUSINESSES: PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES

Over the last decades, an increased interest in strategic thinking of family businesses and its influence on the performance has taken place both for practitioners and academics. Strategic thinking as one of the ways of thinking has a crucial place in the modern world and plays essential role in major issues at different organizational levels including individual decision-making and planning. The main purpose of this paper is to examine family businesses from this perspective foremost, but also to provide some insights whether and how strategic planning is conducted and exercised. Specifically, it will focus on the issue of strategic planning practices from a family business perspective, as well as the extent to which family businesses engage in strategic thinking. It will also examine the sources of knowledge used by family businesses in making strategic decisions, the extent of involvement by stakeholders and the aspects such as trust and values. The results obtained from the paper show that strategic thinking had an acceptable level of family businesses and most of the companies have the key element for one business to sustain, because they have developed strategic plan together with the clear mission and vision statement. Furthermore, this paper can be used to expand insights and learn more about specifics of family businesses, from the perspective of strengthening their strategic thinking and planning for a better performance and growth