Consulting as a factor of improving the educational potentials of managers in Serbia

Management consulting may be defined as a kind of professional support to managers in analysing and solving practical problems. It enables the transfer of successful management system from one enterprise to another or from one organization to another. When an enterprise in Serbia hires consultants it can be seen as their investment in “know-how”, i.e. non-material assets of the enterprise. The economic effectiveness of such investment will be higher if it is achieved in a way that the client could henceforth independently solve or avoid an occurrence of similar business problem. Naturally, thereby a need for consulting management does not stop, because there are also other aspects of doing business, which require additional professional help regarding consulting and knowledge transfer. This research aims to determine the impact of consulting management on enterprise development in Serbia. The research deals with the identification of the key problems of the development of enterprises in Serbia and points to the need for their solution by hiring management consultants. Using factor analysis, certain factors, which have impact on the enterprises’ improvement of business performance, will be singled out, including consulting management, in order to ascertain the impact of each factor on the improvement of performance. An additional motivation for dealing with this topic is to raise awareness among stakeholders (managers, consultants, employees, and other business actors) about the role of consultants in preparing business solutions and recommendations for managers based on empirical research and the application of scientific methods