Business operations during the crisis in the example of Podravka

professional thesis

• Author: Tomislav Majdandžić
• Mentor: Branka Šakić Bobić (mentor); MBZ: 262841
• Committee member: Lari Hadelan (član povjerenstva)
• Committee member: Laszlo Kozar (član povjerenstva)
• Granter: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Agriculture; Zagreb
• Defense date and country: 2018-10-15, Croatia
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: BIOTECHNICAL SCIENCES; Agronomy

Abstract

There are many reasons that can cause a crisis in a company. Some of them are internally and some externally driven. One of the key external factors is the macroeconomic environment. The history shows that each economy in the world has its ups and downs, often called business cycles. A business cycle consists of the contraction and expansion of the economy volume, mostly measured by GDP. Two hundred years ago the economists denied the existence of the business cycles, but the idea of cyclical movement of the economy is nowadays widely accepted. The last global financial and economic crisis was one of the biggest in the history and it affected almost any company in the world, at least in some way. The most common effects of the crisis on a business is reduced sales volume, which causes liquidity problems and forces the companies to restructure their business operations in order to cut costs. The labor cost is one of the costs that gets cut first since many companies cannot deal with too many inefficient employees.
The crisis does not affect all the companies in the same way, though. There are many factors determining possible effect of business cycles on company’s operations. One of the key predictors is the industry of the company and it sensitivity on the business cycles. The food manufacturing and processing industry is an example of an industry relatively insensitive on the global market trends, since the demand for the food is both price and income inelastic. It means that the food consumption tends to be pretty stable even in recession.
Croatian food and beverage industry is one of the most important industry sectors and the most important manufacturing industry in Croatia. In total contribution of Croatian manufacturing industry to Croatian GDP, the food and beverage industry accumulates around 25% of the production and employs 21% of the employees. The economic crisis did not affect the Croatian food and beverage industry too much in terms of total revenues (relatively to other industries), but it still affected the liquidity of the companies and forced some of them to significantly cut their costs.
Another example of an industry that doesn’t get too much affected by the business cycles is the pharmaceutical industry. In Croatia it is the leading high-tech industry. Still, the crisis did have some consequences on the industry, especially changing the structure of the demand in favor of generic, cheaper drugs and limiting the amount of the assets available for the research and development.
This MBA thesis will analyze both theoretical and empirical evidences of the impact of financial crisis on food and beverage and pharmaceutical industry. The theoretical analysis will be conducted using the available researches and other scientific literature and the theoretical knowledge will be empirically tested on an example of Podravka (Company), a company that operates in both industries.
The goal of the research is to test the impact of the financial crisis on business operations of Podravka between 2008 and 2013. This period was one of the most challenging periods in Podravka’s history, because in the same time the Company had to deal with the global crisis, but also with internal problems caused by the bad management of the company.

• Keywords: business cycles; Croatian food industry; Podravka; business operations in crisis
• Language: english
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:204:931487
• Study programme: Title: Executive MBA in Agribusiness and Commerce; Study programme type: university; Study level: postgraduate specialist; Academic / professional title: sveučilišni/a specijalist/ica poslovnog upravljanja u agrobiznisu - MBA (sveučilišni/a specijalist/ica poslovnog upravljanja u agrobiznisu - MBA)
• Type of resource: Text
• File origin: Born digital
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2018-12-14 08:31:05