Did Bulgarian innovative business manage to cope with COVID-19 crisis – a point of view of the future generation of business managers

It is hard to measure, just a few years after the pandemic, the negative impact in all dimensions that COVID-19 and all restrains and social isolation measures had on the economy at all levels (national, international, and global). Nevertheless, the current paper presents the attitude and opinion of Bulgarian students in Business Administration, assessing whether Bulgarian businesses managed to cope successfully with all challenges during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a special focus on the innovative intensive sector of the economy and the ability of the companies in their sectors to cope with challenges, compared with the rest of business organisations. The paper presents the results of 2-year surveyed students in their final year of a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration. Our results reveal that students assess very positively the decisions and changes that the management of the explored companies had made to cope with the difficulties coming from COVID-19 restrains and crises. According to them, companies in innovative-intensive sectors were more able, flexible and change-oriented during crises. Therefore, companies in these innovative-intensive sectors were more prepared for the challenges of the pandemic turmoil, and their recovery level was higher than those in the rest of the sectors. However, students show great confidence in the decisions of the company's management, and the majority accept all activities made by the management to overcome the negative consequences of COVID-19 without any further comments or recommendations. Their average score is perfect 5,06 (in maximum 6,00). This highly positive assessment could be explained in two major lines: firstly, students do not have sufficient business experience in real environments and, therefore, are more willing to trust and accept management decisions. Second line: this very positive result could be based on the lack of sufficient critical thinking, and here is the crucial role of academic education.