Microeconomic Aspects of the Impact of the Global Crisis on the Growth of Non-financial Corporations in the Republic of Croatia

The conducted research shows linear relationships between individual corporation characteristics before the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008 and corporation growth measured by the number of employed persons during the economic crisis in the period 2009 – 2013. The most important conclusion is that the characteristics associated with faster corporation growth in the pre-crisis period (2003 – 2007) were mainly the same as those associated with faster growth during the crisis, from 2009 – 2013, but only if corporation management during crisis is not factored in. The second most important conclusion is that corporation management during the crisis is relevant for growth. However, even when corporation management during the crisis is factored in, it can be concluded that smaller corporations, state-owned enterprises, corporations that engaged at least to some extent in exporting and corporations that relied less on internal funding, operated on a more efficient scale and were less labourintensive before the crisis, grew faster during the crisis. The relationships found to exist at this stage of research between growth and other corporation characteristics are only partial correlations in the context of assumed linear models.