The publication entitled “Determinants of success of small and medium-sized enterprises” presents an innovative approach to the issue of identifying favourble conditions for attaining success by enterprises.

The publication focuses on a comprehensive assessment of the importance of selected determinants of success in the activities of enterprises, from the group of internal conditions (the enterprise’s internal environment) and the determinants of the local and institutional environment. This topic is generally not included in standard analyses and surveys of public statistics.

An important stage of the presented analysis is the construction of a model of dependence between the proposed aggregate measure of success and the determinants of success of enterprises from the group of SMEs, using the technique of regression trees.

Distinguishing family enterprises within the personal scope of this publication on the basis of a subjective criterion - respondents' self-recognition of a company as a family business - made it possible to diagnose the scale of family business in Poland, to determine its basic quantitative characteristics, as well as to analyse its basic behaviours and success factors.

Analytical comments are supplemented with numerous charts and maps, which illustrate the results of the analyses in an accessible manner.