Key Factors of Business Sustainability: Analysis of Human Resources’ Versus Business Performance in Case of Serbian Companies

This research paper analyzes the key risk factors within a company, in terms of three main pillars of its sustainability for the long-term: business performance, human resources and financial viability. Scope of research involves for-profit, small and medium-sized manufacturing companies doing business in Serbia. This paper explores efforts of strategic decision makers operating in specific circumstances, by unveiling key correlations between key risk indicators on company sustainability pillars. The quantitative part of this research was conducted during the last quarter of 2022, and it involved 380 companies. Current theory localizes shortcomings of observing and analyzing business performance, employee performance and financial viability as separate indicators of sustainability. As in existing literature, long-term planning (and recognition of possible risk influences) very often covers only one pillar of the envisioned sustainability nexus, key contribution of this paper is that it offers integral view over the influence of risk on all three aspects, which was backed up with results of implementing clustering method, and with the help of applying statistical learning tests. The future work on this research includes extension of the analysis to other countries in the West Balkans region, and comparison of all determined correlations and findings.