Corporate governance and competitiveness in the context of Serbian approaching to EU

Abstract

The theme of this work is corporate governance and competitiveness of Serbia in the context of approaching the European Union. Serbia is a country in the process of admission to this integration, for which it must fulfill a number of conditions. The most important conditions, besides political, are economic, and their very essence may be defined as an increase in competitiveness of its economy. Our goal is to point out the connection between these two issues and the phenomenon of corporate governance. To this end, among the indicators for measuring the competitiveness of the economies in the world, used by the World Economic Forum, we have chosen those who are directly connected to the internal and external mechanisms of corporate governance. In comparative analysis we have used the latest results in this area that are related to Serbia and its neighboring countries. Comparing those who are members of the European Union, but also those who belong to the candidate group, we concluded that Serbia lags behind both groups according to most of the analysed indicators. In this way, we have shown that corporate governance is essential segment of competitiveness of the national economy, and that Serbia lags behind all comparable countries in meeting the economic criteria for admission to the European Union. It was concluded that in the process of approaching the European Union, Serbia must improve the competitiveness of its economy, and one way is to raise the quality of corporate governance in it, because these are firmly related phenomena that have an intense mutual influence.

Keywords

• competitiveness
• the World Economic Forum
• corporate governance
• the European Union