DETUROPE - The Central European Journal of Regional Development and Tourism 2025, 17(1):86-113 | DOI: 10.32725/det.2025.004

Regional and Sectoral Differences between Family Business Units in the Czech Republic

Jaroslava Pražáková^a, Jarmila Rybová^a, Marie Vejsadová Dryjová^a, Hana Hlaváčková^a

^a University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Faculty of Economics, Department of Accounting and Finances, Branišovská 1645/31a, 37005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic

The topic of the article is to identify the character of family business units in the Czech Republic from the point of view of their sectoral and regional representation at the level of NUTS region 2. Main aim of the paper is to identify if the analysed groups of the family business units differ significantly in financial characteristics. On a selected sample of family businesses, we examined their mutual differences based on data from their financial statements in the period 2020 – 2022 in the Albertina database. During this period, the Covid-19 pandemic was taking place. We examined almost 500 family companies in the Czech Republic that managed this pandemic and provided data to Albertina in all three years examined. We identified family companies according to the region of the company's headquarters in the Czech Republic and according to the size of the company. The monitored signs are these: debt ratio, return on equity (ROE), personnel cost to total costs. The cluster analysis results in three clusters of family firms. We described each cluster according to the reported accounting data, size and sector of the main activity of the grouped enterprises. It is obvious that family businesses registered in the register of family businesses in the Czech Republic are micro-enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises. Large businesses are not on the register. The highest representation is in the processing industry, mainly metal processing. This applies to all three clusters of businesses. The structure of the results of the paper is as follows: The first of them was a separate evaluation of the monitored indicators in the regions and higher administrative units; then we focused on the differences between sectors and, finally, we tried to evaluate all three main indicators together in performed cluster analysis. The results also confirmed some regional and sectoral differences. The approach of family firms to debt financing is crucial here, as most firms are rather risk averse and mainly use their own capital for financing.

Keywords: Accounting, Corporate Finance, Czech Republic, CZ NACE, Family business, NUTS 2 Region

Received: June 27, 2024; Revised: June 16, 2025; Accepted: August 11, 2025; Published: August 15, 2025  Show citation