The following analysis was prepared within the framework of a joint quarterly research project entitled "SME Perspectives", involving the HCCI Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research (IEER) and Volksbank. For the survey a sample of about 300 small and medium enterprises with similar structures and elements were used.

In our analysis we try to find out to what extent does the perception of corruption affect satisfaction with the institutional environment, and what kind of corruption experiences have the greatest effect on this satisfaction. First, we present the company managers' perceptual changes towards corruption and also how their satisfaction with the institutional environment has evolved during the period from 2005 to 2010. Then, we search the variables that affect the development of this satisfaction. Our analysis shows that the higher the degree of corruption, the more negatively managers regard the institutional environment. Among the different corruption experiences cited, what makes managers significantly dissatisfied is, firstly, when they feel that their company has to pay bribes in order to get anywhere economically and, secondly, whether they consider corruption to be a major problem or not. Research of corruption is partly based on perception. Our analysis shows that subjective opinions are still relevant in the sense that much depends on personal experiences with corruption.