Renata Skypalova

Manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies are represented to varying degrees in the structure of advanced economies. Their business success in turbulent times depends on smart business decisions, including decisions concerning human resources (HR) that affect the companies’ ability to survive and compete. However, such judgments may differ in manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. The paper aims to reveal potential differences in HR decisions between analyzed manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies and bring suggestions for challenging employment and compensation decisions that affect the companies’ economic and social position. The analysis uses the HR Analysis in Companies 2023 survey conducted by Gi Group/Grafton Recruitment Czech Republic at the end of 2022. The survey covered responses from 478 manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies in all fourteen regions of the Czech Republic regarding employment and compensation decisions in 2022 and plans for 2023. The analysis revealed tendencies of manufacturing companies to change the total number of employees and the offer of benefits more often than non-manufacturing companies to more flexibly change the labor demand and labor costs depending on the demand for final production. On the other hand, regardless of manufacturing or non-manufacturing companies, the overall findings revealed tendencies of surveyed companies to follow certain HR decisions from the past in the future and confirm the necessity to concentrate on effective HR decisions related to employment and compensation in turbulent times to manage the labor demand and labor costs efficiently.

Acknowledgment
The authors thank Gi Group/Grafton Recruitment Czech Republic for providing the HR Analysis in Companies 2023 survey and the Internal Grant Agency of Ambis College for financial support to create this article.

In recent years, corporate social responsibility has emerged as a pivotal factor for corporations in cultivating a favorable public perception. Despite this, many companies remain uncertain about the integration and rationale behind incorporating it into their core business strategies. This study aims to discern dissimilarities in implementing corporate social responsibility initiatives between Slovak and Czech companies, addressing the triple bottom line framework. This approach is a metric for evaluating a company’s achievement across three dimensions: social, environmental, and economic. The study is predicated on a questionnaire survey conducted among a sample of 180 Slovak and 180 Czech companies operating as subsidiaries of multinational corporations as typical implementers of corporate social responsibility activities in emerging economies. Following the triple bottom line framework, three distinct sets of variables were formulated to account for social, environmental, and economic activities using the Mann-Whitney U Test to ascertain statistically significant disparities between Slovak and Czech companies. The findings indicate that the surveyed companies from monitored countries exhibited no notable distinctions in environmental endeavors. However, discrepancies were discerned in economic activities, specifically relating to post-sales or post-warranty customer services, which was significant with a small effect size (0.19). In social activities, significant differences were observed concerning adherence to the principle of equal opportunities in the workplace. Based on these outcomes, it is recommended that future investigations delve more extensively into the monitored parameters within the Visegrad countries.

Acknowledgment
The paper was prepared within the project “Etika v podnikaní na Slovensku” no. 01/2022/GA FEM SPU supported by Grant Agency – Faculty of Economics and Management – Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra and internal grand of AMBIS college.