Lenka Veselovská

Nowadays sustainable development is a central concept for our age. It is both a way ofunderstanding the world and a method for solving global problems. It is currently a crucial concept for the world to understand and to implement. This research study focuses on examining the foundations of achieving sustainable development and main factors influencing this process at a national level. The aim is to characterize those factors which influence this implementation process mainly from the economic point of view. However, other noneconomic factors related to human well-being and organizational development are not omitted. Countries’ political and legislative environment are also evaluated since they can have significant implications for development of individual organizations conducting their business activities within countries' borders. The focus of examining the topic of countries’ sustainable development is on the cross-country comparison. Values of some important indicators are also provided in terms of comparison among selected countries which enables us to explain the reasons for differences in countries’ development, as well as predictions for the future. Historical perspective provides data which enable to evaluate influence of selected factors in terms of countries’ path to achieving sustainable development.

The world finds itself facing unprecedented conditions as the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus has led to fundamental changes in the global supply chains. This paper aims to assess the initial response undertaken by Central European companies in the early stages of the outbreak. The survey was conducted as a research method to collect data from a large number of companies. Since it takes time to assess long-term effects of the pandemic and related measures, various changes in supply chains are examined as the early results of the COVID-19 crisis and measures implemented by companies. The study examines how different economy sectors were changed due to this situation. The changes in operating volumes were identified as the most commonly used measures to accommodate new market developments. However, developing the new supply chain partnership was the most successful measure. This measure correlates with an increase in revenues and an increase in the number of customers. In some cases, disruptions in supply chains had positive effects on revenues as a reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak. Cross-country examinations found that all Polish companies implemented at least one new measure to tackle this crisis. Nearly 20% of Slovak companies and nearly 30% of Czech companies made no changes in their operations during the early stages of the crisis. However, overall, the supply chains in Central European countries turned out to be quite resilient, since most companies managed to survive the supply chain disruptions and in some cases even show signs of overcoming them completely.

Acknowledgement
This contribution was supported by the project No. 1/0757/18, “Consumer behavior in buying goods of daily consumption with an emphasis placed different contents of goods offered on markets of selected EU countries”.