Issue #4 (Volume 17 2019)

Cash holding decision is a very crucial decision that strongly affects the performance of an organization. Corporate dynamism as a corporate governance tool was explored in this study in order to establish its relationship with cash holding decision in listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Board skill, female leadership, foreign directors, board ownership and directors’ compensation were used as proxies for corporate dynamism. A panel regression model was adopted in this study to examine the implication of corporate dynamism on cash holding decisions spanning six years from 2012 to 2017. Random sampling technique was employed in order to arrive at thirty firms out of thirty-seven listed manufacturing firms, which comprised industrial and consumer goods sector. Board ownership and the existence of foreign expatriates were found to have a significant effect on cash holding decisions. It is concluded that directors with significant holdings tend to be more aggressive towards activities that enhance the performance of a firm, one of which is ensuring that optimal level of cash is held at a particular point in time in order to guide against liquidity problems, which may be caused by overtrading or even keeping excess idle cash, which is supposed to be invested in profitable ventures. Also, the fact that the existence of foreign expatriates will affect cash holding decisions, which may be justified by the fact foreign expatriates are displaying expertise because of diverse experience that they have been able to gain from different parts of the world.

The process of assessment of economic potential of territories and its governance is a complex task in emerging markets countries, such as Ukraine. This requires the creation of an effective evaluation system and management mechanisms. The paper aims to develop the assessment system of the economic potential of the territories under the conditions of sustainable development and the main components of its management. Methods of research are as follows: analysis, synthesis, systematization, standardization, etc. The integral indicator of the dynamics of the economic potential of Ukrainian regions assessment in the context of sustainable development is substantiated; it includes environmental, investment, institutional, innovation, cluster, infrastructure, financial, export and human capital indices. As a result three groups of regions with different levels of economic potential dynamics have been identified and clustered: regions with a high level of economic potential dynamics; regions with a stable level of economic potential dynamics; regions with low or negative levels of economic potential dynamics. The obtained results ascertain that special attention should be paid to the environmental, investment, innovation and institutional components of the economic potential management.

Stokvel is a type of ‘rotating savings and credit associations’ found only in South Africa (SA) which have an estimated value of R49 billion and a membership of 11,5 million, in a country with a populace of 57million and an informal economy with a total value of R160 billion – yet remain a hidden sector of the economy. This confirms that there is a shortage of the consulted literature on the model for integrating the stokvels into the economic policy framework of a municipality. Therefore, developing the stokvel industry could be key to poverty alleviation, reduction of unemployment and broadening equitable access to the ownership of the economy and capital accumulation; thus, improving the livelihoods and raising the standard of living. The objective of the paper is to determine the economic contribution factors of stokvels in the economic transformation of SA at a municipality level. The paper used a mixed methods design. A sample size of 395 stokvel groups’ respondents for the quantitative research was selected using a simple random probability sampling method. The response rate was 100 percent. For the qualitative part, six policy-makers were interviewed using the purposive non-probability sampling method. The paper revealed that the money saving and investment, business opportunities and job creation, and policy development were the main economic contribution factors of stokvels in SA at the municipalities. The paper recommended for policy-makers to formulate an economic transformation policy framework inclusive of stokvels and to adopt their economic contribution factors.

The goal of this article is to define the key factors for the development of cross-generational creative teams, the application of which can help businesses achieve maximum use of their human capital and thereby increase their innovative potential. The need to explore this issue is due not only to technical and technological development, which is fundamentally changing the content of work and the approach to work, but also due to the current lack of workers on the labor market of the Czech Republic and other EU countries. Findings from this article are based on a quantitative study on the research sample of 341 SMEs from the EU for the period 2017–2019. The data examined were obtained based on a personalized questionnaire in the SMEs. The outputs of the key factors for innovation potential of cross-generational creative teams’ linear correlation were further validated by experimental testing on a selected set of successful creative teams. During this testing in the form of in-depth semi-structured interviews, key areas of human resource management were defined in order to achieve more efficient use of human capital. It was confirmed that cross-generational creative teams have an influence on the innovative planning or financial health of a company, and four key areas of HR management were defined to increase the innovation potential of human capital: care and motivation of existing creative team members; acquisition of new creative team members; defining the competencies of creative team members; communication and digital culture.

This study revisits the relationship between job stress and turnover intention for employees using a sample of employees in public companies of Korea. The authors investigate both the effect of job stress on turnover and the process by which job stress affects employee turnover. In particular, they prove that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between stress and turnover intention of the employees. Furthermore, the authors explore the job stress-turnover relationship by extending a review of the organizational justice perspective and posit whether an employee perceived organizational justice could mitigate the presumed adverse effects of job stress on turnover intention. They suggest empirical evidence that there is a significant positive relationship between job stress and turnover intention, and that job satisfaction partially mediates this relationship. However, the authors found no strong evidence of moderating roles of perceived organizational justice. Based on the job demands-resources (JDR) model, the relationship between job stress and turnover intention is evidenced. Besides, the study implies that the incidence of perceived organizational justice fails to mitigate the effect of these value-decreasing job stressors on employee turnover.

The paper investigates the offshore crisis 2015–2017 and its impact on central international offshore oil and gas related maritime cluster, the Blue Maritime Cluster, located at the North-Western coast of Norway.
This complete maritime cluster, heavily involved in offshore petroleum operations, it experienced an almost devastating blow, as it lost almost one-third of its employees as its value added contracted by 39 percent.
When the crises is basically seen as a result of falling of oil prices and lower activity and squeezed profit margins, this paper investigates the crisis in the light of financial instability and reactions down the maritime supply chain.
By collecting data from the Blue Maritime Cluster and the Norwegian central company register one is able both to trace the fall in the activity due to the crisis and measures of financial strength. The study approaches the data by using a structural time series analysis in order to map cycles as deviations from polynomial trends.
The findings ascertain that financial instability was dominant within the Blue Maritime Cluster during its boom before the crisis. Debt ratios and thereby gearing (leverage) were high. Thus, the companies could not meet their obligations when the crisis hit.
The paper also finds that narrow focused supply chain management made the cluster fall deep into the abyss. Companies with a more diversified portfolio were able to meet the hard years better than others.

The purpose of the paper is to develop indicators and standards for assessing the remuneration policy in terms of decent work at the regional level and to approbate the developed tools for assessing the data of remuneration policy research in Kyiv region. The analysis of the labor remuneration policy at the regional level has been based on the developed indicators using case study, statistical method, comparative analysis, analogy method and content analysis. The findings have shown negative trends, in particular the inefficiency of social standards, the low level of wages, the arrears of wages, the unsatisfactory wages structure and the low level of collective-contractual regulation of remuneration. The low level of remuneration, which does not provide an expanded reproduction of the labor force, is a significant drawback in wages in Kyiv region in comparison with wages in Kyiv city, which demotivates employees and leads to migration abroad. The necessity for remuneration policy improvement based on the decent work concept has been proved. Indicators and standards can be used by regional state administrations, state authorities, trade unions, employers’ organizations for analyzing the labor remuneration policy and identifying the directions for its improvement in order to implement the decent work concept and increase the welfare of employees. Public authorities can use the developed indicators for comparing and ranking the regions and finding out the leaders in the implementation of decent work concept.

The paper aims at analyzing the impact of tourism on the economic growth in Ukraine considering its global significance and dynamic development. Tourism should be considered not as a separate phenomenon, but as a complex socio-economic-ecological system, i.e. the national tourism system (NTS). The study attempts to reveal the nature and determinants of the national tourism system impact on economic growth, and also empirically substantiates this in the Ukrainian context. Since the economic decisions require a huge amount of information and different models, a multivariate least square model has been proposed to determine the causal links between NTS and economic growth. The paper also presents the economic parameters such as Ukrainian GDP as a dependent variable, volume of domestic tourism consumption, income from international passenger carriage, international tourism expenditures in the country, the volume of services provided in temporary accommodation and catering establishments, and country’s income from NTS as independent variables. The paper is based on the 2000–2017 statistical data. It concludes that the increase of total NTS contribution to GDP is influenced by all considered factors except the international tourism expenditures in the country. A proposed econometric factor analysis model can be used as a tool to analyze and forecast the socio-economic NTS processes. The hypothesis of the NTS`s impact on economic growth is substantiated.

Strategy reporting is of high interest to investors and can be seen as decision-useful information. The focus of this study is to analyze the determinants of the quality of voluntary strategy disclosure in German management reports of capital market-oriented companies. Based on a theoretical analysis, hypotheses are formulated to investigate the determinants of the quality of voluntary strategy disclosure. In order to test the hypotheses, a number of statistical tests are performed, especially multiple regression analyses. It is based on a unique hand-collected dataset with a self-constructed scoring model, which measures the quality of voluntary strategy disclosure. The sample comprises 110 largest companies in Germany for the period between 2014 and 2018. The results indicate that firm size, firm growth and capital intensity determine voluntary strategy disclosure significantly and positively. Conversely, firm age, financial leverage, ownership structure and profitability do not have a significant relationship with voluntary strategy disclosure. The results are robust to different statistical analysis. This research provides insights into a neglected topic in academia and helps decision-makers in practice and regulators to better understand voluntary strategy disclosure of capital market-oriented companies.

It is essential for small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to become established, be sustainable and grow. These firms play a vital role in the economy of both developed and developing countries. Empirical studies have acknowledged the contribution of SMMEs to the economy, as well as to the gross domestic product. However, the failure rate of these firms has also been emphasized in the same studies. SMME survival is critical for economic growth, which is measured by increases in profits. Capital structure decisions are significant to the survival and growth of these entities. This study was conducted to examine the interplay between capital structure and SMMEs` survival and growth in a developing economy. A sample size of 103 SMMEs was chosen on a non-probability basis using convenience sampling within the eThekwini area, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The statistical tool used for analysis in this study was the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) 5.0 software. Capital structure was found to have a significant influence on the growth and survival of small, medium, and micro enterprises. The study concludes that utilizing retained earnings, personal savings, trade credit and funds from friends and family has a significant influence on the growth and survival of the firm. Debt and external equity financing, on the other hand, have an insignificant influence on the growth the firm.

This paper argues that business enterprises in this competitive global market cannot compete and remain sustainable without effective knowledge sharing to improve business intelligence processes. The central argument hinges on the deployment and use of information technology (IT) as strategic tools to promote business decision making through quick business data analysis and dissemination of business ideas across business units and locations. The study reiterated the critical role IT plays in facilitating a culture of organizational learning and knowledge sharing practices. The study utilized surveys and questionnaires that were distributed to 230 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the results. Findings showed that firms are still using one-on-one meeting to share knowledge, while knowledge sharing activities are controlled through a rigid and inflexible process at the top management level, thereby hindering knowledge flow that is crucial for real-time decision making. The advances in IT have not been used advantageously to improve knowledge sharing and to advance business management. The paper concludes that without strong positive correlation between IT infrastructure integration, and communication strategies and knowledge sharing, the SMEs may not be able to compete in a highly competitive knowledge economy. Consequently, they may lose leverage to another competitor with more robust and mature IT infrastructure alignment for sharing business analytics and intelligence efficiently. A technologically driven, open, and informal approach to knowledge sharing for productive and innovative engagement is recommended. Furthermore, the use of IT that can promote agile and real-time knowledge sharing is recommended.

Reporting on corporate sustainability practices as being in congruence with social expectations is the core idea of legitimacy theory. Therefore, nowadays many organizations are making efforts to inform their stakeholders about the social, environmental and economic changes in their performance. Consistent with the argument above, this paper aims to examine the quantity and quality of corporate online sustainability information of the industrial sector in Jordan based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. In line with content analysis method, this paper analyzes the quantitative sustainability indicators disclosed during last 7 years (2012–2018) by all the industrial sub-sectors listed on the website of Amman Stock Exchange. The results revealed that although all Jordanian industrial sub-sectors practice of the quantitative sustainability disclosure is in a modest degree in the period of 2012–2018, the emphasis on environmental and economic indicators was less than on social indicators in the corporate online reports. Results on qualitative analysis indicated that, considering all sustainability indicators, only the disclosure on indirect economic impacts, procurement practices, product responsibility, and economic performance have been reported at satisfactory levels of quality but with no compliance of GRI guidelines. According to the obtained results, policy makers in the Jordanian industrial sector should be very important players in order to open the channels of dialogue with corporate managers on the importance of their role in taking more responsibility for their non-financial operations. Consequently, this should ensure more transparent accountability through more quantitative and qualitative sustainability disclosure in the corporate reports.

To carry out a comparative analysis of the EU countries’ national innovation systems (NIS), a feature vector has been compiled, covering three modules, namely, science, education, and innovation. The feature vector is a valid multidimensional data set of sixteen official statistics indices and two sub-indices of the Global Innovation Index. The development of a cognitive model for managing the NIS parameters required a preliminary three-stage empirical study to determine its elements. In the first stage, cluster analysis was performed (the k-means, metric – Euclidean distance algorithm was used). As a result, the EU countries were divided into four clusters (following multidimensional scaling estimates). In the second stage, a classification analysis (using decision trees) was carried out, which allowed determining three parameters that distinguish clusters (or classes) optimally. These parameters are recognized as important ones in terms of positioning the countries in the general ranking; that is, they can be considered as a priority for the NIS development and improving the countries’ positions in international comparisons. In the third stage, based on the authors’ approach, the significance (information content) of each key parameter is estimated. As a result, a cognitive model was compiled, taking into account the parameter significance. The model can be used in managing the NIS parameters, seeking to increase the system performance and improve the international position of a specific country. The model can also be used by partner countries, for example, Ukraine, as it demonstrates the landscape of EU innovative development and outlines the directions for priority development of NIS towards the European progress.

The reckless pursuit of social, environmental, political and cultural issues and brands may alienate the very customer base, whom they try to impress, especially the millennials. Hence, this study intends to study the perceptions of millennials towards brand activism, so that the findings from the study can help the brand managers to steer their brands into the troubled waters of brand activism. The methodology followed is HTAB (Hypothesize, Test, Action, Business), a popular analysis framework given by Ken Black in his book titled “Business Statistics: Contemporary Decision Making (6th ed.)” A sample comprising of 286 respondents was collected. The final data had 286 observations and 45 features across seven categories.

It was found that millennials prefer to buy a brand if it supports a cause or purpose and they stop buying if brand behaves unethically. It was also observed that there is no gender difference amongst the millennials towards their perceptions concerning brand activism. Moreover, millennials across different income categories have similar perceptions of brand activism. It was also substantiated that the emotional tie of the millennials with the brand existing for a cause goes beyond price shifts and brands taking a political stance, cherry-picking of issues and being disruptive prompts and creates profound backlash for the brands.

The objective of this article is the construction of future stages in the framework of territorial development for the Island of Bocachica in Colombia through collective construction among state community and participating researchers that was intended to provide the territory inputs for reflection on the future of the Island, from its historical vocation and economic development of the island. Three methods were used: structural analysis, analysis of actors, and construction of stages. The first allowed to identify the key factors in the political, economic, social, and environmental dimensions, highlighting those key variables that dynamize the transformations in the system; secondly, the analysis of actors, which contributed to determining the relations between the key actors of the territory and their degree of power, as well as their convergences and divergences with respect to the key variables identified in the structural analysis. Finally, the construction of stages made it possible to identify three future scenarios with high probability of occurrence. The most important findings of the research show that, if the trend continues in the Island with respect to its territorial development, it is more likely that the economic and social problems it currently presents will continue.

Innovative development is the priority of the Ukraine’s ecomonic policy. In order to achieve the stated goal, it is necessary to ensure the transfer of innovative technologies to commercial production. The transmission of research and development (R&D) results to potential customers should be achieved through market mechanisms that cannot work effectively without, first of all, market research and contacts with interested counterparties.
The study aims to clarify the possibility of using the IT platform of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) as a tool for searching and establishing the contacts between domestic and foreign counteragents. The object of research was the EEN’s IT platform and its mechanism for the innovative solutions implementation. The features of the EEN functioning in Ukraine were investigated. Using the EEN`s tools, the marketing research of current trends in the economic sectors development in the context of cooperation processes was conducted. The possible advantages and disadvantages of the technology transfer in the Enterprise Europe Network were analyzed. The strategy for EEN’s implementation in Ukrainian conditions was formulated. The methods of economic (SWOT and force field) analysis, the comparison method, and the economic-statistical method of analysis of actual data were used. The results of study allowed formulating the strategy and the recommendations for EEN’s development in Ukraine.

The construction industry is a crucially important element of the Ukrainian economy, since its development and performance affect other industries. The economic recession consequences and the unforeseen recent events, caused by different types of risks, have adversely affected the construction industry development and necessitated the search for modern methods of risk management. The study is based on a sample of five projects from five construction industry enterprises and covered the period of 2010–2018. A set of project risks, investigated by the group of experts, was analyzed based on fuzzy set theory, and included seven phases of the fuzzy set model construction to assess project risks of construction industry enterprises. Based on the identified elements of a fuzzy set model and a set of significant project risks, a value classifier of significant project risks for construction industry enterprises was developed. This allowed to estimate the current values of project risk indicators and to identify them by levels of their fuzzy subset membership. Besides, a classifier for the quantitative assessment of the total project risks level for investment projects was developed, which allowed estimating the value of the aggregate indicator. In order to improve the existed methodology, the study suggested introducing probabilistic values for the risk of project failure depending on the significance of the overall project risks. Accordingly, the paper identifies the probability of significant project risks simultaneous occurring during the project implementation. However, the higher the likelihood of risk, the higher the probability of investment project failure.

The article aims to assess the impact of the Family 500+ Program on women’s professional activity. The Family 500+ Program is a governmental support introduced in April 2016 and is designed to assist the families in raising children. The support is provided by monthly payment of PLN 500 for every single child in the family.
The study, primarily, attempts to assess the relationship between the level of expenditure on family benefits and the employment rate, and, on the other hand, based on the surveys, to indicate whether the Program encourages women to quit from the formal labor market. The article describes the professional activity of women, the level of social spending in Poland and some selected EU countries. Based on statistical data, an attempt was made to assess the impact of social expenditure on women’s economic activity based on the linear regression method. Based on this method, it was stressed that the amount of benefit has the impact on the economic activity of women and this relationship is highly statistically significant. Fragments of own surveys from 2017 till 2019 were also presented, which suggest that the Family 500+ Program may lead to the withdrawal of women from the labor market. Respondents most often stressed the possibility of appearing reluctance to work for careers in large families. Entrepreneurs’ responses showed the discouraging effect of the Family 500+ Program (35.1% in 2019), which may contribute to a decrease in labor supply according to 16.0% of respondents.

In conditions of instability of economic, environmental, social and other processes that affect human development, the need to prevent their negative impact actualizes the issue of measuring the security of human development. The aim of the study is to highlight the importance of security phenomenon in the context of human development and improve a Human Development Index. In this paper the method of analysis and generalization was used to identify the existing approaches to the human development measuring; also expert evaluations and correlation analysis were used to improve the composite index.
Thus, a method has been proposed for measuring the level of human development security. The peculiarity of this method is phased, three-tier integral measurement of the human development security in terms of the following dimensions: long and healthy life, education, decent standard of living, adjusted to the correction coefficients of prevailing threats for each of the dimensions. The formation of correction coefficients was carried out by identifying the prevailing threats. To illustrate these ideas, data on regions of Ukraine were used and the research period was 2012–2017. The implementation of the proposed method of measurement allows determining the objective level of human development security in the regions of Ukraine and identifying the percentage of lost opportunities. Thus, the study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that human development is a process of enlarging the human opportunities and freedoms, but the dominant threats hinder the expansion of such opportunities and freedoms, that leads to loss of human opportunities.

The study focused on analyzing the duality CEO-Chairman and its relation on the effectiveness of the board control. A sample of 347 companies with annual sales volume greater than five million US dollars was selected; a questionnaire was provided in order to measure the effectiveness of the board control. To measure the duality CEO-Chairman secondary information was used, and verification was made about the existence of the duality. The effectiveness of the board was measured by an index obtained through the use of confirmatory factorial analysis. Statistical tests were performed, such as Student’s t-test for mean difference, Chi-square to measure the dependence and regression by simultaneous equations to answer the questions. As a result, it was found out that the duality CEO-Chairman is connected in a significant way with the performance of independent directors and risk supervision of the board. The results regarding the duality relationship CEO-Chairman and performance of independent directors are shown to be inverse, while with risk supervision it becomes direct. The obtained results theoretically contribute to the knowledge regarding the practices of good corporate governance.

In the conditions of institutional transformations, the issue of raising the budgetary policy prudence level, strengthening its impact on socio-economic processes becomes relevant, especially in emerging countries. This paper delivers the essence and role of budgetary policy in ensuring the macroeconomic stability and social welfare in the emerging countries. The approaches to budget policy vectors in terms of budget revenues and expenditures, budget deficits, and public debt are presented. The article provides a detailed analysis of public debt service ratio, the proportion of the budget deficit, and public debt to GDP in national currencies of emerging countries to the US dollar during 2000–2018. The authors outlined the budgetary policy objectives, summarized and systematized the approaches to its implementation in the emerging countries in the conditions of institutional transformations. The article identifies the features of medium-term public debt management strategies in the emerging countries, in particular in terms of marginal indicators of the budget deficit and public debt, improvement of the debt management system, maintaining the debt portfolio optimal structure. The impact of budgetary policy on social and economic processes is proved.

The lack of physicians is a serious problem in the Slovak Republic (SR More than 5,000 physicians will be missing in the health care system in the next two years. From the report on health care status in Slovakia, according to OECD (2017), the state of health care in the country achieves very negative results in the indicators related to the human and financial resources of the monitored sector (mortality of newborns, preventable and avoidable mortality, urgent traffic, and others). The study was based on the analysis of the labor market situation in the health care sector for the profession of physician in the SR to identify the state and future need of physicians working in Slovakia, find possible solutions to the identified situation and determine which pull and push factors are the most important. The contribution of the study will be based on the analysis to suggest the ways to facilitate the employment of foreign doctors in Slovakia. The problem of the lack of specialists was considered in two directions of solving it on account of the flow of specialists from other countries: stimulation in order for the foreign medical students to stay in the country after their studies; engagement of foreign qualified doctors. Real situation with doctor stuffing in the Slovak Republic was evaluated, the forecasts until 2022 were made, the proposals on improving the management in solving this problem at the state level were made.

Strengthening the integration of higher education, research, and innovation is a crucial requirement of time. The entrepreneurial university today is considered and analyzed as a promising model for their combination. The educational and scientific systems of many countries are faced with the task of converging all vertices of the “knowledge triangle.” The problem of Ukrainian educational and scientific system is a necessity to implement the concept of formation of the innovation and entrepreneurial model of a modern university, which will enable the effective implementation of administrative reforms in this field. The article aims to analyze the impact of innovative environmental factors on the development of entrepreneurial universities in Ukraine, based on correlation and panel regression analysis. The method of quantitative analysis (panel regression) is used to formulate the key results of the article. The results show that the growth of government expenditures by 1% leads to an increase in the Global Innovation Index by 0.375 in 4 years. Also, every additional 1% of people working with new technologies increases the level of Global Innovation Index by 0.75 annually. Despite European trends, Ukrainian educational environment does not contribute to the development of innovation and entrepreneurial universities (the education expenditures are ineffective). The research provides a vector for understanding the implementation of the most effective strategies of promising innovation and investment development of education and science in Ukrainian universities, considering their existing potential and contemporary world trends of development.

This theoretical exposition aims to add to existing theory on state design and the durability of the liberal democratic experiment. This paper is written on the case of South Africa and the rise of contending regime narratives on the interaction between the state and the economy. The notion of the state being ‘captured’ may well be a nomenclature typical of a great number of states in developing political economies. While the scholarly analysis of weak or fragile states is, to a significant extent, embedded in South African political theory, the notion of a captured state is often conflated with the conceptual confines of the corrupt or criminalized state. The research result – or theoretical contribution this article makes – is to substantiate the postulation that state capture as a feature of state formation also reflects the emergence of a contending or alternative regime preference with a distinct moral justification supplementing liberal democratic experiments. Experimental liberal democracies are more prone to such constitutional or regime challenges. While systemic patronage is a regime preference, which often co-exists with liberal regime imperatives within the constitutional domain of liberal regimes, this paper reviews the state capture as the manifestation of sectarian interests in the formal economy encroaching on the domain of the constitutional state to gain a competitive advantage within the market/economy.

Enterprise development is dependent on the implementation of projects that contribute to improving economic performance. Considering this the need to apply the economic and management approach to the definition of effective projects under risks of reduced enterprise profitability due to the uncertain economic environment is justified. The study used scientific abstraction, formalization, causal relationship, time series analysis, variational range-based standardization, parameter minimization according to maximum and minimum values. The approach is created to evaluate the profitability dynamics of the production, management and finance subsystems of the enterprise, to monitor the deviations in the established corridor of their sufficient levels, to systematically control for the dynamics of the enterprise development to form the effective project portfolio, as well as to manage the risk reduction for projects that are inappropriate for development. The approach approbation, using Ukrainian machine-building enterprises as an example, has found enterprises with the level of development dynamics lower than the corridor determined. This indicates the risks of implementing inefficient projects and the need for systematic adjustment of their portfolio. The enterprises whose business operations belong to the fourth technological paradigm should implement projects to increase the profitability of the production and management subsystems, and those from the fifth paradigm should execute projects for the rise in the finance subsystem profitability.

Ethical leadership has become a fundamental building block amongst the corporate organizations globally. However, minimal research evidence was found from a higher education institution (HEI) perspective, including the evidence from a South African higher education setting. Due to the lack of research linking the ethical leadership`s style and employee`s engagement (EE) at higher education institutions, it becomes important to find out if ethical leadership can positively promote the EE, which, in turn, can promote various other benefits at the institutions. Therefore, this study aims to examine this from the perspective of ethical leadership style and its impact on the EE. This study focused on a large HEI (Higher Education institution) based in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). Quantitative data collection employed the probability sampling targeting 420 employees. Questionnaires were used as data collection tools and obtained a response rate of 312 (74%). The results show that the average mean value for EE (M = 2.87) was weak in comparison to the measurement standard of 3.00, which implied a lack of EE between leadership and employees. In addition, the results indicate that ethical leadership can positively influence the EE (M = 4.27), thus, indicating the need for more ethical leadership at this institution. Furthermore, the current lack of employee`s engagement by leaders that do not exhibit the ethical leadership style can result in employees` disengagement at the institution.

The modern approaches towards higher education systems management often tend to focus on separate universities’ performance, lacking the systemic view of the overall higher education systems’ competitiveness. Thus, the policymakers often fail in tailoring the higher education strategies to the mission of higher education in contemporary society.
The article focuses on providing a systemic insight into the global competitive positioning of the national higher education systems. Based on the suggested ranking methodology, the authors perform the evaluation and ranking of 94 higher education systems, highlighting the limitations of this method, and the cluster analysis, identifying 3 types of their competitive positioning: leaders, followers, and underperformers. Based on Pearson coefficients of skewness and kurtosis calculation, the article shows that globally the inequalities in terms of higher education enrolment rate are decreasing, while those of R&D institutions quality and university-industry collaboration in research remain unchanged. Therefore, upgrading higher education quality assurance systems becomes the main strategic priority for the developing countries in terms of ensuring their higher education systems’ competitiveness. Given the levelling of higher education attainment and its quality worldwide, the authors anticipate further specialization of the universities and broadening of their role within the national innovation system. The article shows that the more comprehensive the approach for evaluating the higher education systems performance – the better the policymakers may benefit in terms of higher education strategic management.

The term “big data” characterizes the massive amounts of data generation by the advanced technologies in different domains using 4Vs – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity - to indicate the amount of data that can only be processed via computationally intensive analysis, the speed of their creation, the different types of data, and their accuracy. High-dimensional financial data, such as time-series and space-time data, contain a large number of features (variables) while having a small number of samples, which are used to measure various real-time business situations for financial organizations. Such datasets are normally noisy, and complex correlations may exist between their features, and many domains, including financial, lack the al analytic tools to mine the data for knowledge discovery because of the high-dimensionality. Feature selection is an optimization problem to find a minimal subset of relevant features that maximizes the classification accuracy and reduces the computations. Traditional statistical-based feature selection approaches are not adequate to deal with the curse of dimensionality associated with big data. Cooperative co-evolution, a meta-heuristic algorithm and a divide-and-conquer approach, decomposes high-dimensional problems into smaller sub-problems. Further, MapReduce, a programming model, offers a ready-to-use distributed, scalable, and fault-tolerant infrastructure for parallelizing the developed algorithm. This article presents a knowledge management overview of evolutionary feature selection approaches, state-of-the-art cooperative co-evolution and MapReduce-based feature selection techniques, and future research directions.

Energy consumption is managed to some degree in different countries. If the government is interested in reducing the energy poverty and increasing the energy consumption, it provides enough energy access for all consumers. However, sometimes, in order to regulate the energy market properly, the government should pursue other goals, i.e., political, economic, or even fiscal. This study aims to figure out how the new natural gas policy of Ukrainian government reflects on the main stakeholders’ incomes and expenses: the profits of domestic gas companies; the expenses of the four main groups of households by income. The article shows the case of unfair taxation of households’ natural gas consumption by the Ukrainian government that was named by the authors as “gas tax.” Analyzing this case using the statistical indicators of dynamics, distribution and structure, it was found out that the honest taxpayers who receive middle incomes (middle class) are in the most disadvantaged position because they are forced to pay the highest price and the largest share of their income for utilities. The paper also includes distinguishing several shortcomings and ethical problems that appear during application of the gas tax in Ukraine: growth of cost inflation, reduction in domestic consumption, reducing the profitability of business; reducing the middle class and increasing the stratification of society, concealment of real incomes and growth of the shadow economy, enhancing injustice and labor migration abroad. All these problems are the arguments for reconsidering gas tax to make it fair and less painful for the economy and households.

One of the most important staff units in an organization is the finance function, as this function maintains the relations with all parts of the organization and operates at a management team level. Therefore, this function needs to transform itself into a high-performance finance function (HPFF). Unfortunately, finance functions encounter many barriers before they can start this transformation. In this article, the research question “What are the most important barriers which have to be dealt with in order for the finance function to start its transition to a high-performance finance function?’ is addressed. For this, a review of the professional literature (as no academic studies could be found on the topic), a small-scale survey among finance professionals, and Delphi research with 14 highly experienced finance experts were conducted. The results of the research were the following Top 10 of barriers of most important obstacles: 1) inefficient and not integrated business processes; 2) data not (yet) in order; 3) insufficient leadership and insufficient will to change; 4) no culture of change and improvement in the finance function; 5) inadequate ICT systems; 6) lack of buy-in from the business for the transformation; 7) insufficient knowledge in the finance function of the business; 8) not the right capacities/people/skills in the finance function; 9) insufficient/unclear business objectives and priorities; 10) business managers do not sufficiently manage the analyses and insights provided by the finance function.

The development of human civilization is related to the constant change of economic formations, and the current social and economic situation is determined by such concepts as Society 5.0, Fourth, and Fifth Industrial Revolutions (FIR, FiIR). The paper aims to estimate the change of human role in each economic formation caused by industrial revolutions. A structured review methodology with a focus on biological, labor, and personal entity of human within the industrial revolutions is used. The description of the changes between the biological, labor, and personality entities of human in various socio-economic formations is discussed. The human as a biological entity is not changed in the first four industrial revolutions, while the FiIR tries to change the biological entity through augmenting the physical capacity. The human as a labor entity is not changed in the first three industrial formations, while the FIR tries to replace the majority of physical human jobs and opens the gate for creative economy and decisions-making. The direct labor participation is minimized within FIR since the economic systems move to the transition to the dominant role of cyber-physical systems. The personal human development is triggered within the FiIR, since informational diversity in economic systems is actualized, and conditions for creative jobs within the creative economy are formed. The biological, labor, and personality entities of human are sequentially actualized within the economic formation caused by industrial revolutions.

This paper presents an overview of the issues related to the readiness of Polish hotel establishments to develop the business tourism services for disabled tourists. The purpose of this study is to identify new innovative amenities for business tourism, with particular emphasis on disabled tourists.
The paper has been divided into two parts: theoretical approach to disabled hotel guests in business hotel and the needs of disabled in the Polish business hotels. The authors conducted a study on Polish business hotels. Studies have confirmed that business hotels, like traditional hotels, are not accessible to people with disabilities.
The study established a research hypothesis, which was proved in findings, i.e. the hotels are not prepared for older people and people with disabilities. Besides, the research results substantiated the necessity of the business hotels adaption to the needs of disable people. Also, the paper presents the suggestions on what the disabled guests expect from the Polish business hotels. In respect of doing this, further investments and financial support are necessary to allow creating friendly conditions for the disabled people.

Nowadays, the creative industry contributes a lot to the economic growth. Reliable human resources support the organizational success. This study investigates the employees’ innovative behavior, which is assumed to be influenced by intellectual capital. This aspect consists of human capital, structural capital, and relational capital. This survey-based research studied the creative industry employees for four months in data collection and four months for analysis and interpretation of data processing results. This study used a quantitative method to answer the proposed hypothesis. The samples were 243 employees of the creative industry in Bandung, Cimahi, Bandung Regency, and West Bandung Regency, Indonesia. For processing the data and testing the hypotheses, the research employed the Partial Least Square-SEM. The results show that there is a compelling effect on human capital, structural capital, and relational capital on innovative behavior. The R-squared value of 0.46 indicates the overall impact. This research suggests some aspects that escalate the innovative behavior. The first aspect is skill enhancement, which leads to the raising of human capital. Next, providing the facilities and infrastructure for internet network connections builds the structural capital. Moreover, offering sources of raw materials needed by employees prompts the relational capital. By carrying out those efforts, the employees’ innovative behavior can increase optimally. Research on intellectual capital currently focuses on the performance of the company and dynamic capabilities. Currently, focus on processes of intellectual capital is still in an emerging stage. This study pursues to fulfill the theoretical gap regarding the intellectual capital in which the focus of the research is on innovative behavior in the creative industry.

This research aims to create a sustainable dynamic model concept towards the craft industry, which competes with each other in order to get the government budget allocation. The object of this research is superior industry (IU) from regional work unit. The regional work unit allocates its fund’s proportion of wood craft industry (IKA) by 51 percent and leather craft industry (IKU) by 49 percent. With almost equal portion, it turns out that the development result of IU has unequal proportion, which is 34 percent for IKA and 66 percent for IKU. This inequality indicates that there is a budgeting allocation, which is not based on performance. System dynamic simulation approach (SD) is conducted to predict the development of performance of both observation objects. In the phase of SD model development, Balanced Scoreboard (BSC) framework is used as a frame of development. The approach of ARCH-type model Success to Successful (StoS) is used as a concept of problem-solving. Several scenarios are formed in this research and needed as symbiosis redesign policy towards IKA product to increase the absorption of IKU product. Practical implications on sustainability of IKA and IKU are discussed in this research. The problem-solving can be applicable and replicable in Indonesia’s craft industry.

The relationship between an aging workforce, higher retirement age, and youth unemployment has already been established in the available literature. However, the empirical research on the impact of an aging workforce, and higher retirement age on youth unemployment is limited, has conflicting results, has occurred mostly overseas, and has not considered the perceptions of young people who are about to enter the workforce. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the perceptions of the youth on the relationship between the aging workforce, higher retirement age, immigration policies, and youth unemployment. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the responses of 183 business students. The findings establish that five relationships were supported out of seven hypothesized relationships. The key research finding reveal that immigration policies and higher retirement age are significantly related to youth unemployment. Lastly, the theoretical and managerial implications of the study were discussed, along with the limitations and recommendations for future research.

The essence of this research is to shed light on use and importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in commercial activity. As such, the objective of the present study is to understand the impact of AI tools on the development of business functions and if they can be affirmed as a means of help or as a substitute for these functions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 commercial managers from technological SMEs. The results indicate that all the participants use AI systems frequently, that these tools assist in developing of their functions, allowing having more time and better preparing to solve the commercial problems. The findings also indicate that the tools used by commercials are still somewhat limited, and companies should focus on their training and development in AI, as well as the training of their commercials. Furthermore, the results show that firms intend to use the data collection and the analytical tool that enable real-time response and customization according to customer needs.

The establishment of a company cannot be separated from its environmental and social factors. Sustainability reports start from those applied to current companies because there are forms of corporate accountability to stakeholders and community considerations of the company to provide social responsibility. This study finds out and empirically proves that there are differences in each Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 indicator in the company’s sustainability report in each industry classification. The authors investigate the dominant indicators in each industry classification based on sustainability reports. The data are obtained from 28 GRI G4-based company sustainability reports in 2016 and 2017. The analytical method in the study is the K-means clustering analysis. The results of study indicate the differences in GRI G4 in 2016 and 2017. The researchers find out that the dominant indicator expressed in the financial industry is an economic indicator. Meanwhile, in the mining, transportation and infrastructure industries, basic and chemical industries etc. the dominant indicators to be disclosed are environmental indicators. This research provides a theoretical basis for sustainability and environmental reporting, particularly in the context of developing countries. It is expected that this study should also inform business practitioners as well as policymakers vis-à-vis sustainability reporting in practice.

The article analyzes public-private partnership (PPP) as a form of interaction between state and business in the context of optimizing the Ukrainian economy. According to the results of SWOT analysis of the implementation of PPP projects in the infrastructure of Ukraine (2017–2019), the main criteria that determine the necessary model of public-private partnership were substaintiated, namely the distribution of investments, risks, obligations between the state and the private sector, the term and object of the agreement.
The study analyzed the impact of economic, political, legislative and criminal processes on public-private partnerships in Ukraine. It was proved that the formation of specific allocation relations based on the interaction between public and private property is the most important feature of public-private partnership, which distinguishes it from other forms of interaction between the state and business. Advantages of PPP are as follows: the increase of management efficiency of state and municipal property objects, the reduction of tax burden on the state budget and optimization of budget expenditures on public services provision, the maintenance of budget-funded institutions, etc. It has been established that the PPP is the best alternative to privatization in order to attract private investment in strategic infrastructure facilities.

This study seeks to analyze and describe the business dynamics of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the commerce and services sector in the municipality of Palmira, Colombia. In addition, it aims at analyzing the organizational characteristics (internal and external) to determine the factors that influence the strengthening of the variables that make them more or less competitive. The study used the estimation of an econometric model and data from 219 SMEs registered with the Chamber of Commerce1 – Palmira 2017. In addition to several investigations with similar claims that seek to study the variables that relate to organizational competitiveness and how this aspect is classified as a fundamental factor in the state of success or business failure in the world, it was found that variables such as the contribution that technical support programs make to strengthen the SMEs.
Good management and knowledge of the financial situation of the company and the correct management of relations with suppliers are the variables that most influence the dynamics and internal and market behavior of companies in Palmira.
It is evident that more than 40% of the companies surveyed have not been trained in issues associated with competitiveness, which indicates that there are weaknesses related to the synergies that should exist between the SMEs and the institutions that provide technical support. Consequently, companies that have received training are expected to receive higher sales from the strategies learned in these trainings.

This study has investigated the extent to which individual and contextual factors determine the entrepreneurial intention in Bangladesh. Also, this study examined the comparative impact of both individual and contextual factors on entrepreneurial intentions. Sample data (n = 270) have been collected through using a survey questionnaire from a renowned public university of Bangladesh. This study has applied both correlation analysis and hierarchical regression for testing the hypotheses. Total eight hypotheses are tested to examine the influence of seven independent variables on entrepreneurial intentions, in which six factors have been found as significant predictors of entrepreneurial intentions. The correlation analysis revealed that risk-taking, locus of control, self-efficacy, and job autonomy are significantly correlated with entrepreneurial intention at 5% significance level. The regression result indicated that individual factors such as risk-taking, locus of control, self-efficacy, and job autonomy and contextual factors such as social networks and university educational program have positive effect on entrepreneurial intention. The study also found out that individual factors have more influence on entrepreneurial intentions than contextual variables. This paper also offers some implications for academic scholars.

Technology transfer from universities to the business environment plays a key role in use of the open innovation concept. Meanwhile, in Ukraine which has a sufficiently high level of scientific and technological capacity, universities do not fully respond to market demands and do not receive the proper commercial results. One of the reasons for this is that current methods and models do not allow justifying the level of techno­logy transferability. This article aims to present a methodological approach to assessing the transferability of technologies from universities to the business environment and to develop a method for determining the integral index of technology transferability. Therefore, the study considered and substantiated options for this transfer based on the sale of technology licenses by the universities; creation of spin-off companies by the university; technology transfer as startups; conclusion of a joint activity agreements; scientific and technical cooperation. A market technology launch matrix was developed to select these models. The developed methodological tools can be used to compare investment projects. The results obtained were tested based on technology of personal passive optically stimulated luminescence dosimetry of ionizing radiation.