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This paper deals with cultural differences in states around Europe. People represent key resources of the companies where flexi forms are necessary way how to reach goals. Hofstede's Cultural Dimension Theory can find many answers. Application of new culture and flexi forms may improve work organization, working time and family life of employees. This paper utilizes survey data obtained from Hofstede Institute research fields and Eurostat database. Set hypotheses are supported by six auxiliary questions what help reach conclusions, how integration slowly cancelled national differences between nations.

The paper presents a procedure that helps in revealing topics hidden in large collections of textual documents (such as customer reviews) related to a certain group of products or services. Together with identification of the groups containing the topics the lists of important expressions is presented which helps in understanding what characterizes these aspects most typically from the semantic point of view. The procedure includes determining an appropriate number of groups representing the prevailing topics, partitioning the documents into a desired number of groups using clustering, extracting significant typical features of documents from each group with application of feature selection methods, and evaluating the outcomes with the assistance of a human expert. The results show that the presented approach, consisting mostly of automated steps, is able to separate and characterize the aspects of a certain product as discussed by the customers and be later useful, e.g., for handling customer complaints, designing promotional campaigns, or improving the products.

The main aim of the paper is to evaluate whether the rule of law affects economic growth in the Balkan states. The reference period is the period 2000-2015 due to data availability. As indicators of the legal environment the Rule of Law Index (the Worldwide Governance Indicators) and Property Rights Index (the Index of Economic Freedom) are employed. The paper uses panel data regression analysis (OLS with fixed effects) for the purpose of identification and quantification. The results indicate that improvement of the rule of law has not statistically significant effect on growth in the Balkan countries. On the other hand, the higher level of property rights might support economic development in the countries, but simultaneously the positive changes prove to be in five-year horizon.

I apply interest rate rules, especially the Taylor rule, to identify basic determinants of the central banks' decision-making process. The results confirmed herding behaviour related to the central bank financial assets and its economic power in the US and Eurozone. The conclusions are discussed in relation to the exchange rate movements and capital flows. The empirical strategy reflects different lag structure and employs autoregressive distributed lag models.

They are available many modeling and decision making systems. Some of them are based on statistical methods like time series analysis. The general problem of these systems is that they cannot correctly react to the changes of modeled systems and their environment. This paper presents an approach based on the fuzzy expert system application, which is able to represent the expert knowledge about the modeled system behavior. This approach combines the statistical methods with expert knowledge and is able to give appropriate information about the system behavior and help with the decision making process. The presented paper describes general principles of this system and its application for waste production modeling as a part of the decision making of the company for waste treatment. This company is able to optimize its resources and warehouse stock management to minimize the production costs.

The objective of the study was in two parts; first, to construct an overall risk index to ascertain risk level of banks listed on Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), second, to ascertain whether there is a significant relationship between risk management and bank performance. Secondary data of all listed banks on GSE over the period 2007-2014 was used and a panel regression data approach and a risk index were constructed for all listed banks. Findings show that, banks listed on Ghana Stock Exchange have declining risk indexes on average over the latter part of the study period indicating that the Ghanaian Banking Regulator may have to impose additional prudential and regulatory requirements to ensure banks remain solvent. We also find evidence that risk management is positively related to performance of GSE listed banks when the latter is measured from ROE perspective.

We analyse the impact of regional and sectoral labour market characteristics as determinants of the supply of employer financed training using a unique data set on employer provided training in Vienna. According to the results labour turnover has a robust negative impact and employment density a slightly less robust but also negative impact on the probability of a firm to provide employer financed training. Policies directed at increasing employer provided training may therefore face substantial challenges in sectors and regions with high labour turnover and employment densities. These challenges are likely to be even larger when it comes to providing employer financed training for less skilled workers.

The purpose of this paper is to show the relation between job satisfaction and proactive behaviour. Existing studies clearly indicate the impact of proactive attitude on job satisfaction. The authors' objective was to verify this relation, assuming reversed hypothesis. Therefore their intention was to establish to what extent job satisfaction affects proactive attitude. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was implemented to test and verify the micromodel containing two latent variables: job satisfaction (exogenic) and proactive behaviour (endogenic). Both of them were equipped with relevant manifest variables, measured in a survey. The survey questionnaires were distributed using snowballing method and the model was tested on the sample of 292 employees. The verification process came out positive and provided necessary data to support the assumed hypothesis. However the model fit was problematic in a sense that it requires verification of the measurement model in order to increase the internal consistency of the set of variables used. These findings can contribute to future studies on job satisfaction. The article points out that as the active attitude is the result, rather than the factor of the job satisfaction, it can be of great importance to people managing human resources.

Taking the leading role of the banking industry in the financial system into consideration, this paper constructed a financial vulnerability index by using the method of principal component analysis, and found China's financial vulnerability showed a slightly upward trend in general. In order to confirm the macro factors affecting financial fragility, dynamic regression models were constructed. As a result, the authors obtained seven major macro factors. Finally, the authors determined that an overheated economy, increasing inflation, excessive growth of the country's fiscal expenditures, and export shocks will increase financial vulnerability. However, the increasing investment in real estates and fixed assets may reduce the risk in the financial market. Therefore, China needs to adapt to the new normal economic development model, weaken government intervention in the financial markets, deepen financial reforms, and maintain steady development in the financial system.

The paper deals with the impact of the economic agent sentiment on the return for Apple and Microsoft stocks. We employed text mining procedures to analyze Twitter messages with either negative or positive sentiment towards the chosen stock titles. Those sentiments were identified by developed algorithms which are capable of identifying sentiment towards companies and also counting the numbers of tweets in the same group. This resulted in counts of tweets with positive and negative sentiment. Then we ran analysis in order to find causality between sentiment levels and the stock price of companies. To identify causal effects we applied Granger causality tests. We found bilateral causality between the risk premium and the amount of news distributed by Twitter messages.

The article focuses on the Age Management philosophy and the concept of Work-life balance in the selected Czech banking institutions. The objective of the article is, inter alia, to determine whether the selected Czech banking institutions are dominated by stereotypical perception of the employees and further to reflect over how the concept of the Work-life balance can affect the context of aging of the population and the Age Management philosophy. The article presents a view of some of the results of quantitative and qualitative research conducted in the selected Czech banking institutions in the Czech Republic. The research group of the questionnaire survey included in total 180 employees of banking institutions working in and responsible for the area of human resource management and 282 employees of the 50+ age category. The results of the inquiries show that these institutions are more or less not dominated by prejudices and the corporate culture is welcoming and friendly to all the employees regardless of their biological age. The satisfaction with the measures carried out in the Czech Republic in association with the 50+ employees was assessed rather negatively. The concept of Work-life balance is supported across the board, not based on the context of the Age Management philosophy.

In our study we have examined the awareness and attitudes of young people (18-24 years) in Hungary toward a special selection of items: as several countries in the world, Hungary also has its own list of domestic products, places and historical heritages, which are called 'hungaricums'. These items could be defined as the core elements of patriotism, thus they are able to induce strong ethnocentric behavior. Our aim was to differentiate the emotional attitudes by gender. To achieve that, we have designed an online survey in order to get a basic understanding about the young people's attitude toward the hungaricums and the gender differences in this age group. We have found that the hungaricums are known in this age group, but most of them has a really small spontaneous awareness. Based on the opinion of the respondents the most typical hungaricum is the schnapps ('pálinka'), and the Ilcsi natural cosmetics are the less typical to our country. By analyzing the gender differences with using ANOVA method we could conclude that the evaluation of the females is significantly higher in eight cases. Based on this evaluation we grouped the hungaricums with using the MDS method, and our results show that there are also some differences between the males and females. This study is the first step of a complex neuromarketing study, where we examined the visual representation of the hungaricums in an fMRI machine. Further extension of the research project is to check the attention and interest with the usage of an eye tracking device.

We examine whether the presence of outside directors with multiple boards seats influence firms related-parties transactions. These non-executive directors with vast skill, experience, knowledge, prestige and shared networks are part of major Boards Committees responsible for key corporate policies, strategy and management. Subsequently, it remains an untested assumption whether the outcome of related parties' transactions are influenced by the presence of this class of 'busy directors'. We obtain data from 142 companies across five sectors between 2009 and 2014 and conduct analysis using a two-stage multiple regression. The results reveal that the existence of multiple directorships on boards failed to evolve as predictors for related parties' transactions. We thus conclude that the presence of these 'busy directors' on boards does not alter a firm's related parties' transactions significantly. Overall, this may suggest that the influence of executive directors and other outside directors and key management personnel do play an important role in explaining organizationally complex strategic decisions in this regard.

The aim of this study was to examine the factors that determine return on equity (ROE) in the Manufacturing industry in the Czech Republic over a 10-year period of 2005 to 2014. The study combined firm level variables (DuPont model) and macroeconomic variables (Multifactor Arbitrate Pricing Theory - APT) to regress data obtained from Amadeus (Bureau van Dijk) and the World Bank respectively. The results show that profit margin and net asset turnover have a positive and significant effect on ROE. However, financial leverage had a negative and significant impact on ROE. With regard to macroeconomic variables, none of them affected ROE positively. GDP growth and Interest rate impacted negatively on ROE whilst unemployment, inflation and exchange rate do not have any impact on ROE. These results suggest that the firms can improve their ROE by developing cost leadership strategies and increasing sales revenue.

In this article we evaluate three chosen restaurants in Nitra city from the perspective of visual proposal of chosen communication tool, which can be effective for influencing of restaurant's guests to visit each restaurant. It might be done through techniques and methods used in neuroscience. The consumer neuroscience is the area of marketing that studies the sensomotoric, cognitive and affective consumer's reactions on different marketing stimulus. In this article, we use Eye Tracker as one of biometric methods and we research, how restaurant's leaflets can be attractive for guests and in the conclusion we suggest some tips for marketing communication doing for three restaurants in practice. Means of biometric and neuroimaging technologies it's found out, how the consumers do the unconscious purchasing decisions and what's part of brain is responsible for these processes that 95% of human thinking and activities become just real in subconscious. This paper is a part of Scientifics project VEGA 1/0874/14 (2014-2016): "Using of neuromarketing in the food visual merchandising", solved at the Department of Marketing and Trade, FEM-SUA.

The research on the banking efficiency all around the world has been one of the main topics for the international financial sectors over the last years. The special case is in Europe. Some of the countries are in the European Union. The European Commission creates the rules for safer and sounder financial sector in these countries. In the past, these rules brought a lot of controversy whether they help to all countries in the European Union or just some of them. The purpose of this article is to determine the development of different types of efficiencies for banking industry in the Visegrad Group. Generally, the development is measured by the Malmquist approach. Different type of index is used in this article, more precisely the Hicks-Moorsteen Total Factor Productivity index. It is one of the alternative indexes. The results have showed that the model with the variable return to scale assumption is better for the use in banking industry in the Visegrad Group, as this model is more precise about the results.

This contribution is focused on the use of the stereoscopic image for the purpose of depth map creation. Further, methods for calibration of the camera(s) are discussed. A stereoscopic head was constructed for the purpose of creating a stereoscopic image. Two Basler acA1600-20uc industrial cameras with Computar M2514-MP2 lenses were used for constructing this head. Furthermore, the algorithm for obtaining the depth map is described. The programming language C# and EmguCV library were used for the implementation of the algorithm. The algorithm consists of 4 parts. The calibration of the camera(s) and image acquisition is solved as first. Calibration of the camera(s) is solved by detection of intersections on the chessboard. Further, methods for the purpose of obtaining the depth map are described. Finally the implemented algorithm is tested.

This paper proposes a straightforward and intuitive computational mechanism for the economic adjustment of default probabilities, allowing the extension of the original (usually one-year) probability of default estimates for more than one period ahead. The intensity of economic adjustment can be flexibly modified by setting the appropriate weighting parameter. The proposed mechanism is designed to be useful especially in the context of lifetime expected credit losses calculation within the IFRS 9 requirements.

This paper introduces a system for detection of plagiarism in source codes written in the PHP computer language, part of the plagiarism detection tool Anton. We used the greedy string tiling algorithm together with tokenization and hash calculation. The efficiency of the system was tested on both an artificial dataset and on real data coming from a course taught at our university. Our results are compared with other similar systems and solutions, concluding that Anton can detect all examined types of plagiarism with higher accuracy than other systems.

Many consumers believe that choices they make result from rational analysis of available alternatives. In reality, however, emotions greatly influence and determine our behaviour and decisionmaking also on the market of products and services. The main aim of this paper is to show the relationship between selected personality traits and emotional consumer behaviour. We used two psychological tests (Eysenck personality questionnaire and author's scale of emotionality) and tested several factors that might have influenced emotional consumer reactions. We found out that two of three tested personality predictors are significant - extroversion and neuroticism. The higher the score that respondents reach in the scales of extroversion and neuroticism was, the more emotional was their behaviour and decision making. In that connection, there are also differences between individual temperaments. Cholerics and melancholics react more emotionally than other two temperaments.

Crowd investing has recently become an interesting possibility for young entrepreneurs to finance the start-up of new firms. This paper analyses the impact of education and gender of young entrepreneurs who finance their start-ups using a crowd investing platform. We analyse the crowd investing projects financed through the Companisto and Seedmatch platforms, which are the main crowd investing platforms in Germany. The study confirms that the majority of founders of crowd investing start-ups completed a university education. However, we find a surprisingly low-rate of female founders in crowd investing, although the gender structure do not influence the amount of crowd investing. Thus, the crowd investing does not facilitate the access to finance for new groups of entrepreneurs, but it rather facilitates the financing conditions for founders, who could also obtain a credit from the bank.

The aim of this paper is to scrutinize some aspects of the Uppsala model whose applicability for SMEs' internationalisation is often questioned. This model explains internationalisation as a sequential process based on learning in which an enterprise increases its international commitment in incremental steps (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977). The assumptions of Uppsala model are discussed in conditions of SMEs from different countries, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Austria and Germany. The paper is based on primary data obtained by questionnaire survey performed in 2014. Respondents were small and medium-sized firms from the above mentioned countries. Following assumptions are scrutinized: SMEs start internationalisation by exporting to neighbouring markets, SMEs behave in internationalisation according to the establishment chain, SMEs' risk perception regarding foreign markets with different psychic distance changes with the obtained knowledge and SMEs' risk perception regarding particular foreign markets differs depending on the country which the enterprise comes from.

The article focuses on how milk packaging is perceived by generation Y. The required data were obtained through eye-tracking using the SMI RED 250 device. Additionally an in-depth interview and a short questionnaire were included in the experiment to obtain complementary qualitative data. The research took place during November 2014 in the Eye Tracking Laboratory at Mendel University. In total 110 respondents representing generation Y participated in the experiment. The research analyzed the front of 12 types of milk packaging. The main objective was to determine which package attributes attract the most attention among consumers. The research shows that the most attention is given to the milk brand as well as claims with additional information, such as fat content and quantity. Additionally, the respondents were asked to rank the packaging samples from the best to the worst. Finally the respondents had to decide which of the products they would buy. The results provide valuable insights to create customized, eye-catching packaging for consumers.

The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of investment incentives on development of regional unemployment in the Czech Republic and with proposal of recommendations related to utilization of investment incentives as an instrument for promoting employment and development of regions as well as for reduction of differences in economic activity of regions. Time series from 1998 to 2014 were used to solve the problem when regional unemployment was chosen as a dependent variable, for which econometric model was created using panel regression and including investment incentives. Results of testing prove that investment incentives have positive and statistically significant influence on regional employment.

We apply standard Merton and enhanced Merton-D-Vine copula model for the measurement of credit risk on the basis of accounting and stock market data for 4 companies from Prague Stock Exchange, in the midterm horizon of 4 years. Basic Merton structural credit model is based on assumption that firm equity is European option on company assets. Consequently enhanced Merton model take in account market data, dependence between daily returns and its volatility and helps to evaluate and project the credit quality of selected companies, i.e. correlation between assets trajectories through copulas. From our and previous results it is obvious that basic Merton model significantly underestimates actual level, i.e. offers low probabilities of default. Enhanced model support us with higher simulated probability rates which mean that capturing of market risk and transferring it to credit risk estimates is probably a good way or basic step in enhancing Merton methodology.

This paper investigates the β -convergence in the trade volumes of EU countries. We focus on a different approach to convergence analysis, namely trade's contribution to convergence. Neoclassical growth theory assumes there will be a convergence process among the economies, even in absence of trade. Trade relations might, however, speed up this process. We use panel data for trade volumes of 26 EU countries and test the presence and the speed of β -convergence pattern on SITC sectors 6 and 7 trade categories. The implied speeds of unconditional convergence of the export volume per capita are about 0.05-0.06 (implying half-lives around 12-13 years). When accounting for the country- or time-period specific effects, we can observe relatively high convergence rates (with half-lives somewhere around 2-4 years).

The recent global developments have emphasized the limits of the actual corporate reporting system. Today's organizations experience a growing pressure exercised by various types of stakeholders as a result of the increasingly public concern regarding environmental and social issues. Hence, companies must assume their responsibility for the improvement of the environment and society within which they operate materialized through the disclosure of sustainability and corporate responsibility information. The main challenge is not to simply increase the amount of information provided inside the annual reports, but to increase their relevance through new, comprehensive and condensed reporting practices which combine and interconnect financial and nonfinancial data. Accordingly, the concept of integrated reporting is founded. Despite its necessity and adequacy, differences among countries regarding the adoption of integrated reporting exist. This paper aims to analyze the relation between the number of integrated reports issued by companies inside a country in relation with its economic, social and environmental performances. The results found that there is a higher commitment from companies, belonging to more developed countries, to make their contribution towards the development of integrated reporting concept and practice.

Music is an inherent element of visual merchandising tools. It can affect not only the amount of time spent on shopping, but also the overall satisfaction of customers at the point of sale. Nevertheless, it is essential to find the right compromise between the combination of music genres and basic factors of store sound systems, because everyone perceives music and sound with varying sensitivity. Properly chosen music and sound system factors provide numerous advantages to retail stores, including the more relaxed and friendly-behaving staff as well as the encouraged customers spending more time inside the store. From the customer perspective, the music influences him when determining which store to choose. Last but not least, music can help the customer to overcome stressful situations such as waiting at the cash registers. We assessed the sound system and noise levels in retail stores operating in the Slovak food market through a questionnaire survey with the managers of these stores as well as by measuring the noise intensity in the particular sales departments. The survey sample included 182 store managers. The research was carried out in stores located mainly in western Slovakia and included Slovak retail chains but also companies with transnational capital ties. The questionnaire survey results showed that the store sound distribution depends on the size of the sales format and not on the ownership of particular retail chains operating in the Slovak Republic. Through measuring the level of noise a different approach of these companies can be assumed when creating cultural and pleasant shopping environment.