Although SMEs make significant contributions to socio-economic conditions of countries, they face many financial, organizational and mercantile obstacles in their operations. In this regard, having more innovative, risk-taking and proactive activities (EO) increases SMEs’ performance, financial conditions and help them to survive in the long term. Therefore, finding regional, national and international differences in EO of SMEs can enable policymakers, financing institutions, SMEs, and entrepreneurs to create more opportunities for SMEs to overcome those problems. In this regard, this research seeks to explore the differences between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of SMEs that operate in different regions of countries with various cultural values, income levels, economic, political and legal risks. Moreover, age and size of firms are also considered to find differences among SMEs in national and international contexts. In line with these objectives, the current study examines two different countries that have cultural differences and have different economic, legal and political risks. To achieve the objectives, 1620 Czech and Turkish SMEs were analyzed by performing the Mann-Whitney U and Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation tests. According to the results of Moran’s I autocorrelation test, this research does not find any differences between the low and high-income regions of the selected countries regarding EO of SMEs. Experience and age of the respondents might be the reason for these results. Significant results in the national context are that EO of SMEs does not differ across the age categories, while there are differences between firm size and their EO. In the international context, the main findings are that Czech SMEs are more proactive than Turkish ones in all age and size categories, while Turkish SMEs are more innovative in all age categories and only in small size segment. However, this research has not revealed any differences within the risk-taking behaviour of SMEs from different countries considering their size and age. The significant differences and similarities in EO of SMEs from different countries might stem from the educational status of the respondents, a considerable number of operating firms in a market, agility, flexibility, R&D activities and sector of firms. Financial, educational, administrative and legislative support needs to be given by policymakers to close the gap between EO of SMEs of different age, size, regions and countries.
The aim of the article is to identify and quantify the impact of selected social environment indicators on students' propensity to do business. A survey-based questionnaire was conducted with students in the last year of their economic studies at 25 universities. The database contains 1,352 filled-out questionnaires showing Slovak, Czech and Polish students' attitudes. A linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the formulated hypotheses. This approach was implemented separately for each country (Czech Republic -CR, Slovakia -SR, and Poland -PL). The results showed several findings. The comparison of social environment
This research deals with the arguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of shared economy in the field of passenger transport in the Czech Republic. The main purpose of the research is to compare some ridesharing platforms, namely, Uber, Liftago and Taxify and traditional taxi services regarding their starting rates and a characteristic of the cars that they use. Investigation of the topic shows that starting rates and quality of services of these platforms differ regarding the locations and ride-hailing services. Therefore, analysing various sharing economy platforms in the Czech Republic regarding transportation and finding differences among them might create value addition for sharing economy literature. In this regard, this paper applies a research technique that consists of interviews and direct observation in the provision of transport services. In the research, a primary survey was carried out; In terms of secrecy, scenarios of interviews and cover-stories were prepared to motivate respondents to more open communication. Respondents were providers of transport services in the form of classic taxis, Uber, Liftago and Taxify, the most important providers of passenger taxis in the monitored cities. The research was carried out in 2017/2018 in different cities of the Czech Republic, namely, Prague and Ostrava. The obtained data were processed in the SPSS IBM Statistics program using the methods of descriptive statistics. The results of the research show that in the analysed parameters, the ride-hailing platforms do not provide cheaper services in the monitored markets and that their prices are comparable to those of traditional providers. For this reason, travellers, users and providers of ride-hailing services can benefit from this study by considering the differences that this research proves.
As being an important player of sharing economy, ride sourcing services provide benefits for socio-economic and environmental issues of countries and make positive contributions for sustainability. To indicate socioeconomic and environmental influences of these services, this paper aims to make comparison between some alternative Transportation Network Companies, namely, Taxify, Uber and Liftago and standard taxi services regarding their drivers’, vehicles’ and trips’ characteristics. In line with this objective, this research investigates 84 drivers of ride sourcing services and standard taxi industry from two various cities of the Czech Republic, namely, Prague and Ostrava. The data of this paper was collected by using a self-administered questionnaire and the researchers applied multiple correspondence analysis in R-software to make the analyses of this research. The results of these analyses show that different from standard taxi services, most of the drivers of Taxify in Prague are not Czech fluent. Moreover, in Prague, drivers of Uber Technology Network company work at the weekends and they drive Uber cars as a part time work. When it comes to transportation activities in Ostrava, standard taxi services were driven for higher kilometres and at the weekends, while total kilometres that were driven by Liftago’s cars are less than standard taxi services and these trips were mostly taken in workdays. These results show that services of standard taxi industry and ride sourcing services differ regarding characteristics of drivers, trips, vehicles, passengers and cities. Some policy implementations are also provided by this paper to hinder disruptive transportation actions.
The main purpose of the research is to examine selected demand factors for cultural events in tourism in the Czech Republic. Eight hypotheses are formulated. The primary research was carried out in the form of a questionnaire. There were 1666 respondents interviewed in various tourist destinations in the Czech Republic. While testing the hypotheses the Friedman test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, the Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient are used. We confirm the hypotheses that the residents of the Czech Republic think that cultural events are organized more frequently than sports events, shopping events (e.g. markets, trades), exhibitions and fairs, and religious events in the Czech Republic, the motives for participation in cultural events are mainly experience and entertainment, women more often participate in cultural events than men, men more often attend sports events than women, and people take the greatest pleasure to participate in cultural events and not in the other events (sports events, shopping events, exhibitions and fairs, and religious events). We reject the hypotheses that summer is the best season for organizing events, that families are more likely to participate in cultural events than single people or people with friends, and that advertising in mass media has the greatest influence on the decision to visit cultural events. The benefit of the paper is to focus the research on a new area of tourism development in the Czech Republic – organizing events at tourist destinations and trying to reveal the impact of various factors on demand for cultural events. Organization of events in tourism is a relatively large area, therefore, it opens further possibilities of exploring this issue in terms of the organized events' impact on tourist destinations, the offering of organized events, managing organized events. Keywords: cultural events, exhibitions, fairs, Friedman test, Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, shopping events, sports events, Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
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