Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):133-152 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.397
The paper compares the funding structure of European clusters. It uses a hand-collected questionnaire survey (n = 185) to examine the budget structure of European clusters. The objective is to identify the differences between clusters in post-communist and developed countries, as well as between clusters located in countries with higher and lower levels of innovation performance. The results show that clusters in (i) post-communist countries and (ii) countries with lower levels of innovation performance have a much higher share of EU structural funds and community programmes in their budgets than clusters in (iii) developed countries and (iv) countries...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):107-132 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.394
The article focuses on adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in Czechia's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It examines how enterprise size and sector affect the level of implementation of these technologies. The main objective is to observe the differences in the use of modern technologies in SMEs based on enterprise size and the sector in which they operate and to identify the main barriers to their implementation. The research was conducted online between October 2023 and January 2024, involving 240 respondents from various sectors. The statistical analysis included a non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA), the Kruskal-Wallis...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):81-106 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.395
The role of high-tech companies increases in turbulent times. Additionally, the status of the company (high-tech or non-high-tech) affects financial decisions. Moreover, CEOs with ownership in the company that they work for make specific financial decisions. The paper aims to identify the impact of CEO ownership on financial decisions in high-tech companies. The sample consists of 750 manufacturing firm-year observations from the period 2018-2021. All the companies included in the research are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Linear mixed-model analysis with individual and interactive effects were implemented. Findings show that high-tech companies...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):65-80 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.393
It is a well-known fact that consumers demonstrate their status through displaying their consumption and one of the key areas of consumption used to display status is travel. While traditional markers of travel status emphasized destinations, today’s status is more often conveyed through particular, often intangible, elements included in how the travel experience is shared. The display of these more intangible and immaterial aspects of travel consumption has developed vis-a-vis the proliferation of social media, which has allowed displaying the manner of travel in more detail but has also changed what status travel means. Our research aims to...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):25-63 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.396
The increasing complexity of energy security threats, both internal and external, poses significant challenges for businesses in Europe, necessitating a robust framework for evaluating and responding to these risks. This article introduces a comprehensive methodology designed to assess the effects of these threats on a state's energy security through two distinct approaches. The first method focuses on identifying imbalances by analysing the deviation of key indicators from established sustainability benchmarks. The second method combines expert evaluations of changes in comprehensive index components with mathematical computations to assess their...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(4):1-24 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.392
In the contemporary business environment, many companies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have adopted self-service technologies (SSTs), moving away from traditional face-to-face interactions. Although numerous studies have examined the factors that shape users’ attitudes towards SSTs, the extant literature has primarily focused on the impact of specific individual and technological factors. In addition, a predominant emphasis is placed on SSTs for hotels, restaurants and retail stores. To bridge these gaps, the present research explores the effect of demographic factors on Bulgarian users’ attitudes towards SSTs at filling stations....
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):103-131 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.391
An increasing number of articles published on the nexus between corporate sustainability disclosure (CSD) and tax behaviour (TB) have enriched the academic research landscape. However, they have provided inconclusive results as to the nature of the connection and have not yet adequately examined the sources of variation that might moderate the effect sizes under investigation. This study performs a standard meta-analysis and synthesises the empirical-quantitative results regarding the CSD-TB connection, following Hunter & Schmidt's (1990) research design. Several criteria are employed to collect documents with methodological and content relevance....
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):87-102 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.390
Companies with product quality labels, often micro-companies or solo entrepreneurs, do not have the marketing know-how of retail chains and are being outpaced in communication in the fast current online environment, especially on social media platforms. Current literature does not provide this specific knowledge, such as what are the important product quality characteristics which should be talked about in marketing campaigns and how these should campaigns be targeted. Thus, the aim of this article is to examine the product quality characteristics important for Czech consumers purchasing food products with a quality label and find suitable consumer...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):65-85 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.387
The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions is common evidence of gender inequality. Consequently, the European Commission brought a directive to balance the underrepresentation of women on boards in EU countries. Often, females are presumed to be less favourable for top management positions in successful companies and are faced with different obstacles during their careers. However, they possess many different characteristics, which makes them excellent leaders and may create positive differences in financial reporting quality (FRQ). Croatia still lags behind other EU countries in terms of the share of women within corporate boards; therefore,...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):45-63 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.388
The effectiveness of education policies and economic, social and environmental conditions play a crucial role in a country’s ability to attract intellectual capital and influence emigration levels. Effective management of migration processes requires coordinating and synchronizing policies across various economic sectors to address the complexity of these dynamics. This study employs a two-step system of the generalized method of moments (GMM) to analyse the impacts of population literacy and ICT skills on migration patterns in EU countries in the period 2007–2022. The findings underscore the importance of enhancing ICT skills and improving...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):21-44 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.386
This study aims to statistically investigate the effects of an infodemic as an external stimulus on consumer decision processes based on the stimulus-organism-response theory (SOR). An infodemic is known as an epidemic of misinformation, and the literature on infodemics in marketing is quite limited. With the research model created for this purpose, the mediating role of brand trust (organism) in the relationship between both infodemic and positive word-of-mouth marketing (stimulus) and consumers' store visit intentions (response) is examined. The findings suggest that infodemic news and positive word-of-mouth marketing influence consumers' shopping...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(3):1-19 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.389
A frequently discussed topic nowadays, especially in business, marketing or human resources, is the generation gap. Young people have a relatively strong environmental sense, which is also reflected in their choice of employment. When formulating the hypotheses, we proceeded from theories of social capital. Gen Z, which has grown up and matured in a fully digital world, attracts a lot of attention. This is evidenced by the many expert studies on the subject. One important reason for studying the behaviour and attitudes of Gen Z is their significant purchasing power. These people are on the rise or approaching the peak of their professional careers....
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):119-137 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.384
Leadership in family businesses has unique characteristics due to the special culture that family business carries, such as the special family bonds that the leader has with the team, the strong influence of the leader on the “family” team and the high level of dependence of the whole family on the business success. These traits should be reflected in the leader’s approach towards teamwork. This research paper aims to identify these traits, more specifically, using the Belbin team role methodology, to identify which team roles are the most typical of family business leaders and which are rather rare or insignificantly represented....
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):93-117 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.382
This research explores the relationship between the recruitment process and turnover intentions, with the mediating role of affective commitment among Generation Z working in European enterprises operating in Vietnam. Specifically, the study explores the relationship between job description, job evaluation, job specification, job analysis and affective commitment of Generation Z while also identifying the influence of affective commitment on turnover intentions. Based on the theoretical and literature summary, the research model is proposed. Accordingly, hypotheses are developed, and we apply a quantitative analysis with a research sample of 250 Generation...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):75-92 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.385
The predictive value of tax allocations (deferred taxes) and their incremental power in explaining future cash taxes paid and current tax expenses in the agricultural industry is a topic of significant relevance. This is particularly important for policymakers and managers due to the complexity of accounting standards in this area. The goal of the paper is to enhance the understanding of tax planning techniques used by agricultural companies. We consider four variables crucial in our analysis: dependent (cash taxes paid and current tax expenses) and independent variables (deferred tax assets and deferred tax liabilities). Our modelling of the relationship...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):45-73 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.383
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have a significant influence on global financial markets, with assets exceeding USD 11.2 trillion and accounting for 40% of the world's largest 100 asset owners' total assets. Understanding the drivers behind SWFs' investment decisions is crucial. This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) compared to financial data on SWFs' investment decisions, analysing 72% of their total public equity holdings from 2019 to 2023. Findings reveal that SWFs prioritize company self-reported environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics over public...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):25-43 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.380
Our study approaches consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce during disruptive times, taking the COVID-19 pandemic, the most prominent recent disruptive event, as a reference. The analysis of the phenomenon was targeted at two differently developed European countries, Romania and Germany, which were investigated. Considering the time span from January 2020 to January 2022, Google Trends was used to track the search volumes associated with the main e-commerce platforms in the analysed countries, serving as a proxy measure for gauging consumers’ orientation towards e-commerce. Based on sound sentiment and quantitative analyses, our study...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(2):1-23 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.381
This article examines the challenges of integrating new employees into a company in an environment where remote work is growing significantly. The reference situation is the COVID-19 crisis, seen as a case study. To describe the process as accurately as possible and to identify areas of diligence, we use a mixed method based on 51 questionnaires containing numerous open-ended questions and eight semi-structured interviews. The descriptive part of our analysis allows us to focus on the link between the degree of experience and the proactivity of newcomers. It also reveals the differing expectations that newcomers may have regarding what integration...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):125-141 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.377
More efficient and productive employees enable businesses to achieve better results, innovate, enhance the quality of products and services and respond to changing market conditions. The research therefore focuses on an analysis of procrastination at work in Slovak SMEs. We focus on the prevalence of procrastination and demographic determinants that were investigated and analysed among 253 administrative employees of various SMEs in Slovakia. Quantitative research was carried out by online inquiry using the standard questionnaire Procrastination at Work Scale, which focuses on online and offline employee procrastination and its total score. Small and...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):105-123 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.379
With the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations faced profound social and economic upheaval. These circumstances forced organisations to make major changes. In the face of these changes, nurturing employee engagement and fostering a sense of belonging to the company have emerged as new challenges. Organisational commitment appears to be an important factor in ensuring that employees remain in the organisation despite the crises that occur. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the organisational commitment of employees from the level of human resource management (HRM) policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular,...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):75-104 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.376
This paper estimates the presence of the Deaton paradox in Europe. Using panel data for 24 countries ranging from 2000 to 2021, we estimate the presence of excess smoothness of consumption. We use the generalised method of moments (GMM) estimator. We cluster our dataset, which lowers the data variability, and use both quarterly and monthly data to obtain robust estimates. We broaden our knowledge of the Deaton paradox in a new direction by using a combination of uncommon datasets, GMM and clustering. Our findings indicate that traditional economic theories about consumption may not be applicable. The evident excess smoothness in consumption patterns...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):57-73 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.375
Over the recent decades, the world has experienced several major disruptive events with far-reaching global impacts on societies, economies and financial systems. This study investigates the financial market reactions to one of the most recent global disruptive events, the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the role of investors' herding behaviour during uncertainty. While previous research has mainly explored this on Asian and American markets, our study addresses this gap in understanding Northern European reactions, particularly in rising and falling markets, and aims to explore the existence of herding during the COVID-19 pandemic and to further investigate...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):19-55 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.374
Cork is a natural, recyclable, non-toxic and renewable resource with unique functional characteristics that is part of a self-sustaining sector. It is increasingly being applied to fashion brands from its traditional use in the wine and construction sectors. This shift is posing new challenges, starting with the determination of the positioning axes that are viable to create brands with value. To answer this question, the methodology used consists of a three-step sequence that includes a series of interviews to identify potential positioning axes, a questionnaire with 152 answers to confirm the validity of these axes and then applying partial least...
Central European Business Review 2025, 14(1):1-18 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.378
The objective is to assess the quality and quantity of non-financial disclosures required by Directive 2014/95/EU for companies operating in the energy sector in the Czech Republic before and after the introduction of the obligation of non-financial disclosure for large publicly traded companies. The information disclosed by companies is the subject of quantitative research. Non-financial information in the form of annual reports or sustainability reports before (2015, 2016) and after (2017–2021) the introduction of the duty of non-financial reporting was the subject of the analysis. The textual analysis of these reports was carried out using...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):125-165 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.368
To identify the most recent trends in the literature about the convergence of FinTech and Sustainability, this study combines bibliometric analysis with a thorough literature review using documents from the Scopus database. The current body of literature in a particular topic of research is thoroughly and methodically examined on a systematic literature analysis. One quantitative technique that makes it easier to identify current trends and underlying ideas in a subject is bibliometric analysis. Trends, evolution, bibliometrics, mapping, and qualitative content analyses serve as the foundation for the analysis. By following all inclusion and exclusion...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):95-124 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.373
This paper investigates stress management practices in Czech small and medium-sized enterprises (n = 194) within the manufacturing sector, with the primary objective of assessing the extent to which these enterprises integrate stress management principles into their internal management processes. The study places a particular emphasis on how these enterprises implement stress management, encompassing both organizational and individual level interventions, while also scrutinizing perceived work stressors, including challenges arising from workplace digitization. A questionnaire was compiled by making use of theoretical insights and empirical findings...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):71-94 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.372
Many individuals enjoy sharing their stories and experiences through social media, which exemplifies social media word-of-mouth (social media WOM). This study examines the role of social media WOM in driving masstige purchase behaviour. This study involves perceptual distance, luxury perception, purchase intention and gender in such an investigation. Masstige refers to providing prestige to the masses, indicating luxury products for a broad audience. A survey of 246 consumers is conducted and structural equation modelling is employed to analyse the data. We find that social media WOM positively influences perceptual distance, luxury perception and...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):51-69 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.371
Logistics concepts are becoming less functional nowadays. The successful concept of just-in-time manufacturing seems untenable for 21st-century Europe. New ideas and new practices are emerging. One of the major trends in contemporary logistics is the demand-driven enterprise. Managing supply, fields and other processes in a company based on demand requires accurate demand forecasting at the relevant time. Relevant data are necessary for this forecasting. In the time of big data, the problem is not collecting data but evaluating them correctly. Data analytics is of great interest in business. The aim of the paper is to verify the possibilities of demand...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):23-50 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.370
This study investigates the impact of audit committee members’ competence on the ethical aspects of external audits and its influence on the audit quality of public interest entities (PIEs). Using a mixed-method approach, including surveys with respondents at audit firms and PIEs in Europe and semi-structured interviews with participants at PIEs in Europe, the findings highlight the importance of pre-appointment training for audit committee members concerning external audit ethics. This pre-appointment training would enable audit committee members of PIEs to evaluate whether external auditors and audit firms should implement appropriate safeguards...
Central European Business Review 2024, 13(5):1-22 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.365
Migration processes have emerged as crucial social, political and economic concerns, affecting societies, industries and organisations. The challenge lies in effectively utilizing immigrants' resources. This research aims to determine how AI tools can support matching migrants' skills with labour markets in host countries. We propose the application of an ensemble learning methodology. To validate this approach, we collect data to assess the career trajectories of 248 tertiary-educated Ukrainian immigrants in Poland, a new immigration destination. Various machine learning models are evaluated using the decision tree algorithm on these feature sets....
