Iryna Polishchuk

Intellectual capital is the total value of all entity’s intangible resources (organizational, human, and customer). Effective management of intellectual capital in high-tech industries needs determination of its role in ensuring profitability and clarifying the direction of managerial and investment policy in intangible resources. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of intellectual capital on the profitability of Slovak software development companies. Panel data regression analysis was used as the main research method to analyze the data of 16 Slovak software development companies for 2015–2019. The study designed and analyzed four panel data regression models with different dependent variables (Return on Assets, Net Profit Margin, Gross Profit Margin, Earnings Before Interest and Taxes Margin) and similar independent variables (Capitalized Development Costs, Software, Acquired Intangible Fixed Assets, Personnel Costs, Social Security Costs, Social Costs, and Total Costs of Economic Activity). The analysis of these models was carried out based on the fixed effects method. It was found that intellectual capital reflected in the financial statements of software development companies does not meet the information needs of stakeholders and does not have a significant direct impact on profitability. Only Acquired Intangible Fixed Assets had a direct positive impact on the profitability of software development companies in all four analyzed models, and some independent variables had a negative impact. It is proposed to expand the structure of financial reporting items that characterize the intellectual capital and improve the method of recognizing costs of various types as intangibles.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a universal call to action over the past few years and a basis for assessing the progress of sustainable development of countries and organizations. This paper aims to identify the relationship between the sustainable development activities of universities in different regions of the world, as reflected in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings (THE IR), and the progress towards achieving SDGs of the countries in which these universities operate. The research methods were correlation analysis and robust regression tools, and parametric and non-parametric methods of variance analysis. The information base was the results of annual reports based on the THE IR and Sustainable Development Reports for 2017–2021. The results confirm the existence of directly proportional close correlations between the variables, while the regression analysis confirmed that a one-unit increase in the overall THE IR ranking score leads to a corresponding increase in the overall progress of countries in achieving SDGs (on average by 0.2-0.3 units) and SDGs 3, 8, 11, 16 in particular. It was also found that universities play a key role in achieving different SDGs in various regions. In Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North Africa, universities are critical for SDG 17 achieving. In OECD countries, universities contribute most to SDG 3. Examples of the best practices that can be used as a guide for university administrations that are at the beginning of developing sustainable development policies are also given.

Funding
Inna Makarenko gratefully acknowledges support from the Jean Monet module project “Transparency. Accountability. Responsibility. Governance. Europe. Trust. Sustainability” financed by the Erasmus+ program (101085395 – TARGETS – ERASMUS-JMO-2022-HEI-TCH-RSCH).

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The study provides a comparative empirical assessment of the financial stability of waste management companies in Ukraine and the EU under geopolitical fragmentation and war-induced shocks. The sample includes 2,371 firms from the Orbis database operating in waste collection, recycling, and disposal from 2019 to 2023. The methodology combines correlation analysis, K-means clustering, and robustness checks using hierarchical and DBSCAN algorithms. Financial stability is measured by liquidity, solvency, and profitability. Wartime data gaps are addressed using median and k-NN imputation. The results identify three financial profiles (resilient, balanced, at-risk) in both regions but reveal profound structural asymmetries. In the EU, even at-risk companies maintain positive solvency (13.9%) and marginal ROA (0.81%), reflecting stable institutional conditions. In contrast, Ukrainian at-risk firms exhibit critical financial distress, with near-zero solvency (0.09%) and deeply negative profitability (ROA (–11.2%), ROE (–15.9%)), indicating capital destruction due to war-related shocks. A key finding is the weakening of financial coherence in Ukraine, with a significantly lower correlation between ROA and liquidity (0.60) than in the EU (0.78), confirming a structural break after 2022. Additionally, resilient Ukrainian firms show abnormally high liquidity (Current Ratio 7.91 vs. 3.51 in the EU), indicating precautionary cash hoarding and investment paralysis under extreme uncertainty. The findings confirm that geopolitical shocks transform financial behavior, whereby EU companies maintain efficiency-driven models and Ukrainian firms shift toward survival-oriented strategies. The study offers micro-level evidence of war-induced disruption to financial stability and proposes policy measures for recapitalization, green finance, and alignment with EU sustainability frameworks.