Issue #2 (cont. 3) (Volume 15 2017)

Nowadays sustainable development is a central concept for our age. It is both a way ofunderstanding the world and a method for solving global problems. It is currently a crucial concept for the world to understand and to implement. This research study focuses on examining the foundations of achieving sustainable development and main factors influencing this process at a national level. The aim is to characterize those factors which influence this implementation process mainly from the economic point of view. However, other noneconomic factors related to human well-being and organizational development are not omitted. Countries’ political and legislative environment are also evaluated since they can have significant implications for development of individual organizations conducting their business activities within countries' borders. The focus of examining the topic of countries’ sustainable development is on the cross-country comparison. Values of some important indicators are also provided in terms of comparison among selected countries which enables us to explain the reasons for differences in countries’ development, as well as predictions for the future. Historical perspective provides data which enable to evaluate influence of selected factors in terms of countries’ path to achieving sustainable development.

This work is framed in the research of business failure. We examine a method of analyzing the dynamics of financial failure. The authors examine a method of analyzing the dynamics of financial failure, because our goal is to analyze how the economic and financial indicators show the risk of failure in a group of companies.
Using a sample of 163 companies declared bankrupt or dissolved, the authors show how to depict company trajectories of behavior and movement to terminal failure. They analyze these trajectories to find and describe empirical evidence of the different dynamics of bankruptcy. The authors also show that the estimation of failure risk is more accurate when these different failure trajectories are defined.
In conclusion, the authors can see that there are different failure trajectories. One can use these different trajectories to identify more efficiently the indicators warning of the failure risk of the companies analyzed.

Immigrant entrepreneurship is increasingly becoming part of the global economy which is garnering more attention from different academic disciplines. The increase in numbers of immigrants all over the world, especially in recent times, has also led to an increase in the immigrant entrepreneurship. Socio-cultural and economic impacts of this increase begin to draw attention of researchers studying the economy and business. However, analyzing the studies about immigrant entrepreneurship phenomenon systematically is quite limited. In this context, the aim of the study is to reveal knowledge network of immigrant entrepreneurship and show slightly-used paths of this field as suggestions for further studies. To achieve this aim, social network analysis (SNA) providing linkages and connections about immigrant entrepreneurship is used. Likewise SNA method is commonly used in scientific researches to provide a powerful set of tools for describing and linking information. Articles about immigrant entrepreneurship published in journals which are involved in SSCI are evaluated and UCINET software is used for visualizing our research through keywords. The study is expected to contribute to the business literature generally and entrepreneurship literature specifically and lead to researchers who aim to study the immigrant entrepreneurship by means of focusing on gaps and variables which are not discoursed adequately in the field.

The paper aims to introduce and clarify automatic exchange of tax information as a global and European Union initiative in order to curb tax evasion via cross-border tax avoidance, along with aggressive tax competition. It investigates the role of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which developed Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and endorsed it in 2014. CRS is a framework for automatic exchange of tax information with the purpose to promote cooperation among various jurisdictions. For EU Member States, CRS is transposed by the amended EU Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC2). Bulgaria as a member state has transposed the Directive in the national law.
This study examined automatic exchange of tax information (AETI) from Bulgarian perspective – historic development, legal framework, responsible and competent authorities and application of DAC2 and expectations for newly approved DAC3.
In the study, Bulgarian financial institutions (banks) are examined, implementation status and how the challenge of AETI, including client information and data protection, are addressed. Primary data for banks are collected from publicly available sources (website of the respective bank), as company websites of top 5 Bulgarian banks were examined for information related to automatic exchange of financial information/tax information.
Results show that major Bulgarian banks, within First Group in terms of assets, are initiating the process, internal due diligence and preparation for the new reporting requirements.
General conclusion is that currently there are some critical issues to be addressed, new DAC3 might introduce higher challenges, as practical guidance is the solution.

The founder’s syndrome is considered a management weakness and leadership disorder affecting every entrepreneur envisioning and planning a long-term journey for his/her established business. The challenge, with expanding companies, is that the bigger they become, the more re-organization they require through re-design, processes re-engineering, restructuring, reforming corporate governance structure and more innovation plans and strategies they would need to withhold the complexities and uncertainties of their external environments they are exposed to. Therefore, re-organizing growing businesses can become very difficult if the decision-making process remains caught at the upper level of hierarchy. The major risk factor in a business-growing journey is to be confronted with the founder’s syndrome.
A growing company led by an entrepreneur suffering from the founder’s syndrome who is afraid to let go and resist organizational re-alignment, development of strategies and introduction of advanced management systems, can never survive the complex external environmental challenges due to the excessive lack of innovation. Business innovation in complex and uncertain environments requires innovative strategy setting which, if applied, should be complemented by a re-organizational structure and design compatible with the roadmap of strategy innovation. In fact, to support and stand for innovation, the business corporate leadership culture should not be contaminated with the effect of founder’s syndrome. On the contrary, the founder should have enough creativity and empowerment skills to accept the compromise of power and control with more open communication and information sharing combined with lean organizational design, to facilitate and encourage innovation for an extended long term organizational survival.

Drawing on the legitimacy theory framework, this study introduces an alternative means to spot “fuzzy reporting” signals as a way to detect greenwashing at the firm level. Its approach is based on the way the sustainability reporting process can mislead stakeholders after critical incidents take place. In order to do so, a single environmental incident, which took place in Colombia, is analyzed in light of what happened before, during and afterwards, with special emphasis on the corporate disclosure process performed by the company involved. Results obtained give support to the assumption that fuzzy reporting can be objectively detected not only through the analysis of annual sustainability reports, but also by tracking other forms of corporate messages when a specific concern is carefully followed. This study’s contribution is two-fold. First, it builds on the theoretical notions of greenwashing and fuzzy reporting by illustrating a practical and objective way to identify some deceiving corporate practices. Second, it empirically evaluates this approach in a sensitive context in order to obtain better illustration and prepare the groundwork for further studies.

The customers are an essential element for marketing decisions and became a factor decisive to develop collaborations with the company. The study examines the four building blocks of the interaction of the DART model (Dialogue, Access, Risk Assessment, Transparency) in the hospitality industry from the client’s perception. This approach of the research is paramount, as value co-creation and DART model especially are based on a dialogical process between equal partners. That means that the principles of the four building blocks of interaction are equally applied to all the actors involved. This argument is amplified as the dividing line between producers and consumers is barely evident in the service-dominant logic. The exploratory study has been carried out at the Makedonia International Airport in Thessaloniki, Greece. Partial Least Squares (PLS) provides empirical support to conduct the exploratory study.

Gender equality has been a major principle of the European Union since the Treaty of Rome introduced the principle of equal pay for men and women in 1957. Gender equality means the same rights and opportunities for women and men across all sectors of society. The primary objective of the paper is to explore the management style of women, as well as their distinctive characteristics. It is believed that these distinctive features have a major influence upon their career-related behavior. The contribution tries to underscore the fact that women of the 21st century can prove themselves successfully in managerial positions within organizations, even though their career development is still hampered by gender inequality, since the world of management is a male-dominated field. Women in management positions have considerable, yet not fully utilized potential, which could help companies to succeed. In the paper, a questionnaire was used to obtain the relevant data on the management style and characteristics of female managers in the Trenčin region, Slovak Republic. At a later stage, the sepre-research findings will be used to conduct a comparative study in cooperation with the colleagues from the Universidad de Valencia and Universidad Catolica de Valencia San Vicente Martir in the Spanish region of Valencia.

At present times, the impact of new technologies on job creation is going to be a serious problem in personnel management. In the human resources contents, this issue still remains in minor attention. As a result of new communication technologies development in the near future, we will be facing too many changes in working patterns and demands on staff regarding job requirements. Simultaneously with the above stated changes on labor market, a new generation of workers is emerging that grew up with the development of communication technologies, they profess different lifestyle from the one the generations have had before. Many of these generations become employers and bring new approaches to employment of people being different from traditional working patterns. Despite the facts being alleged in this study, it is difficult to estimate to what extent those changes will affect Slovak labor market. Gradual development of technologies is an ongoing process in Slovakia as well and in four years robotics is to be a key technology in most manufacturing plants mainly in automotive industry. Currently, three generations are present on labor market that may have a different approach to changes being implemented nowadays. In this study, the authors analyze the survey results on the use of communication technologies by Generations X, Y, Z, and their abilities to be prepared for changes on labor market. Survey provides interesting information about the access of different generations to communication technologies and their relationship with technical innovations.