Assessment of the level of business readiness for digitalization using marketing and neural network technologies

The increasing turmoil in the external organizational setting or business environment has focused attention on capabilities and resources as the primary source of competitive advantage. Obviously, this statement points to the application of the resource-based view (RBV) of organizational management. Nevertheless, what constitutes RBV remains an illusion in many quarters of organizational management, as scholars have managed to put up their personal ideas, and managed to converge on phenomenon-driven theories, in addition to RBV. This paper reviews the concepts of RBV in light of knowledge management to highlight some critical pitfalls that might have eluded the research community on the subject matter of RBV. To this end, this paper’s educational value lies in the fact that it simplifies the concept of RBV to the new researcher in a fashion that is capable of appealing to his or her level. A cross-sectional qualitative research approach was employed in an effort aimed at understanding the role of RBV in creating a sustainable competitive advantage and key competencies. A total of 20 relevant articles were searched from different databases and search engines, including Scopus, EBSCO, ABI Inform, IEEE, PubMed, Science Direct, SABINET, IEEE, Bing, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. The findings indicate that RBV plays an important role and assists organizations not only create, nurture, and maintain competitive advantage, but also understand the collective resources needed to compete favorably in a globalized and highly competitive market. With expert knowledge workers at its core to provide support for knowledge creation, sharing, and utilization, the RBV principles discussed in this paper promise to guarantee a methodological step geared towards the achievement of competitive advantage. It, therefore, makes an incremental contribution to the RBV to attain modest improvement in organizational settings.

The aim of the article was to find out the optimal capital structure of the companies in relation to their maximum performance. To reach this aim, the data of the companies operating in the field of heat industry of the Slovak Republic were used. As the first method, a correlation matrix was applied. It was found out that there is statistically significant relationship between capital structure indicators and performance of the companies. Due to the lack of data in time series, the authors were not able to apply multiple regression model to assess the impact of these indicators on performance. Therefore, a method of modelling was used to analyze the impact of the change in capital structure on performance. Modelling was based on the principle of a gradual change in the capital structure in favor of debt. By the increase in debt, it was confirmed that there was a change in the values of selected indicators. In the course of analysis, it was confirmed that the value of EVA equity increased with the rising indebtedness by which the proposition I of the modified MM theory was supported. The performance expressed by EVA entity indicator is at its minimum when the capital structure is 90:10 in favor of equity. By increasing the debt, EVA entity rises. Based on these results, it can be stated that the performance of selected companies increases when the share of debt also rises, even when taking into account the rising financial risks.

The startup ecosystem in the Czech Republic falls far below the level of the developed economies of its Western neighbors. The startup map of the Czech Republic shows 1,717 continuously operating startups. And yet they have yet to receive priority attention in the academic realm. The primary goal of this article is to define the key factors of startup sustainability and to look for dependencies between them. The secondary goal is to identify the weaknesses of the Czech startup environment. The scientific hypotheses formulated focus on demonstrating the dependencies of selected factors influencing the startup sustainability. These have been verified on the basis of evaluation of data obtained via primary qualitative and quantitative research. Its findings were compared with the data of secondary research and with the conclusions of the scientific studies of international authors. The data were processed using statistical apparatus. Thanks to this research, the authors have identified in their conclusion the factors of the remote, immediate, and interior environments that can influence startup sustainability. They demonstrate a correlation between the level of strategic management and the quality of internal communications processes, between the capacities of startup management to manage relationships with customers (CRM) and to drive communications strategy, including brand support. In real practice, however, nine out of ten startups do not succeed. The reason is that their design fails to understand and address the needs of customers and lacks marketing and managed sales.