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Many changes occurred in the management of the economy in Slovakia caused by the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. The process of globalization into Slovak economic conditions was limited due to initial alertness. While the governments of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic presented themselves as pro-reform, the Slovak government preferred Slovak privatizers (Kosír, 2016). Nevertheless, the retail chain Billa entered Slovak market in 1990, followed by automobile giant Volkswagen in 1991, American retail chain Kmart in 1992, which took over the department stores Prior. Because of the reforms implemented, Slovakia gains confidence from foreign investors. Significant foreign capital inflows into the emerging business environment of the Slovak economy, such as Heineken, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and others. A courtesy of Slovak government has also become reprivatisation of VSŽ Košice, which became part of the U.S. Steel, based in Pittsburgh in the USA.

Presumably complex systems can be better understood when they are broken down into their constituent elements and structured hierarchically. Then, judgments about these elements can be synthesized on the basis of their relative importance at each level of the hierarchy into a set of overall priorities. By breaking down a reality into homogenous clusters and subdividing them into smaller ones, it is possible to integrate large amounts of information into the structure of a problém and form a more comprehensive picture of the whole system. There is a decision support methodology (DSM) which conforms to the above prescription. It is called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and was devised at the Wharton School of Business by Thomas Saaty (1980). Its contemporary applications can be found, for example in Lidinska and Jablonsky (2018), Abdelmaguid and Elrashidy (2016), Kramulová and Jablonský (2016), and Ponis et al. (2015).

In the 1970s, Milton Friedman has claimed that: “the only social responsibility of a company is the use of its resources together with the engagement in businesses that are meant to increase the profits, maintaining the rules of the game. This means to engage into an open and free competition, without any abuse or fraud.” And this is how, starting from the 70s, the “rules of the game” were known in business and the responsibility that triggers the community, a responsibility that the companies fully acknowledge and embrace. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) deals with strategies used by companies to develop their business in an ethical way, to respect the relation with the other members of the society. CSR can involve a range of partnerships with the local communities, investments with a real social impact of the corporations (education, art, and environmental protection), the development of the relations of the companies with the clients, employees and their families.

According to Tibor Nyitray, President of the Wine Growers’ Union of the Czech Republic, wine is not only a product of nature, but also pleasure and joy, work and entrepreneurship, the result of long-term education and practise, the reason for meetings and association, and finally science and trade. Wine and winegrowing has made considerable progress in the last twenty years. Legislation has improved, the quality of equipment has risen, modern technologies have been developed, and a significant number of wines have obtained remarkable achievements at international competitions. Everything now depends on winemakers. They should not ‘only’ sell the wine that produce, but they should seek to build a good reputation for their products, gain the permanent confidence of consumers, and offer interesting and attractive wines. It is important that they will be more interested in what wines customers want to receive from them, and their aim should be in the first instance to satisfy consumers, and only after sales (Bárta, 2013).

The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of university education and business environment on entrepreneurial initiatives and to make comparisons of the results between students coming from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries were selected for the analysis since these are three of the V4 countries with common targets regarding the development of business environment and with an important location advantage. The International Visegrad Fund promotes mutual cooperation within the region in various fields, including the development of economic relations (in tourism, education, scientific research, cross-border cooperation). This Fund also implements own projects in these fields. The importance of the research is justified by the identification of the factors that mostly affect entrepreneurial initiatives; these factors could be developed more in order to increase the number of successful businesses in each of these country. Moreover, some obstacles to entrepreneurial initiatives are identified and suitable recommendations are provided to minimize these obstacles.