Domů

It is widely documented in the literature that innovators perceive business obstacles differently from non-innovators (Mohnen et al., 2008; Galia & Legros, 2004). Extant findings indicate that firms are able to surmount obstacles (Baldwin & Lin, 2002; Tourigny & Le, 2004) and efforts to understand how firms manage to innovate despite obstacles have been made (Radas & Božić, 2012). It has also been emphasized in the literature that we need to distinguish between obstacles that cause absence of innovation and those that make innovation difficult (D’Este et al., 2012; D’Este, Rentocchini, & Vega-Jurado, 2015).

In the 1980´s the US economy was marked by until then rather unusual external and internal deficits. Similar situation gradually appeared in other countries. During last decade it was analysed in the case of so called PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) in the European Union. This co-movement draws interest of many researchers. Generally it is believed that internal deficit (fiscal budget deficit) causes external one (external balance deficit). External balance deficit is usually measured via trade or current account deficit. This phenomenon is called „twin deficit“. Twin deficit problem can be perceived as a vicious circle. High budget deficit generates important current account deficit and this in turn leads to higher budget deficit. Therefore twin deficit threat should be in the centre of attention of policy makers.

Knowledge management is presently of specific interest to economists dealing with corporate governance, as over the last four decades they have noted a lack of influence of the traditional factors of competitive advantage due to the growing impact of global processes, diffusion of innovation and the widespread uptake of modern technologies in production processes. Information and knowledge, which are elementary resources for the blossoming of societies functioning on a modern basis, their economies, and most of all companies, are increasingly important for development.

If you are an economist, you are reading this article without any financial incentive from your employer. It is equally difficult to verify that such activity will contribute to your growth of human capital and increased productivity in research or teaching. (That does not prevent the authors from hoping it will.) The standard economic model, which explains employee’s effort only through the wage (determined by productivity), is therefore incomplete.

In the highly competitive restaurant industry, satisfying guests should be the critical objective of all businesses that wish to prosper and encourage repeat purchases. However, ensuring proper quality in restaurants is limited by a number of industry-specific factors, including volatile demand, small businesses, intense competition, the wide range of food and beverage products offered, the inseparability of production and consumption, intangibility of services, labour-intensive production, the importance of employees’ attitude towards guests and many other factors that significantly affect the level of overall service quality.