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Over the past three decades, an exponentially growing body on elements and actors of the concept of an entrepreneurial university has emerged. Compared to its western European counterparts, however, the idea of the third role of the university has only recently been implemented in Central and Eastern European countries, and thus both research and entrepreneurial practice grapple with empirical results. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap while adopting a case study approach to examine the issue of what resources a prominent technical university operating in the emerging market of the Czech Republic transfers to academic ventures to utilise and commercialise university research results. Within a survey, nine academic founders and two university representatives were interviewed to assess the role of university resources in facilitating academic entrepreneurship. Our research results suggest that creating infrastructure to foster the third role of universities in an emerging market is a complex and long-term issue. Formal institutions embedded in the intra-university organisational structure, such as knowledge transfer offices and entrepreneurial centres, need to be equipped with sufficient resources and competences. Skilled people with their own network of contacts to intra-university departments and external environment represented by regional incubators, venture capital providers, business angel associations, and experienced entrepreneurs should be involved in the process of creating and increasing capacity. Furthermore, the upcoming agenda should undoubtedly acknowledge the significant role of entrepreneurship education with a focus on talent recognition and entrepreneurship training to impact the entrepreneurial intentions of researchers and students. Overall, we also conclude that the motivation of academics to commercialise their inventions could be positively affected by the applied concepts of assessing their performance. Finally, this study shows that measures at all management levels have to be adopted to create a vital organisational culture that will be in alignment with the vision of entrepreneurial university. The novelty of this paper is twofold. First, the study provides a useful methodological concept of data collection as the multi-level approach was applied for studying the phenomenon of entrepreneurial university. Furthermore, the research findings have valuable implications for university authorities, as well as national and local policy makers, in creating growth programmes and supporting the entrepreneurial mindset.

A structural model for the verification of the causal relationship between sustainability and economic value added is presented in this paper. The study has shown that there is no definite and unique relationship between corporate sustainability and economic value. Based on the results of the structural modelling, sustainable value model ESGVA is methodologically improved. The model expresses all four dimensions of corporate sustainability: environmental, social, corporate governance and economic. The case study demonstrates how different the results are if a purely economic concept of company value is used compared to value that takes into account environmental, social and corporate governance factors. The model is applicable to comparative analysis of socially responsible investments. Sustainable value provides extra information on corporate performance and can be used for decision-making of individual investors. First published online 17 March 2022

Objective: In this paper, we intend to contribute evidence in regard to going public motivation on a sample of companies that launched an IPO at the Prague Stock Exchange between 2004 and 2017. Research Design & Methods: In order to evaluate the prevailing motives for the IPO launch, we design and apply a set of composite indicators the values of which may be understood as an indication of the extent to which IPO launch motives originate in the zone of the issuing company’s needs or in the zone of interest of its owner (owners). Findings: Our main conclusion is that the dominant going public motivation is to allow current shareholders to cash out and to enhance the company´s publicity and image. Implications & Recommendations: Since the study disclosed that the prevailing motive of primary issues at the Prague Stock Exchange was the exit of investors and enhancing publicity and image we suggest that companies launching the Prague Stock Exchange in recent years were predominantly determined by non-financial aspects. Thus, the research findings represent substantial implications for issuers, investment bankers, the stock exchange, and macroeconomic policy makers when the concept of incentive schemes how to increase the attractiveness of the local capital market will be proposed. Contribution & Value Added: Our set of composite indicators allows assessing not only the predominant IPO motive zone, but also measuring the intensity of the motives. This helps to better understand the urgency of the needs of the issuing companies satisfied by the IPO implementation.

The objective of this study is to develop a qualitative model supporting chief financial officers (CFOs) while considering the timing of initial public offerings (IPOs) under conditions of underdeveloped capital markets, where decision making is often made under information shortage. A lack of adequate statistical data in connection with turbulently changing environment suggests that additional research is needed to develop new IPO timing models based not only on statistical analyses. We used a qualitative research approach based on trends, which are increasing, constant or decreasing. Firstly, we identified key variables influencing IPO timing, which have sufficient support in the relevant IPO academic literature, e.g. GDP growth rates, level of compliance, stock market returns, etc. Next, a qualitative model working with 9 variables was developed. The result is represented by 19 scenarios and their qualitative solutions. The transitional graph represents all possible transitions among the 19 scenarios. The main message of the findings presented is what scenarios can occur and what actions might be implemented by CFOs in order to increase the chances of IPO success. We believe that our findings provide valuable implications for local issuers, investment bankers, stock exchanges and macroeconomic policy makers.

This article describes the impact of R&D investment to on the economic stability in the Czech electronics industry in the period 2007–2014. Increasing the competitiveness of companies is conditional on the systematic investments, development and stability of companies. Searching for competitive advantage through innovation may be one of the ways of how to obtaining a stab. market position in the industry. The aim of this article was is to determine whether there are relations between changes of economic indicators and the reporting process of research activities for innovative companies in the electronics industry. The research was conducted among 103 companies based in the Czech Republic, which invested in R&D in 2007 – 2013. The comparison was made between companies which invested in the 2007 – 2013 in the annual or occasional R&D. Two subgroups were established and companies in each subgroup were monitored companies according to their size. Spearman’s rank correlation was used to assess if relationships among R&D Expenditure and Operating Revenue were preserved across periods. Two hypotheses were formulated and verified on the basis of statistical data processing of innovative companies. The results showed that innovative companies had the ability to better capitalize on their asset base, and they are better able to cover their needs from their own resources better than other companies of in the electronics industry. Their ability to provide a return on equity varies by according to company size. Innovative companies showed an ability to reach a positive outcome from operating activities. The coefficient of self-financing for SMEs is for SMEs constantly above the industry mean and increases with the length of period of time. This trend was not confirmed for micro-companies and large companies this trend was not confirmed.

IPO (Initial Public Offering) is a complex decision making task which is always associated with different types of uncertainty. Poor accuracies of available probabilities of lotteries e.g. quantification of investor interest is studied in the first part of this paper (Meluzín, Doubravský, Dohnal, 2012). However, IPO is often prohibitively ill-known. This paper takes into consideration the fact that decision makers cannot specify the structure/topology of the relevant decision tree. It means that one IPO task is specified by several (partially) different decision trees which comes from different sources e.g. from different teams of decision makers/experts. A flexible integration of those trees is based on fuzzy logic using the reconciliation (Meluzín, Doubravský, Dohnal, 2012). The developed algorithm is demonstrated by a case study which is presented in details. The IPO case integrates two partially different decision trees.

The article focuses on the problem of interdependences among Central European capital markets. The main aim of this research is to identify long-term interdependences among Austrian, Czech, Hungarian and Polish capital markets and the market of Germany. Additionally, the impact of short-term shocks on these markets is under evaluation. In the first step of the research the interdependencies among the capital markets in the years 1997-2015 were verified. For this purpose the DCC-GARCH model with the conditional t-distribution was used. In the second step, an analysis of cointegration for the interdependencies among the markets was carried out. The authors proposed to include conditional variances of the analysed markets as additional explanatory variables in the cointegration analysis. As the conditional variance most often reflects the impact of short-term shocks, the proposed approach allowed to take into account short-term market shocks in the cointegration analysis. The results enabled to identify long-term path for the course of the interdependences among markets of Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The mentioned Central European capital markets make a group of markets characterized with similar long-term path, which are focused around the dominant market of Germany.

The objective of the paper is to critically evaluate and determine risk-return profile environmentally focused stock’s companies which are covered by STOXX Global ESG Environmental Leaders Index and whether this index should be taken in as an independent asset class of investments portfolio for its risk-return improvement. This paper gives an empirical view on the ex-post asset classes characteristics focused mainly on risk side of investment.

This paper examines the determinants influencing the IPO timing by enterprises under the conditions in force on the Polish capital market. In the study we asked CFOs Polish enterprises divided into two groups to formulate their insights in the area of IPO timing. The first group consisted of the entities that have previously executed an initial public offering, the second one included the entities that have not executed an IPO (but considered doing so in the past or were candidates for doing it in the future). The survey results can be summarised as follows. First, in choosing an opportune time for an IPO, both subsamples of companies take into considerations the current need of external equity capital for continuing their growth. Second, managers also take advantage of macroeconomic development and effort conducting IPOs when present and projected state of the national and global economy is favorable. Overall stock market conditions, conditions in the business sector and investors´ interest in the business sector were identified as determinants of IPOs timing with a very strong support. Finally, Polish CFOs attach less importance to the interest that other companies operating in the same type of business may have in IPOs. The interest that firms from other business sectors may have in going public does not have an appreciable effect on timing as well.

The aim of the paper was to identify the present situation in innovation policies of small and medium-sized enterprises in the South Moravian and Moravian Silesian regions. In order to achieve the specified objective, quantitative research was carried out in the small and medium-sized enterprises by way of questionnaires. The achieved results imply that the enterprises under investigation apply competitive strategy focusing on top quality of goods on offer. The research manifested that the companies focused markedly on innovations in supplying products on offer with additional functions or features. The research results show that the companies do not conduct changes in production organization frequently, not even following their earlier innovative activities. The results of the research into the innovative activity “change in product design” imply that this activity is not applied frequently in comparison with the above-mentioned activities. Based on the interviewed companies' weak points in human resources, the elementary drawbacks include lack of management's command of foreign languages as well as production staff's expert skills. The results of the research imply that the interviewed companies perceive the sphere of products (improved product quality, extension of a product range), the sphere of new technologies and the sphere of an increase in market potential as the most significant. The questionnaire inquiry shows that innovative and development activities are most frequently financed from companies' own funds, subsidies/grants, bank credits and leases. Mortgages and venture capital are only made used of occasionally.

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally, the Czech Republic unlike, and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. In the United States of America, Japan and in the Western Europe countries the method of company funding through IPO has been applying for several decades already. The first public stock offerings began to be applied in these markets in higher volumes from the beginning of the 60th of the last century. From that period importance of IPO goes up globally and the initial public stock offerings begin to be applied more and more even in the Central and Eastern European countries. Since 2004, several companies that have opted for this form of financing can be found in the Czech Republic as well. The objective of the paper is to analyze the main characteristics of initial public offerings of shares effected on the Czech capital market between 2004 and 2008 and to outline the perspectives of further development in this area.

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally, the Czech Republic unlike, and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. In the United States of America, Japan and in the Western Europe countries the method of company funding through IPO has been applying for several decades already. The first public stock offerings began to be applied in these markets in higher volumes from the beginning of the 60th of the last century. From that period importance of IPO goes up globally and the initial public stock offerings begin to be applied more and more even in the Central and Eastern European countries. In the conditions of the Czech capital market it is possible to identify only few companies, who attempted to funding through the IPO way at present. Greater part of the Czech companies still undergo the debit funding for financing their further development, namely in the form of bank loans. At the same time it is necessary to take into account, that the debit financing starts, thanks to so-called mortgage crisis in the USA, causing problems and mark up. Admittance of a stakeholder into the company is not convenient for all and thus IPO represents an interesting option of how to acquire a no arrear capital. The aim of this article is to determine the IPO concept, analyse its development at the world stockholder markets, describe the reasons for IPO implementation according to the contemporary professional literature and compare it with the approaches to this particular form of funding with companies that have already implemented IPO at the Czech capital market.

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally, the Czech Republic unlike, and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. In the United States of America, Japan and in the Western Europe countries the method of company funding through IPO has been ap­p­lying for several decades already. The first public stock offerings began to be applied in these markets in higher volumes from the beginning of the 60th of the last century. From that period importance of IPO goes up globally and the initial public stock offerings begin to be applied more and more even in the Central and Eastern European countries. Under the conditions of the Czech capital market this way funding of development of the company, connected with its entering into the capital market, is not very usual. The Strategy of Sustainable Development of the Czech Republic considers this situation the weakness of the Czech economy, and its resolving has to be paid a due care. The present paper introduces the results of an analysis identifying the causes of the low numbers of IPOs in the Czech Republic. These causes were analyzed in a comprehensive way covering the period of time from the beginnings of the modern-day capital market in the Czech Republic until the present times. In order to reach the objective, the secondary research of the literature sources, focused on the issue in question and the primary research in the Czech companies was carried out.

In advanced markets, IPOs represent an opportunity to obtain the necessary capital for further company development. This form of financing is significant not only for the joint-stock company itself, for which an IPO is an alternative to debt financing, but also for further development of the capital market as a whole. That is to say, one of the fundamental functions of the capital market, the allocation function, is accomplished by means of IPOs. It follows from investigations of the situation in IPOs in the Czech Republic that financing company development through IPOs, which are linked with entrance into the capital market, has not become common practice in the Czech capital market. Comparing the present situation with the situation in international markets, it must be stated that the Czech capital market shows anomalies not only with regard to advanced capital markets such as those in the USA or Japan but also in reference to markets in Central and Eastern Europe. In the past, unfavourable conditions resulting from legislation and the institutional environment were considered the major cause of the long-term low numbers of initial public offerings in the Czech Republic. It follows from the results of the analysis of legislative barriers to carrying out IPOs that in recent years, a number of steps were taken to draw the Czech capital market nearer to the European standard, at least formally. Laws were passed that determine the scope and regulations for entrepreneurial activities of individual subjects, and an independent authority was set up that kept an eye on the tran­spa­ren­cy of the market and compliance with the given regulations; there are institutional and technical prerequisites available that facilitate trade in securities. Nowadays there are no more any legislative or general economic barriers, designated as significant obstacles for IPO realization in the Czech environment in the past. It depends mainly on approach of individual companies to this form of funding and on assessment of not only all minuses, but also all the pluses connected with IPO. The aim of the present paper is to determine all major prerequisites for successful implementation of an IPO in the Czech capital market.