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The purpose of this paper was to identify the most significant factors and issues concerning a successful Pre-Commercial Procurement in the Slovak and Czech markets and to validate a conceptual model developed to describe relations within all procurement phases with more detailed exploratory attributes. Number of price changes within the negotiation phase (generally in electronic dynamic pricing environment) and volume of procurement were identified as the most crucial determinants of savings, with a positive and negative effect on the success of Pre-Commercial Procurement respectively. Selection of auction type affects the number of participants and number of new participants in the auction, with less transparent auction types being more attractive for suppliers than transparent types. Further, Pre-Commercial Procurement was compared to traditional procurement of common products and services, identifying differences in number of participants and total volume of auctions. A survey conducted identified the critical need to improve innovation driven sourcing ecosystem to make the market more transparent for identification of suitable suppliers but also for the procurer to be more visible on the market when procurement is taking the place. The developed conceptual framework with tested relations can be a guide to proper Pre-Commercial Procurement procurement setting.

This study examines the effect of corporate governance, disclosure and firm characteristics on firm performance by taking data from the 2013 financial year annual reports of large public listed companies (based on market capitalisation) in Malaysia. Using multiple regression analysis, this study finds that the effect on firm performance, namely ROA, ROE and Tobin's Q, is different. Board size, the percentage of independent directors on the board and percentage of ownership concentration in firms have a significant negative relationship with ROA. ROE shows a significant negative association with board size, AC independence and ownership concentration. Tobin's Q only shows a significant negative relationship with board size. The findings in this study contribute to literature that good corporate governance characteristics, appropriate disclosure of corporate governance information and firm characteristics have improved the performance of listed companies in Malaysia. The study also suggests limitations and directions for future research.

Currently, the mint industry is using some of the conventional manufacturing processes that usually require specialised skills like engraving. This kind of skill is beginning to lose its attractiveness to the younger generations as it takes many years to be trained as an apprentice before one can be a qualified craftsman. This article highlights how CAD/CAM and CNC technologies can be used effectively to computerise some of the conventional medallion design and production processes. Some industrial case studies are described and an evaluation performed. A comparison based on the time required by the current practice and the proposed method is presented in one of the case studies. It is found that the proposed method is able to cut down the time for manufacturing the working and master dies by more than 50%.