Innovation and open innovation are expected to strengthen firm performance. The learning process and inbound activities are particularly important for catch-up countries and firms. The empirical ...evidence, though, is incomplete and provides inconclusive results. This paper studies the role of open innovation activities in a sample of Slovenian firms. Using a combination of survey data and official registry financial statements data, we investigate the differences in the role of open innovation across firms with different productivity. The results show that open innovation is more important in less productive firms. This is consistent with the theoretical ideas that stress the role of learning, capacity building and knowledge transfer. However, these firms also invest less in open innovation activities, which is a paradox in itself, introducing an important challenge for managers as well as questions for future research.
The paper focuses on gender- and age-related wage-productivity gaps in intangible and non-intangible work occupations using the 2017 Slovenian linked employer-employee microdata for privately owned ...firms. Comparing employees based on age, gender and occupation, our results show that, in general, there are wage gaps in favour of men, with the exception of individuals aged 50 or older who belong to the intangible capital group, where the wages of men and women are almost equal. There are also significant wage gaps in favour of older workers, with the exception of women in non-intangible occupations, where those aged 30-49 and those aged 50+ earn almost the same. Comparing the productivity of workers using value added decomposition method and based on age, gender and occupation, in general we find that gender and age gaps are more pronounced. For example, women tend to be more productive than men, with the exception of men under the age of 30 in non-intangible work occupations. Similarly, older workers tend to be less productive than their younger counterparts, with the exception of women aged 30-49 compared to women under 30 in non-intangible work occupations. Moreover, age-related wage productivity gaps are higher for intangible than for non-intangible worker occupations.
Challenges On the Path Toward Sustainability in Europeoffers a theoretical and empirical approach to addressing sustainable development, providing rich data analysis at cross-country level, as well ...as practical examples from the European context.
•Text reviews increasingly important for travelers and managerial decision-making.•Numerical evaluation of facility rarely sufficient, textual reviews provide rich information.•Illustration how text ...mining methods can be used to summarize reviews.•Implications for travelers and management highlighted.
Firm inclusion into global value chains is apart from the immediate effect on the demand important also in the long run due to other effects, such as opening up of new markets, technology and ...knowledge transfer etc. Innovations at large (product and process innovations, organizational, market and marketing innovations), knowledge accumulation, as well as strengthening of corporate capabilities and competencies, represent a major part of investment into intan gible or knowledgebased capital. The latter can enhance productivity growth by as much as a third. This paper studies the position of Slovenian companies, based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey database by the EBRD (panels IV and V) to assess the differences in the accumulation of intangible capital between the compa nies that are active in global markets and those that are not. The results show that the observed differences are most pronounced in computerized information component of intangible capital, while differences in innovative property and investment into strengthening economic competencies are not as large. These results partially reflect the recent economic crisis as well as the impact of the service sectors.
PurposeThe Internet has changed consumer decision-making and influenced business behaviour. User-generated product information is abundant and readily available. This paper argues that user-generated ...content can be efficiently utilised for business intelligence using data science and develops an approach to demonstrate the methods and benefits of the different techniques.Design/methodology/approachUsing Python Selenium, Beautiful Soup and various text mining approaches in R to access, retrieve and analyse user-generated content, we argue that (1) companies can extract information about the product attributes that matter most to consumers and (2) user-generated reviews enable the use of text mining results in combination with other demographic and statistical information (e.g. ratings) as an efficient input for competitive analysis.FindingsThe paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.Originality/valueThe study makes several contributions to the marketing and management literature, mainly by illustrating the methodological advantages of text mining and accompanying statistical analysis, the different types of distilled information and their use in decision-making.
The article analyses the research performance of researchers from the School of Economics and Business at the University of Ljubljana in the broader Slovenian public higher education space, ...particularly through the prism of scientific publications. The data show that the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana performs above average in the Slovenian public higher education space, especially in the highest quality publications, both in the A'' and A'' categories, and that it significantly outperforms both the average of public universities and the average of the University of Ljubljana.
The Slovenian economy is strongly integrated into international value chains. As technological development is important for maintaining competitiveness and position on international markets, many ...companies are actively using new technologies in the field of Industry 4.0, with large companies leading the way and small and medium-sized companies lagging behind in the adoption of new technologies. The article analyses the situation in the field of new technologies adoption in small and medium enterprises in Slovenia and tries to shed light on the reasons for lagging behind. The analysis is the result of the research project "Industry 4.0: Introduction of the concept in Slovenian companies and impact on the broader socio-economic development of Slovenia" under the auspices of the School of Economics and Business.
Article examines the impact of digitalisation and intangible capital investment on the non-financial performance of firms in Slovenia. Article examines the relationship between: (1) digitalisation ...and firms' non-financial performance; (2) digitalisation and firms' attitude to digitalisation; (3) investments in intangible capital and firms' non-financial performance; where we (4) also expect differences by industry and between firms operating in global value chains. Considering survey data, the SEM approach shows that, digitalisation and intangible investment both have positive effects on non-financial performance. Level of digitalisation depends on the importance attributed to digitalisation, whereas the importance of digitalisation depends on the expected long-term benefits of digitalisation for the firm. Level of digitalisation is dependent on the anticipated long-term benefits of digitalisation. These have a positive, yet non-significant impact on a firm's level of digitalisation. Despite business agility having an impact on the importance of digitalisation for businesses that is less than the expected benefits, it is still highly significant. Other results were not statistically significant.
The paper studies corporate governance characteristics in a panel of transition countries to investigate the relationship between the investment in intangible capital (specifically innovation) and ...corporate governance. We show that innovation is restricted by finance and the managerial attitude towards activities that support innovation. In case of financial restriction, softer innovation (process, marketing, organization) are more less impacted by the restriction and are also more common. Lack of managerial support to innovation results in less innovation, regardless of the type. We also show that external determinants, like the intensity of competition and international orientation, are related to innovation. The paper extends the knowledge about the link between corporate governance and intangible investment at large and in particular in transition countries. As such it provides useful implication at microeconomic as well as macroeconomic (developmental) level.