Journal of Business Economics and Management

Exploring the synergy of technical and social sciences: an overview of professor Joanicjusz Nazarko’s 45-year scientific journey

Martyna Wilczewska — 2024-05-24

This article presents Professor Joanicjusz Nazarko’s outstanding achievements in research, scientific cooperation, teaching and organizational work, in celebration of the 45^th jubilee of his scientific work. Over the years, Professor Nazarko has contributed significantly to the development of technical and social sciences in Poland. He authored more than 300 publications, which constitutes a substantial knowledge base on its own. Using bibliometric and statistical methods and techniques, we present an overview of Professor’s most important scientific achievements and major works. We also highlight his efforts to establish a national and international network for scientific cooperation. Lastly, we present his didactic successes. This jubilee serves as the opportunity to recognize and honour Professor Joanicjusz Nazarko’s significant contribution to the development of science in Poland.

Unveiling the role of industries for European financial stability. Insights from the energy sector

Iulia Lupu — 2024-05-24

Extensive analysis of intertwinement with other industries caused the energy sector to gain momentum in the recent economic literature. This paper aims to create an indicator that captures the impact of financial stability for energy companies on all other industrial groups. To this end, we use daily data from 2007 until the end of 2021 to compute financial stability metrics for all European companies from the STOXX 600 index. The main contribution of our study is to harness the neural network forecasting power to predict extreme levels of this impact. We motivate this choice with evidence from the literature that documents the improved performance of these methods in predicting crises. Our methodological approach also employs an outlier detection algorithm based on copula (COPOD) to identify situations when the energy sector substantially impacts other industries and develop a framework to predict out-of-sample situations. We found evidence that the Deep Renewal model has superior forecasting accuracy to the standard Croston model. The main conclusion is that the design of this methodological framework allows authorities to monitor the impact of shocks produced by the energy sector on financial stability at the European level and undertake strategic management actions.

Does online media attention improve China’s green fund performance?

Yaping Xiao — 2024-05-27

This study investigates the relationship between online media attention and the performance of China’s green funds. The results show that increased media attention can boost the performance of green funds in the short term, however, this effect is short-lived. The mechanism of short-term positive effects may be due to increased media attention leading to larger purchases, which may undermine funds’ long-term performance. In particular, online media attention has a greater impact on larger and older funds. Moreover, it indicates that media attention reduces the returns of individual investor-dominated funds, but has little effect on institutional investor-dominated funds.

The relationship between the circular economy and business performance: a systematic literature review

Marta Nosková — 2024-06-17

The circular economy represents an effective way to address limited resources and mitigate the impact of human activity on the planet. To summarize the possible effect of circular economy implementation on business performance and its possible measurement, a systematic literature review on a final sample of 28 papers was conducted. The main findings reveal that the circular economy can help to improve business performance and that numerous indicators could be used to measure it, especially the balanced scorecard approach, which seems suitable for such classification (however, more research on this topic is needed). Additionally, it was revealed that the circular economy concept itself has no clear and generally used definition, which complicates the summarizing of the revealed indicators. To simplify future research, we proposed a research framework based on this systematic literature review and emphasized the research gaps.

Analyzing causality and cointegration of macroeconomics and energy-related factors of Nordic and SEE European countries

Irina Alexandra Georgescu — 2024-07-04

Discrepancies between several South-Eastern European (SEE) countries and Nordic countries are investigated in this paper using an econometric analysis. Its aim is to examine the relationship between CO₂ emissions, GDP per capita, urban population (URB) and electricity production from Renewable Energy Sources (RES) – EPREN, excluding hydroelectric for the two groups of EU countries located in the North and S-E of Europe. The data covers a period from 1990 to 2022, providing a comprehensive view over three decades. The relationship between the four variables is determined by various causality and cointegration tests. We check the unit root tests and conclude that the analyzed time series are stationary at first difference. Further, we estimate two models: Fully Modified and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares and study causality and cointegration between variables. The results show that CO₂ emissions are impacted by GDP, URB and EPREN for both regions. Testing causality, for SEE and Nordic countries, the bidirectional and causalities do exist.

Pay or leave? The role of social media fatigue and willingness to pay to avoid fake news in social networks use

Vasile Dinu — 2024-07-04

Social media networks are a technological phenomenon that has changed the entire social environment, as many real-world activities have shifted to posts or comments on social media. However, with this development several negative aspects have been revealed, such as information overload, privacy concerns and fake news. The aim of our research is to determine the impact fake news has on social media fatigue and discontinuous behavior and whether the willingness to pay to avoid fake news impacts this relationship. The results of two mediation models show that fake news positively affects social media fatigue, but there is no direct effect on the discontinuous use of social media. However, social media fatigue partly mediates the relationship between the awareness of fake news existence and discontinuous behavior. Furthermore, social media fatigue increases the willingness to pay for quality content, but contrary to our expectations, it does not reduce discontinuous behavior. This shows that the fake news phenomenon is far more complex, with other factors affecting it. Furthermore, imposing a price to avoid fake news is not a solution as users do not necessarily see value in this, but prefer to avoid social media so as not to have to deal with social media fatigue.

Green credit policy, corporate social responsibility and green innovation

Zhi Zhang — 2024-07-04

Human activities have an increasingly serious impact on our natural surroundings. Hence, cutting-edge sustainable technologies are essential for both governmental agencies and the corporate sector as a pivotal means to safeguard the environment. This study aims to shed light on the function that corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays in enterprises by examining the relationship between green credit policy (GCP) and green innovation (GI). This research examines a total of 5,819 panels of Chinese listed businesses’ data spanning from 2009 to 2021. The differences-in-differences (DID) model was used to assess hypotheses. The empirical results suggest that GCP has facilitated the adoption of GI by firms. GI in heavily polluting firms was elevated by 15% relative to the control group. The presence of CSR serves as a mediating and moderating factor in the relationship between GCP and the implementation of GI initiatives within firms. Lastly, based on the empirical results, relevant suggestions for optimizing GCP are proposed to achieve better environmental protection results.

Accounting according to the Czech legislation or IFRS? Czechia case study

Michal Krajňák — 2024-07-04

The article deals with the decision-making situation whether it is more advantageous for accounting entities in Czechia to keep accounting according to Czech accounting regulations or to International Financial Reporting Standards. The preparation of financial statements only in accordance with national accounting regulations may often not be sufficient. Different ways of regulating accounting in the world put pressure on accounting harmonization. International Financial Reporting Standards are the world’s primary tools for accounting harmonization. The results of the decision analysis show that it is more advantageous for accounting entities to prepare financial statements only in accordance with national accounting regulations. The main reason for the higher utility of this option is lower costs, which is the most important criterion in the decision-making process. While accounting entities confirm that the preparation of financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards provides higher quality and comparability of accounting information, it also provides higher costs. In the article are used methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and a selected method of multi-criteria decision making.

Analyzing new ventures’ innovation generation and adoption: a configurational analysis from the optimal distinctiveness perspective

Zhimin Xie — 2024-07-04

The institutional theory literature focuses on the legitimization of new ventures’ innovative behaviors, while the entrepreneurial orientation literature emphasizes differentiation of the pursuit of innovation by new ventures. We apply the optimal distinctiveness perspective to examine how the institutional environment and entrepreneurial orientation jointly influence two modes of innovation – innovation generation and innovation adoption – in new ventures. We employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on country-level data obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. Our findings reveal that there are five equifinal optima of distinctiveness rather than a one-size-fits-all optimal distinctiveness for high innovation generation and high innovation adoption, respectively. Moreover, the orchestrating mechanisms of the two modes of innovation are different: that of innovation generation is threshold orchestration and that of innovation adoption is compensatory orchestration. Furthermore, except for the difference, we also identify something similar shared by mechanisms of innovation generation and innovation adoption. These results extend the optimal distinctiveness theory by empirically verifying equifinality in optimal distinctiveness and articulating different practices of threshold orchestration and compensatory orchestration, and also contribute to the innovation literature by examining the differences and similarities of the mechanisms of innovation generation and innovation adoption.