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Recent changes in digital technologies did not just provide augmented
opportunities for firms and individuals, but rather influenced almost all spheres of everyday life. Among them, hardly any other one has experienced so much changes than payment systems. However, existing systems are based on traditional currencies, and there is a debate whether they will remain safe and stable in the long-term perspective. Cryptocurrencies are somehow treated as a possible solution here, but does it satisfy all countries? In this modest review, we tried to summarize positions of all European jurisdictions towards digital tokens.
The ongoing digitalisation forces both induviduals and firms to keep up with modern technologies, invest in digital literacy and up-to-date skills. However, some regions suffer from poor Internet quality and remain digitally underdeveloped. A prominent example is Palestine which lacks digital freedom due to the restrictions posed by Israel authorities, but also faces a number of internal problems that hamper entrepreneurship. In our paper, we tried to find out whether the recent introduction of 3G mobile Internet in 2018 boosted the business activity in Palestine. Results of our survey of technologically driven start-up founders and experts working closely with them demonstrated that recent improvements in Internet quality are positively associated with the business development, though this effect is largely offset by poor legislative base and low investments in human capital in Palestine.
Albeit augmented reality (AR) technologies first have been discovered in the third quarter of the 20th century, their widespread use began just two decades ago. Existing paper trails show that AR has a wide range of industrial application: it simplifies human-machine communication, improves human-machine interfaces (HMI) for quick information exchange in training (including feedback to study the workflow), correction of errors, machine maintenance, assembly assistance etc. However, broader industrial acceptance of AR, prior to all by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), recently faced considerable problems and the expansion of AR solutions does not match the high potential it has demonstrated. That results in a limited practical use, mainly for demonstration and advertising purposes. This short review is to present the state of the art of the industry, challenges that SMEs face in adopting AR technologies, and several practical examples of a (commercial) adoption of AR. Some prospects for further development of AR and its ongoing integration into industry are briefly discussed in the summary.
Leadership is about lifting a person’s vision, raising their productivity to higher standards and creating a personality beyond their usual capabilities. Our study examines the Pygmalion effect and leader-member exchange (LMX) on employee task performance via organizational commitment. The data was collected from 280 middle-level managers from top ten banks in Pakistan. This study offers three main contributions to the literature. First, our results discover a strong link between the Pygmalion effect, LMX and employees’ task performance through mediation of organizational commitment. Secondly, our study indicates that leaders should have higher quality relationships with employees and higher task performance expectations. Finally, most previous studies focused on leadership approaches or have been conducted in western developed countries. To our knowledge, this study is a unique contribution to the literature on leaders’ expectations in changing and diverse environments, as in underdeveloped countries like Pakistan.
Our paper examines the impact of training outputs and employment factors on several facets of employee performance while supporting managerial decision-making in the banking sector. First, we introduce four performance measures in individual productivity assessment. Second, three identified groups of covariates are associated with these measures, namely, the training method success, delivery of knowledge, and labor market performance feedback. Based on our empirical results from Germany, we suggest that response-related decisions are accompanying bank employees’ profiles and appraisal. In particular, we form decision-making functions and finally show that the banking industry successfully balances between internal and external factors in optimizing employees’ performance.
Latest changes in broadband internet provision, as it was expected, will improve the life quality of millions of people around the world and will simplify the business routine, so that even new companies would be able to compete with well-established ventures. However, while there are numerous examples how modern digital infrastructure increases productivity or economic growth, very few papers try to link the availability of high-speed internet and the appearance of new firms. With our previous research at the municipality level in Brandenburg, we started to cover this research gap for the case of Germany. Our current study is focusing on possible effects of (ultra-)broadband provision on firm entry rates in 401 German administrative districts and independent cities. Results of our regression analysis demonstrate significance of basic broadband availability for the whole country (and very strong for less-urbanized administrative districts), while the ultra-high-speed connections have a weak and negative influence on new business formations. Hence, the advanced digital infrastructure does not seem like an important prerequisite for a better entrepreneurial milieu, at least in the case of Germany.
Recent improvements in broadband infrastructure in Europe have introduced augmented possibilities for both businesses and individuals. As expected, the provision of high-speed internet connections for European users will be an important step towards Industry 4.0 as well as a better entrepreneurial milieu. Still, though scientific literature is replete with examples of how modern communication technologies boost productivity and economic performance, not much research indicates how broadband technologies may bolster entrepreneurship, especially at a very detailed, municipal level. The aim of this study was to find out whether high-speed broadband provision had any effect on higher firm entry rates in Brandenburg, Germany. This region was chosen because of its favorable position in the vicinity of the capital state, Berlin. We carried out an ordinary less square estimated regression analysis using a dataset built for 417 municipalities. The results show that ultra-broadband provision had no significant impact on well-performing municipalities and those located close to Berlin, with no impact in the general model, and also had a negative correlation in underperforming and peripheral areas (significant at a 5% level). This leads to the conclusion that advanced broadband infrastructure does not automatically translate into higher firm entry rates; there is no such urgency in the need for speed, as it might appear at first glance.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) determine our everyday routines to a large degree, but also reshape existing business patterns and bolster economic development. So far, scholars tried to explain the role played by telecommunications in economic development and business, albeit some significant research gaps in this research field still exist. Our bibliometric analysis of the most up-to-date articles' abstracts clearly demonstrates that the role of ICT on entrepreneurship, location strategies of new ventures and innovative activity of firms remains heavily underinvestigated and, hence, deserves much more attention from the side of academic community.
The introduction of both mobile robots (MR) and AI-embedded mobile robots (AIMR) into the industry is very slow compared to other types of industrial robots (IR) and automation systems. Many scientific articles and studies are focused on the programming and design of MR. At the same time, integration issues, topical problems and related obstacles are almost entirely absent from the scientific literature. The authors of this paper acknowledge that the complete analysis of this area is a very challenging task. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, we focus on the local problem of analysing the introduction of MR and AIMR in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors offer the analysis of the current challenges and trends in the introduction of mobile robots into SMEs. They also propose solutions to these problems based on their own as well as external experience in the design, programming and implementation of mobile robots.