The business environment has become complicated—full of risk and uncertainty over and above companies’ control— therefore companies must find mechanisms to enhance their performance in the light of this instability. The Iranian market is one of the best examples of unstable markets because of its political and economic circumstances; despite this, the pharmaceutical industry in Iran is considered one of the best industries, which is still working efficiently. The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of strategic flexibility on the performance of Iranian SME pharmaceutical companies, by considering the effect of environmental uncertainty as a moderator. The study is a cross-sectional one. Primary data was collected from 113 companies by using an adopted questionnaire. The questionnaires were forwarded to managers at these companies, a purposive (selective) sampling technique was used to collect the data, and the total number of responses that were valid for statistical analysis was 228. The response rate was 67.25%. The results showed that strategic flexibility positively affects companies’ performance. Supply and demand uncertainty moderate the relationship between strategic flexibility and companies’ performance.

Transaction Costs (TC) is a very important topic, especially in a changing work environment which has a large number of operational firms, and increasing business growth. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the transaction costs concept, and provide a conceptual framework to understand the meaning of transaction costs. Publications including articles and research papers have explained the notion of transaction costs and the theoretical issues related to them. The literature review reveals that, transaction costs are costs which arise because of the of a company‘s activities in the market , including (fees, commission, taxes) which are paid by the firm to provide a service or produce a good either to external parties or as internal costs. Therefore, according to the literature review. It emerges that firms must make a comparison between internal and external transaction costs and choose the lowest cost which enables them to increase profits. This means companies have to reduce transaction costs to the minimum level to achieve more profits and competitive advantage.

Nowadays, strategic flexibility and its effect on organizational performance are crucial to discuss. Moreover, organizations, especially industrial companies, should estimate how flexibility as a mechanism can improve organizational performance. The Hungarian food industry is highly significant in the industrial sector of the Hungarian economy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to evaluate how the performance of the Hungarian food industry is affected by strategic flexibility, using supply and demand uncertainty as moderators. It is a quantitative and causal study. A survey was conducted to collect the primary data from a proposed sample of managers at the target companies. As a result, 301 valid responses have been analyzed in SPSS. Regression analysis, correlation, and moderation analysis are used as well. The results indicated that strategic flexibility generally enhances the performance of the target companies, and 20.3% of changes in companies’ performance are related to strategic flexibility. The flexibility of resources affects only the operational performance, while the flexibility of coordination positively affects company performance; it has a 44.2% influence. The findings also showed that uncertainty does not moderate the relationship between strategic flexibility and target firms’ performance. Thus, strategic flexibility is considered as one-effect mechanism in a stable business environment. In all cases, strategic flexibility should be applied in addition to other managerial techniques to enhance company performance.

In today’s rapidly changing global financial market, potential counterparties are in dire need of reliable and timely information on the partner bank performance in order to find the most successful one in terms of conducting credit and deposit transactions. Public ratings of banks serve to solve this problem and are considered as one of the effective tools for choosing such a bank. In Ukraine, the rating of banking institutions is not widely used by business entities because of the imperfect methodology of analysis of banks, a rating process that is closed to the public, the assignment of an unreliable rating to selected banks, the use of obtained ratings by banks for marketing purposes, etc. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to improve the existing rating systems for Ukrainian environment. International and domestic regulatory documents on rating, data of the National Bank of Ukraine and commercial banks, materials of rating agencies, as well as scientific publications of well-known Ukrainian and foreign scientists made the theoretical basis of the study. It is proposed to take a number of priority measures to legislatively regulate the activities of bodies for rating scores of banking institutions, to create a branched infrastructure of the rating market and to establish effective interaction of its participants, to end demonopolization and weaken entry barriers and to introduce new agencies in the rating market, to identify new rating methodologies. The conclusions are aimed at the development of a civilized and transparent rating business in Ukraine, which will ultimately contribute to the timely detection and neutralization of crisis phenomena in the banking sector, restoring confidence between banks and their clients, creating the preconditions for making sound business decisions.

The article summarizes the arguments on minimizing the uncertainty level caused by numerous unforeseen circumstances due to using operational flexibility to increase companies' efficiency (example of small and medium enterprises in the pharmaceutical sector of Iran). The research aims at investigating the relationship between operational flexibility and a company's performance to examine the impact of environmental uncertainty on these relationships. This study was conducted as quantitative. The deductive method using the synergy of systematization of scientific background on the problem and the empirical proof of the formulated hypotheses became a methodological study tool. The article provides evidence of the economic-mathematical model based on data from small and medium-sized pharmaceutical Iranian companies. The study hypotheses are as follows: 1) operational flexibility has a positive effect on the productivity of the pharmaceutical sector of Iran, represented by small and medium-sized companies; 2) uncertainty determines the relationship between the operational flexibility and efficiency of small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies in Iran. The model constructed by the authors allowed measuring the relationship between variables using regression analysis and moderation analysis (Hayes model). The total number of companies included in the sample is 113. In turn, 228 managers of these pharmaceutical companies took part in the surveys (Iran example). The empirical analysis results showed that the mix flexibility indicator has practically no effect on companies' efficiency, and the volume flexibility and product development flexibility indicators generally have a positive effect on the performance of companies in the pharmaceutical sector. On the other hand, the environmental uncertainty indicator does not help reduce the relationship between the operational flexibility indicator and companies' performance in the pharmaceutical sector of Iran's economy. The study results could be useful for planning small and medium enterprises' activities in the context of improving their performance.