The disease COVID-19 has had an impact on the lives of all people in the world. It also had a great impact on the world economies themselves. There are several scientific publications on the impact of the COVID-19 disease on the work performance of employees, while researchers have focused on less traditional factors such as corporate culture, leadership, or work engagement as well. Corporate culture influences the shared values or behavior of employees at the workplace and creates an environment in which employees work. Through leadership, managers should be able to motivate their employees and thereby ensure their better work performance. It can be assumed that if employees are more engaged, their work performance will be higher. The main goal of the paper is to examine whether corporate culture has an impact on the work performance of employees through the mediators of leadership and work engagement. The data necessary for the goal set in this way were obtained through a questionnaire survey, which was attended by 489 respondents during the year 2022. After the data reliability analysis, by using serial mediation with two mediators, the influence of corporate culture on work performance was verified independently, but also through the mediators of leadership and work engagement. Based on the results, it can be claimed that individual factors have a significant impact on work performance, while the influence of corporate culture mediated by leadership and work engagement was also confirmed. The influence of corporate culture, mediated only by leadership, and the independent influence of corporate culture through work engagement on work performance were also confirmed.

The COVID-19 outbreak has rapidly affected global economies and the parties involved. There was a need to ensure the sustainability of corporate finance and avoid bankruptcy. The reactions of individuals were not routine, but covered a wide range of approaches to surviving the crisis. A creative way of accounting was also adopted. This study is primarily concerned with the behavior of businesses in the Visegrad Four countries between 2019 and 2021. The pandemic era was the driving force behind the renaissance of manipulation. Thus, the purpose of the article is to explore how the behavior of enterprises changed during the ongoing pandemic. The Beneish model was applied to reveal creative manipulation in the analyzed samples. Its M-score was calculated for 6113 Slovak, 153 Czech, 585 Polish, and 155 Hungarian enterprises. Increasing numbers of handling enterprises were confirmed in the V4 region. The dependency between the size of the enterprise and the occurrence of creative accounting was also proven. However, the structure of manipulators has been changing. Correspondence analysis specifically showed behavioral changes over time. Correspondence maps demonstrate which enterprises already used creative accounting before the pandemic in 2019. Then, it was noted that enterprises were influenced to modify their patterns in 2020 and 2021. The coronavirus pandemic had a significant potency on the use of creative accounting, not only for individual units, but for businesses of all sizes. In addition, the methodology may be applied for the investigation of individual sectors post-COVID.

Debt levels are a crucial factor when assessing the financial stability of agricultural firms, and excessive indebtedness is usually the most important indicator of financial distress. As agriculture is a capital-intensive sector with a high reliance on borrowed funds, firms in this sector are more vulnerable to insolvency. This study examines the performance of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and decision trees (DTs) in predicting the bankruptcy of Slovak agricultural enterprises. In an attempt to compare the models’ performances, the most consequential indebtedness ratios are investigated through machine learning approaches. ANN and DT models are found to perform significantly better than traditional forecast methods. ANN achieved an AUC of 0.9500, accuracy of 96.37%, precision of 96.60%, recall of 99.68%, and an F1-score of 98.12%, determining its robust predictive ability. DT performed a little better on AUC (0.9550) and achieved an accuracy of 97.78%, precision of 98.69%, recall of 99.01%, and an F1-score of 98.85%, determining its predictive ability and interpretability. These findings confirm the potential for applying AI-based models to enhance financial risk assessment. This study provides informative results for financial analysts, policymakers, and corporate managers in support of early intervention strategies. Additional research would be required to explore state-of-the-art AI techniques to further refine bankruptcy forecasting and financial decision-making in vulnerable sectors like agriculture.

Nowadays, corporate culture has become a strategic priority for companies. It is an important part of companies, as it indicates the overall trend in the behaviour of employees' work relations and processes. At the same time, corporate culture helps employees understand the company, identify with the company's goals, and become part of the company. Some authors consider corporate culture to be the main characteristic that distinguishes successful companies. If a company exhibits a high level of culture, its organizational performance also increases. Therefore, we consider corporate culture to be an integral part of every company. Data for the research was obtained through an online questionnaire. Subsequently, we used the statistical program IBM SPSS 25. To determine the existence of a relationship between company size and corporate culture and between industry and corporate culture, we used Pearson’s χ2 test for contingency tables, as the variables are qualitative. Subsequently, we evaluated the strength of the relationship based on Cramer's V. Subsequently, correspondence analysis was used to display the use of corporate culture for industries according to SK NACE and company size. Using Pearson's χ2 test, we found that there is a weak relationship between firm size and corporate culture, and a moderate relationship between industry and corporate culture. On the basis of correspondence analysis, we found, for example, that micro-enterprises use a culture of power, medium-sized enterprises use a culture of roles, and the electricity and gas supply industry uses a culture of performance. The added value of the article is the topicality of the research and the fact that the results relate to the Slovak Republic and can serve as a basis for further research. As a limitation of our research, we can consider that not all branches of the Slovak economy were represented according to SK NACE.

Providing conducive working conditions is essential for fostering the personal and career growth of employees, ultimately ensuring their psychological well-being. This study aims to investigate the impact of workplace conditions on the psychological well-being of university teachers in Slovakia and to examine how factors from the Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale (LWMS) function as moderators in this relationship. A questionnaire survey collected data from 687 respondents, and the analysis included reliability and moderation tests, with a one-way ANOVA confirming the model’s significance. The findings indicate that workplace conditions significantly affect the psychological well-being of university faculty, with LWMS factors—criticizing, ignoring, meaningless tasks, ridicule, and conflicts—moderating this relationship. A limitation of this research is the reliance on the LWMS, which comprehensively addresses bullying but encompasses only five factors. This study contributes to the understanding of workplace bullying and its impact in academic settings, offering implications for theory and practice in fostering healthier work environments in higher education.

Businesses should come up with a strategy, plans, and goals so that their total assets can make a profit during the transformation process. Utilizing various features of a property can generate this income. This comparison provides evidence of profitability. During the global economic downturn, a number of businesses encountered issues that caused their payment situations and profitability to deteriorate. The goal of this article is to ascertain whether particular profitability indicators also revealed the pandemic-related global crisis, particularly in the Visegrad Group countries. This analysis was conducted based on categories of business size. Specifically, 8671 enterprises were analyzed. The evaluation of indicators revealed whether there was a significant change in a negative direction, a significant change in a positive direction, or no significant change. It was possible to make a clear diagram of the companies that took part in the study and to figure out the median values in order to compare the results of the chosen profitability indicators. Correspondence analysis was conducted so that conclusions could be more accurate. According to the findings of this study, indicators of ROA, ROE, and ROS did not change significantly across enterprise size categories in the years preceding, during, and after the pandemic. Since the government regulations of the V4 countries had a significant impact on these businesses, the change was most obvious in the case of small businesses within the ROS indicator. The added value of the article is derived from its analysis of selected profitability indicators in the largest group of Central European nations and its relevance.