The concept of Industry 4.0 means a new paradigm of modern manufacturing. This phenomenon requires continuous innovation processes and technological development from each enterprise. Traditional concepts of quality must absorb changes and prepare themselves for new challenges. The studies linked to successful adaptation to Industry 4.0 focus mostly on technical dimensions and forget the impact of organisational culture. One should, however, remember that quality culture plays a crucial role in the organisational culture of manufacturing enterprises with elements of quality management implemented. Developed quality cultures support the innovation environment, which is why it is necessary for the enterprises to identify the current level of their quality culture and detect significant factors that differentiate individual quality cultures and focus on them. Given this fact, the aim of the paper is to analyse the typical cultures and quality concepts and to detect the factors that differentiate individual quality cultures in Slovakia. We use data from our own survey; dependences were indicated by means of correspondence analysis and the test of proportion. The improvement and assurance of quality, the use of information and the overall effectiveness are significant factors detected by the discriminant analysis. The conclusions of the survey may be used by scientific researchers but especially by manufacturing enterprises interested in quality which are coming to terms with the era of Industry 4.0.

The paper deals with the possibilities of company goodwill valuation and verification. The value of company goodwill is still an actual issue for the scientific community. Goodwill as an economic phenomenon has attracted the attention of economic experts since the nineteenth century. Nowadays, there are many approaches to goodwill valuation. However, its identification and quantification are still a challenge. The paper aim is to identify significant sources of company goodwill creation and their verification on the sample of 2 European countries with the similar business environment, political stability and regulatory platform - Slovak and Czech companies. The sample for the identification of significant sources of company goodwill creation consists of the financial statements of Slovak companies in 2015. The sample for data verification consists of the financial statements of Slovak and Czech companies in 2016. The paper identifies the determinants of goodwill creation by multiple regression analysis. The paper also verifies the total explanatory power of these determinants by matrixes of changes. Volatility and deviation of the results are captured by descriptive statistical methods. The paper’s results point to a necessity to identify the key determinants of goodwill creation. They bring the construction of an econometric model for company goodwill valuation. It could be used to compute the value of company goodwill of the individual companies in the Slovak economic conditions.

Economic performance of a company depends on many factors. They can include factors easy to influence by the company (internal factors) or factors that are very difficult to influence (external factors). An example of an external factor is e.g. the development of the economy. Internal factors include e.g. assets structure and liabilities. Other factors which might be influenced by a company are income structure and diversification.The contribution analyses a structure of these parameters for building companies in the Czech Republic between 2012 and 2017. For the analysis, statements of the Czech Statistical Office for the companies with more than 500 employees were used. The statistical survey was conducted 4 times a year; obligatory participation of the companies in the survey resulted from the obligations related to the legislation in force. Company performance assessment is based on the Economic Value Added (EVA) considering not only the performance as such (profit) but also the risk that the company or owner takes in the market. For the analysis, especially financial analysis tools are used, when financial statements of building companies in the given economy are analysed. Furthermore, statistical methods for assessing categories of companies are used with the aim to describe clearly the significant differences between the individual categories. In total, 4 categories were determined (ranging from the best-performing companies to the companies where a collapse is very likely). The objective of the analysis is to identify an optimal structure of a building company (machines, inventory, or material), a method of its financing, and a suitable diversification of income sources from the perspective of financial statement. The results show that significant differences in these structures can be identified and that the individual structures have a great impact on the overall company performance. In practice, the results of the analysis create a benchmark for building company management in the given economy. The analyses took into account seasonality typical for the given sector.

There are more than 6, 000 municipalities in the Czech Republic, where the concept of the municipality is understood as a territorial self-government unit. Thanks to the operation possibilities of the local government, it is possible to solve the local problems in these municipalities, including examples: construction of various public spaces, transportation, security, etc. This solution is often better than would be in the case with the central management. However, this management has its limits associated with the budget parameters of the given municipalities and it is very closely related to the political struggle in the given locality. It is very common for the people who have no experience with the management of public spaces and finances to be elected to the new positions of representatives and mayors. This state of affairs may also lead to erroneous decisions that may have a long-term negative impact on the citizens of the given municipalities, in view of their efforts to identify against the previous political competition. The article makes an extensive research into the application of scientific methods, approaches, experiments and their validation that can be used in the context of the urban safety. The focus of these methods will be concentrated mainly on the municipalities (around 10,000 inhabitants). Applied methods will also be discussed with a view of the limited resources (budget, personnel, territorial, etc.). Part of the research article will be examples of good practice that have been used primarily in foreign countries. There will also be a discussion on the implementation and impact of these examples of good practice in the cities in the Czech Republic. Implementation will be discussed in two examples of the specific cities (Milevsko, Chotěboř) with regard to their budget constraints, state of roads and sidewalks and many other parameters. The aim of the article is to get a basic overview of the possible ways of solving local problems with a view to maximize the benefit for the citizen. The study was developed as a part of the research project TL02000559 and will be followed by further research with application potential.