Many organizations choose business sustainability to meet environmental, social, and financial demands to ensure responsible and long-term success. In order to achieve this, enterprises have to fully and optimally apply their resources. Intellectual capital is one of their most important resources creating market value and reinforcing sustainable competitive advantages. The main goal of the paper is to indicate which elements of the intellectual capital of small and medium-sized enterprises in Poland have the greatest impact on their sustainable development in the opinions of managers. The study took into account 1041 economic entities. Managers of small and medium enterprises operating in Poland have been asked to assess the elements of intellectual capital. The paper utilizes a new approach to the importance assessment of the impact of each characteristic on business sustainability. It is based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets. The proposed method is especially useful when variables are measured on an ordinal scale. In accordance with the classical theory of measurement, it does not allow the majority of arithmetic calculations to be performed. Based on the results of the research it has been determined that the most important factors are those which constitute human capital. Moreover, the observation has been made that there is a high degree of coherence of opinions expressed by managers of small and medium enterprises. The results of the research can be applied by both managers of enterprises in managing intellectual capital and employees of companies, by increasing their awareness of the topic of the influence of intellectual capital on business sustainability.

In the assessment of most complex socioeconomic phenomena with the use of multicriteria methods, continuous data are used, the source of which are most often public statistics. However, there are complex phenomena such as quality of life and quality of services in the assessment, for which questionnaire surveys and ordinal measurement scales are used. In this case, the use of classic multicriteria methods is very difficult, taking into account the way of presenting this type of data by official statistics, as well as their permissible transformations and arithmetic operations. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was the presentation of a novel framework which can be applied for assessing socioeconomic phenomena on the basis of survey data. It was assumed that the object assessments may contain positive or negative opinions and an element of uncertainty expressed in the form a “no”, “difficult to say”, or “no opinion” answers. For this reason, the intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS (IF-TOPSIS) method is proposed. To demonstrate the potential of this solution, the results of measuring the subjective quality of life of the inhabitants of 83 cities in EU countries, EFTA countries, the UK, the Western Balkans, and Turkey are presented. For most cities, a high level of subjective quality of life was observed using the proposed approach. The highest level of quality of life was observed in Zurich, whereas the lowest was observed in Palermo.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether the wide scope of supply chain collaboration including both customers and suppliers (Upstream–downstream External Collaboration) determines the greening of innovation more significantly than the scope limited only to suppliers (Upstream External Collaboration) or customers (Downstream External Collaboration). This goal was achieved as part of extensive research on the impact of relational capital on the innovativeness of high-tech companies in Poland. The results of the research were analysed using fuzzy conversion scales and descriptive statistics based on triangular fuzzy numbers. The application of the achievements of the fuzzy sets theory made it possible to test the hypotheses presented in the article with the use of fuzzy analysis of variance (fuzzy ANOVA). The findings confirm that the subjective scope of collaboration in the supply chain is important for greening innovation. Companies that cooperate with both suppliers and customers (Upstream–downstream External Collaboration) declared a greater tendency to green their innovations than those that cooperate with only one group of partners. The research findings contribute to the literature on the role of collaboration in the ecological responsibility and environmental performance of supply chain partners. The conclusions may have practical implications for the design and implementation of strategies in sustainable supply chain management. The study provides important lessons for SC managers facing the challenge of sustainable management during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Research background: The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges the world is facing in the 21st century. The global response to this problem must comprise transitions in land and ecosystems, energy, urban, infrastructure, and industrial systems and a transformation in enterprise and risk management. With the global pressure to fight climate change and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the innovative potential of Industry 4.0 technologies (blockchain, Big Data analytics, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 3D additive manufacturing and technology platforms) has been subject to enormous interest among researchers and practitioners. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technology investment and digital transformation in many business areas, potentially including sustainability risk management. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope of Industry 4.0 technology implementation in sustainability risk management and its financial impact. Methods: Based on the survey research, the authors verified if enterprises implementing Industry 4.0 technologies during the last five years are benefiting from their investment depending on the number of technologies. Due to the ordinal measurement scale of the analyzed variables, the verification of hypotheses was carried out using the Mann-Whitney U test. Findings & value added: In the opinion of the managers surveyed, the number of Industry 4.0 technologies implemented in the sustainability risk management process does not affect the enterprise’s aggregate Financial Performance Indicator, individual financial indicators (ROA, ROE, OPM, NPM and FLR) and the enterprise’s ability to manage financial risk. This study contributes to the literature on the technological transformation of the sustainability risk management process and its financial importance. The design and implementation of sustainable development strategies imply a long-term perspective, including the achievement of risk management effects in this area. The implementation of one technology, let alone two or more, is a difficult and time-consuming management challenge before synergy effects are achieved in an integrated technological eco-system.

The paper addresses the problem of complex socio-economic phenomena assessment using questionnaire surveys. The data are represented on an ordinal scale; the object assessments may contain positive, negative, no answers, a “difficult to say” or “no opinion” answers. The general framework for Intuitionistic Fuzzy Synthetic Measure (IFSM) based on distances to the pattern object (ideal solution) is used to analyze the survey data. First, Euclidean and Hamming distances are applied in the procedure. Second, two pattern object constructions are proposed in the procedure: one based on maximum values from the survey data, and the second on maximum intuitionistic values. Third, the method for criteria comparison with the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Synthetic Measure is presented. Finally, a case study solving the problem of rank-ordering of the cities in terms of satisfaction from local public administration obtained using different variants of the proposed method is discussed. Additionally, the comparative analysis results using the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Synthetic Measure and the Intuitionistic Fuzzy TOPSIS (IFT) framework are presented.

Several complex phenomena are measured with the use of tools in the form of a questionnaire where the values of criteria are assessed by the respondents using ordinal scales. Therefore, a special method of construction of synthetic measure is needed which takes into account the fact that such measurement scale allows only to determine the relationship between the states of objects: diversity, equality, minority, and majority. The main goal of this study is to propose a synthetic measure based on Hellwig’s approach and the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set theory which allows to measure complex social phenomena under uncertainty, including data from questionnaire surveys. First, the method of converting ordinal data from questionnaires to interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (I-VIFS) is proposed. Next, the method of constructing a synthetic measure for I-VIFS is presented. Finally, through this synthetic measure, the optimism coefficient is defined, which allows to set the limits of the intervals for I-VIFS parameters. The usefulness of the proposed approach is showed using the results of a questionnaire survey of the subjective quality of life of inhabitants of selected communes in Poland. Results indicate that the synthetic measure is suitable and effective to evaluate complex phenomena based on ordinal data from questionnaire surveys under the conditions of measurement uncertainty. Moreover, the use of the concept of the optimism coefficient increases the flexibility of its application.