Intellectual capital before and during COVID-19 in the hotel industry: the moderating role of tangible assets

Purpose: The study aims to assess the relative impact of intellectual capital (IC) as opposed to tangible assets on profitability and employee performance in hotels in Serbia before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: The current study was undertaken in 2019, the year before COVID-19, and 2020, the year of COVID-19\u27s major impact. This study utilizes the Value-Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC) as a measure of efficient use of IC. Financial data were collected from 163 hotels in Serbia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings: The results revealed that IC was a relevant factor for both profitability and employee performance before and during the COVID-19. However, the study reveals a negative moderating effect of tangible capital efficiency (TCE), meaning that with the increase of TCE, the relationship between IC and performance becomes weaker. Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of the study is rooted in VAIC\u27s ability to fully incorporate all elements of IC, leaving the relational capital out. Practical implications: To achieve better performance, hotel management should direct resources more towards IC and less toward tangible assets, which implies doing more with less. Originality/value: The results indicate the importance of IC in a period of crisis for the industry and economy that are not recognized as knowledge intensive. To the best of the authors\u27 knowledge, no other study has attempted to assess the relative contribution of tangible assets and IC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

A Formalized Model of Multiple Selves in MUD’s

We will investigate the concept of the self (and its relation to personal identity in multiple cyber worlds). This investigation has its own justification, the fact that several questions concerning personal identity are answered by constructing examples of thought experiments involving fictional worlds. Thus it seems legitimate to us to discuss the problem in the framework of “concrete” alternative worlds which we call cyber worlds. The next section deals with a brief history of the problem of personal identity in modern philosophy and introduces the concept of the “self”. In section 2 we introduce conceptual frameworks that illustrate the idea of the self as composed of information in multiple cyber worlds and as a result pose some important questions to be investigated further, we finally conclude with section 3 and we consider how some concepts from anthropology may be applied to the study of the Cyberspace. Some authors tend to confuse, or overlap the concept of virtual communities or reality with the concept of Cyberspace because this is a rather vague concept. In this paper we consider virtual communities and virtual reality as just one portion of the Cyberspace. At the moment we are not going to try to answer fundamental ontological questions such as: what is Cyberspace? Is it or does it have a dimension? We assume that there exists a Cyberspace, a sort of electromagnetic space (and this space may be divide into modules), where a virtual interaction might be created and we will refer to this as a virtual world

Multiple Personalities and the Proteus Effect in Collaborative Virtual Environments. A Wittgensteinian Viewpoint

What does it mean to be you? How drastically can a person change and still remain, in the eyes of either themselves or their peers, the same person? Until recently, these questions were typically asked in the context of philosophy, psychoanalysis, or science fiction. However, the increasingly common use of avatars during computer-mediated communication, collaborative virtual environments (CVE' s) in particular, are quickly changing these once abstract questions into practical quandaries that are fascinating, thought-provoking, potentially paradigm shifting for those who study social interaction, and potentially devastating to the traditional concept of human communication. Given the advent of collaborative virtual reality (CVR) technology, researchers have begun to systematically explore the phenomena of Transformed Social Interaction (TSI).    The Proteus effect is a particular application of TSI in which a user's self-representation is modified in a meaningful way that is often dissimilar to the physical self. When the user then interacts with another person, the user's behaviour conforms to the modified self-representation regardless of the true physical self or the others impressions. In an earlier introductory paper we detailed a conceptual framework that illustrated the idea of the self as composed of information in multiple cyberworlds, this tentative framework was utilised to explain a “layering” feedback process that may occur as a result of the self interacting in a CVE, in addition we expanded this framework to integrate an anthropological viewpoint of the self.    In this paper our intention is to provide further understanding of the relationship between the Proteus effects and the conceptual model of multiple virtual personalities interacting in CVE using the Wittgensteinian language games framework, we expand our earlier paper to suggest that the notions of a “virtual personality” and “virtual game grammar” may hopefully bring a refreshing approach to examining the Proteus effect

Do not mention Russia: A theoretical framework for bank penalties due to economic sanction violations and policy implications

In this paper, penalties to banks violating economic sanctions have been investigated and discussed. This topic has sparked renewed interest and attention following the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine due to the Russian aggression in February 2022 and the ongoing general deterioration in the global economic climate. Thus, based on the experience with penalties to banks for violations of economic sanctions from 2007, a theoretical model has been proposed. It is proposed that this model may be informative in devising the optimal level of penalties based on behavioral characteristics of banks and regulators. The model is based on the economic examination of the motives and incentives for bank misconduct, by drawing on the Shapiro-Stiglitz model addressing typical consequences of asymmetric information in principal-agent models. From a policy perspective, the proposed model also has the potential to provide opportunities for standardization of restrictions posed on banks as a result of bank misconduct. Relevant policy implications concerning penalties are put forward that may be implemented for future considerations, particularly in cases related to violations of economic sanctions

SUSTAINABILITY TRANSPARENCY IN SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS: BENCHMARK AND CASE STUDY APPROACH

The COVID-19 pandemic and the current food, energy, and safety crisis caused by the war in Ukraine strongly affected the existing gap in Sustainable Development Goals funding. Restoring global sustainability progress and the 2030 Agenda requires reshaping responsible investment architecture and rethinking the role of sovereign wealth funds as the largest investors in this process. The current study explores the ways in which the most transparent sovereign wealth funds act towards sustainability values and incorporate environmental, social, governance, and ethical criteria (ESGE) into their investment strategy, portfolio, and reporting. Also, 16 high-ranked funds by the Sustainability Transparency Index (Cavagnetto et al., 2022) were investigated by using the case study and benchmark analysis. Study results demonstrate the similarity of all funds disclosure within some questionnaire criteria like sustainability policy, scoring (voting) rules for decision-making, ESGE criteria, stakeholder engagements, and assurance of the financial information disclosed. Nevertheless, qualitative differences were identified between the sustainability transparency criteria of A and B-ranked funds. There is also huge variation in the implementation of funds’ ethical criteria, sustainability coherence, relevance of sustainability goals, disclosure of specific climate-related goals, and foundation membership criteria. Policy implications derived from the differences in sovereign funds' benchmarks are aimed at enhancing the sustainability context in funds’ operating frameworks, developing impact measurement metrics, prioritizing the most material stakeholder requests, sustainability verification procedures, and standardizing funds’ sustainability reporting. Specific channels, instruments, and regulatory measures towards greater funds’ sustainability transparency and their involvement in bridging the sustainable development funding gap may be the subject of further investigation

Složitost výrokových důkazů a přepisování

Matematicko-fyzikální fakultaFaculty of Mathematics and Physic

Propositional Proof Complexity and Rewriting

In this work we want to find a new framework for propositional proofs (and in particular for resolution proofs) utilizing rewriting techniques. We interpret the well-known propositional proof system resolution using string rewriting systems (semi-Thue system [70], [71]) Σ ∗ n and Σn corresponding to tree-like proofs and sequence-like proofs, respectively. We prove that the system Σ ∗ n is complete and sound with respect to tree-like Resolution R ∗ (and we show how it is possible to obtain the same result for R). Using this interpretation we give a representation of Σ ∗ n using planar diagrams in van Kampen style. In this representation we show how the classical complexity measures for Resolution (size, width and space) can be interpreted. Subsequently, we consider rewriting in a synchronous, parallel fashion as it is used in the theory of cellular automata. In this respect, we give a new proof of Richardson theorem [63](a global function GA of a cellular automaton A is injective if and only if the inverse of GA is a global function of a cellula