Climate change, urban sprawl, a global pandemic, and the general trend of digitizing economies are driving the need for digital transformation of utilities. Policymakers of industry digital transformation need some aggregated metric that captures the essence of this multidimensional concept, identifies the pros and cons of current policies, and guides future directions based on cross-country benchmarking. This study develops the Industry Digital Transformation Index for the utility industry (IDTIu) as a composite indicator. IDTIu provides an aggregate score for the digital transformation of the national utility industry based on 31 indicators grouped into 8 sub-indices. IDTIu scores were calculated for 34 European countries based on 2020 data. To avoid the methodological challenges of equal weighting and expert assessments, we applied the original Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) model and its two extensions for the proportion and priority of sub- indices. Our results show that (i) the full flexibility of the original BoD model leads to the expected deficiencies in ranking leaders and assigning zeros to insignificant sub-indices; (ii) BoD model with ordinal sub-index share restrictions does not allow ranking of laggards when IoT, AI, and BDA are ranked as top 3 priorities. Therefore, at the current stage of the digital transformation of utilities, we recommend the BoD model with proportional sub-index share restrictions.

Research background: Stock exchange trading is an activity carried out in order to achieve a profit. The oldest and largest market operator in the CR is the Prague Stock Exchange. The complex development of the market in a given period with regard to its development trends is monitored by means of the stock market index. The index of the Prague Stock Exchange is PX index. Purpose of the article: The objective of the contribution is the evaluation of the development of the PX index in the years 2018-2020 and the prediction of its further development. Methods: The data on the PX index were obtained from the official Prague Stock Exchange websites. The data are available for the period of 26 March 2018-31 March 2021. The processed data are analysed using neural networks, specifically the time series analysis. The opening price is used as a variable. Findings & Value added: The research results show that the Czech market index has been relatively stable in the past, its values being around its initial value, 1,000 points. No major fluctuations were recorded, as the PX index included very stable firms. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp decline caused by the effect of anti-pandemic measures on the economy. Currently, the Czech market index is expected to grow gradually and stabilize at around 1,000 points.

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Increasing competition has emphasized the need for creating and using more effective strategies at the level of SMEs to achieve competitive advantage. SMEs face higher risks in terms of the globalization due to the limited resources as well as size. The objective of the study was to examine the determinants of risk management with an emphasis on the sector specifics of SMEs in the V4 countries. This enables the quantification of sectoral differences in relation to the socioeconomic determinants. The research sample included 1585 SMEs from the V4 countries. The data obtained from SME managers and owners were processed using the descriptive statistics and logistic regression. The results of the analyses confirm the existence of differences across SMEs concerning the risk management, which are determined by the country in which a given company operates, industry, gender and age of its manager or the owner of the company. The results of the study provide a valuable platform for the development of systems to measure and assess business risks in companies and to set up training systems. It will also enhance the development of international and national benchmarking indicators and the creation of international databases for comparative analyses.