No abstract

Decision making based on information provided by an enterprise accounting information system, is essential for sustainable development and enterprises growth. Besides widely used prediction models for an assessment of the financial distress, there is also a useful indicator of a capital maintenance evolution, that provides a deeper view to the enterprise growth or decline compared to traditional performance measures. The aim of the contribution is to develop a model for assessment of a capital maintenance evolution using available accounting outputs. Our constructed model and coefficient for a capital maintenance evolution CMEOPNN has been developed using the multi-layer (triple) artificial neural network with a feedforward signal transmission by a backpropagation method and an activation function is a sigmoid function. For construction our model we used 663 Slovak enterprises sample out of 5 most frequented industry sectors with a unified structure of the provided information in the financial statements for 2014-2017.

Purpose This paper aims to determine how important cultural events organized by hotels are when guests select the establishment, determine the most influential source to attract customers to the hotels’ cultural events and measure their ability to meet guests’ expectations. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative exploratory methodology was adopted. Data collection was performed through voluntary and non-probabilistic face-to-face interviews to 2,229 guests and six directors from eight hotels that organize cultural events. Findings The data revealed that, although cultural events organized by hotels were not a selection factor, these were attended by the majority of guests, who felt valued for being asked for feedback by the hotels and were more influenced by marketing communications within the establishments than by word-of-mouth. Originality/value Contrary to cultural events organized by local authorities, cultural events organized by hotels have received little to no academic attention. This research allowed the authors to better understand the factors that may influence hotel selection and guests’ satisfaction.

This research aimed to determine if disreputable behaviour in esports is a threat to its sponsors. An exploratory design and a convergent-parallel mixed method with equal status were used. Esports sponsorship experts (N = 22) were interviewed via digital platforms and esports fans (N = 5,638) filled an online survey. Qualitative data was processed on NVivo 10 and quantitative on SPSS 25. The results showed that most experts consider disreputable behaviour as a threat to esports sponsors and roughly one-third of fans have developed negative feelings towards esports sponsors due to disreputable behaviour. The most brand-image threatening types of behaviours are corruption, illegal and unregulated gambling, and toxicity. Despite esports’ rapid growth, the field of esports sponsorships has received poor academic attention. Moreover, the findings are relevant for existing and potential sponsors wishing to understand how esports’ disreputable behaviour can damage their brands and how to proactively avoid this threat.

The purpose of this research was to identify the main motives that contribute to society's negative view of videogames and that present a risk to the eSports sponsors' image. To achieve this, an exploratory, qualitative, and integrative literature review was conducted. According to the theoretical data, there are four main reasons why society has a negative perception of videogames. It is commonly believed that: (1) gaming is an unproductive activity, (2) violent videogames incite aggressive behaviors, (3) videogames lead to gaming-addiction, and (4) eSports lead to eSports-related gambling addiction. However, while the literature presents convincing evidence that gaming can create addiction and that eSports can promote gambling addiction, there is no conclusive evidence to assume that violent videogames lead to aggressiveness and there is evidence showing that playing videogames can be a productive activity. Nevertheless, these four beliefs are a threat to the eSports sponsors' image and may lead them to cancel their existing sponsorships or lead other brands to not want to sponsor eSports to prevent being associated with these negative notions. This research will help expand the minor literature on eSports sponsorships and advance the knowledge of why some eSports sponsorships are terminated and why some brands may be reluctant to sponsor eSports.