The paper focuses on key success factors of startups in the European Union. Startup companies have a massive potential to boost the level of innovation and competitiveness of national economies. They are also uniquely equipped to provide extremely effective and flexible ways of meeting both existing and emerging market needs. However, the development of these microventures differs from country to country. Hence, we put forth a hypothesis that strategic success factors in the development of startups vary in highly developed and catching-up countries. Our main goal was to determine the key success factors of startups in the EU, and to classify the gap between developed and lagging Member States. For this purpose, we applied the method of component analysis on startup data available for selected the EU states. We managed to isolate 5 components explaining 72% of data variability, all of which can be linked to human capital as well as to formal and informal economic institutions. The results confirmed the validity of our hypothesis. We established that more developed countries offer an institutional competitive advantage to startups, while the gap in success factors between highly developed and catching-up countries can be attributed to human capital and to institutions. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions how to reduce this gap by improving formal and informal institutions via innovative public policy and by supporting education.

Temperature fluctuation and abuse in the food cold chain (FCC) is becoming an increasingly crucial factor in the process of food production and for the logistic business, especially in COVID-19 pandemic. The quality of perishable food products depends largely on accurate transport and maintenance temperature. The evidence for temperature-related food waste and loss is extensive. The research problem is thus: how to decrease and control food losses caused by temperature abuse in the FCC and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary objective is to propose a framework for real-time temperature measurement protocols supported by passive RFID, IoT and Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts. This method allows not only the signaling of temperature abuse alerts but, in addition to hitherto methods, investigation and mitigation of the causes of process instability of individual FCC links in the future. The secondary objective is to delineate the necessary data sources and ways of their collection and utilization in order to decrease food losses and waste via process stabilization of temperature in transport and storage. As contribution to current literature and practice, we offer an in-depth analysis of threats in the FCC in food transport and storage infrastructure and a solution supplemented by SPC charts and tested in controlled experiments that is practicable from economic and technical standpoints.

Summary The following paper explores circular economy as a model of management within the framework of sustainable development. Its structure comprises 4 parts. The first part illustrates the role of sustainable development as an emerging paradigm in the theory of modern economics and in the recent policy of the European Union. In the second part, the authors demonstrate the applicability of sustainable development based on the relevant management models on the micro, meso and macro levels of economy. The third part discusses the concept of circular economy, in particular the various definitions of the phenomenon, its advantages over the linear economy, the role of innovations in its development and how to overcome barriers to its application. The fourth part outlines the current state of implementation of the circular economy in the EU in regard to its normative implications for the member countries. The conclusions close the exploration. The paper is theoretical, based on the review of the international literature on the subject. The unique contribution of the authors consists of the systematic analysis of the term circular economy as a holistic model of sustainable development and of illustrating the benefits of its promotion in the management practice.

The availability of water, energy and food plays a key role in meeting the basic needs of the world population and allowing them to achieve prosperity and supports the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). These three fundamental resources are closely interrelated, with their deep interdependencies reflected in various concepts of the ‘water–energy–food nexus’ (W–E–F). One-third of the total food produced globally results in food loss and waste (FL and FW), which also means the waste of resources used for their production, mainly energy and water. We thus propose a fusion of the W–E–F nexus and the FS–FW–FL nexus to achieve a better correlation between food production and food consumption in order to avoid additional negative effects. We explore the research problem of how the availability of water, energy and food resources can be improved by reducing FW and FL. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of opportunities to reduce the negative effects of FWL. The review paper is based on a comprehensive analysis of the literature, exploration of various (basic and extended) W–E–F models and their linkages with SDG and the entirety of the food supply chain from field to table. In addition to a literature analysis, we applied comparative methods, modeling, visualization and basic indicators of descriptive statistics. Although the amount of literature on this topic is growing, we found that systematic knowledge is still scarce, with each new study putting forth yet more new solutions. Although the data in various studies show somewhat different results, we conclude that reducing FW and FL has a positive, harmonizing effect on the W–E–F nexus.

The article contributes to the theory of sustainability. It aims to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on global food security and its role in changing food supply chains, with a particular focus on international chains. The research is presented in several sections. The analytical portion discusses the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological crisis on the global food market. The state of food safety is then presented, taking into account the quantitative and qualitative aspects. Next, the aspect of the economic availability of food is examined, as well as the important role that international food chains play in shaping food safety. All sections include the results of an analysis of international secondary data on food security under the influence of an ongoing pandemic. The stated objective of the work was achieved and the questions that formulate the research problem were answered. Finally, the need for further normative studies was identified.