The main goal of this study was to examine the effects of capital investments on firm performance, using panel-data analysis. For this purpose, financial data were gathered for 60 manufacturing firms based in Serbia, in the period from 2004 to 2016. The main research hypotheses were developed in accordance with the definition, nature, and time aspect of capital investments. Therefore, empirical expectation of this study was that the relationship between capital investments and firm performance should be positive—they probably bring losses to the firm in the short term, but they should increase firm performance in the long term. Finally, the results have indeed shown that capital investments have statistically significant negative effect on the short-term performance, but positive effect on the long-term performance of the analyzed firms, while controlling for time-fixed effects and certain internal factors.

Our paper analyzes close collaboration between a manufacturer of domestic appliances and consumer electronics and its customers. It reflects on the inclusion of open innovation by users that is presented in the paper on the case of the development of the refrigerator door handle, with an emphasis on design and functionality. The main research question we wanted to answer was whether a buyer (customer/consumer) might actively participate in the process of a new product development. It was interesting to test it in a highly dynamic industry setup since white goods are becoming an integral part of consumers’ life style and not just a mere home appliances used for routine housekeeping tasks. Research sample includes 146 respondents. We applied the conjoint analysis and quality function deployment (QFD) in order to test and understand how customers perceive the different attributes of a new product development process.

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Interaction between corruption and economic development is one of the most widely studied topics in the recent history of scientific research. Because of the strong influence of both these factors on the standard of living, we have tried to answer the following question: In what time frame is the interaction between these two factors most prominent? Taking into account the data of the level of corruption (as measured by the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and economic development (as measured by the movement of GDP per year), in the time period from 1995 to 2011, we divided the research results into three time zones: zone 1 -which covers the time period of the first five years (short-term impacts), zone 2 -which covers the time period of the next five years (medium-term impacts), and finally zone 3 -which covers the time period of the last five years (long-term impacts). Based on the research results, we have come to conclusion that the strongest causality between these two factors are in zone 2, the so-called medium-term framework. The empirical findings of this article suggest that further research in this direction is necessary, if we take into account the fact that corruption is present in almost all countries of the world.

This paper presents the methodology for strategic posture determination of SMEs. The methodology itself that is explained in detail is based on the original work of A. Rowe and the research has been conducted on the sample of 179 companies from an emerging market of various sizes, ownership structures and industry sectors. A modified strategic analysis tool for defining company’s strategic posture (modified Strategic Position & Action Evaluation - SPACE analysis) presented in this paper investigates the basic dimensions of external environment and enterprise itself: environment stability (ES) and industry strength (IS), as well as competitive strength (CS) and financial strength (FS). Along with the presented mathematical modelling that determines resultant vector describing the strategic posture, the paper presents the mean scores of each variable from the questionnaire results that are calculated for every strategic posture. The results obtained contribute to the precise definition of the strategic position of companies and are useful for future works related to small and medium-sized firms' strategic posture evaluation.