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This study presents a comparison of the performance and the ranking of pork producers in 16 countries over the period 2012–2017. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to make the ranking and identify the best practices among the involved countries (“peers”). For the DEA analysis, the output is aggregated into the category Carcass meat production in sow/year/kg, the inputs into Feed costs, Other variable costs, Labor costs, Depreciation and finance costs. In the first round of evaluation, only Brazil, the USA and The Netherlands were designated as peers. Significant differences between the highest-ranking values (1) and the lowest-ranking values (0.709) showed greater differences between European and non-European pork manufacturers. To get more European countries among the peers, non-European countries the USA and Brazil were excluded from the second round of evaluation. The second round of evaluation indicated that Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain are efficient producers with regard to the given inputs. The ratings of Germany, Italy and France are close to one (with differences of less than 4%); therefore, these countries can also be classified as efficient units. The identification of peers among selected EU producers represents “best practices” in the field.

rapid changes in the external environment require the decision-makers to select new approaches and methods of decision-making (Svoboda 2008). information and knowledge systems based on knowledge approach and or/MS methods have an important role in this process. Quality decision support systems and information and communication technologies and the quality of the provided information and knowledge for the decisionmakers are an important source of competitiveness (Šilerová, Kučírková 2008). This quality is based on the user's satisfaction with these systems (Beránková et al. 2008) and their elements as mathematical models. in connection with these facts and with wide-spread theory of knowledge mapping, more and more questions dealing with their practical use arise.Do we need to formalize knowledge? Do we need to formalize its using a knowledge map? What are we to do with a (mathematical) model to consider it as a knowledge map? is the approach of the linear programming model construction (creation) process an analogue to the process of the knowledge map creation? is there any relevant application of this process in agriculture and rural development? Some answers to these questions will issue from the following text. And finally: can we read a solution from a model in the same way as knowledge from a map? Knowledge maps in agriculture and rural developmentZnalostní mapy v zemědělství a rozvoji venkova H. Brožová, T. Šubrt, J. Bartoška Department of Engineering Systems, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech RepublicAbstract: The possibility of knowledge maps use in the decision-making process in agriculture and rural development is discussed in this paper. Each knowledge map presents a visualization of knowledge using different tools, where a mathematical model can be applied as one of them. The hierarchical structure of a knowledge map conforms to the general structure of a mathematical model. The mathematical model, when successfully solved and correctly read, is a knowledge map in itself. The parallels exist also between the creation process of a mathematical model and of a knowledge map. in general, every phase of a system approach can lead to a special knowledge map. The following paper explains this process and demonstrates it on the farm production structure optimisation problem solved by using a linear programming model. Key words: knowledge formalisation, system approach, decision-making, map creation process, model creation process Abstrakt: znalostní mapy mohou být významným nástrojem při řešení problémů zemědělství a venkova. Každá znalostní mapa vizualizuje znalost pomocí různých nástrojů. Speciálním typem této vizualizace či formalizace může být matematický model, protože hierarchická struktura znalostní mapy odpovídá obecné struktuře matematického modelu. Správně aplikovaný úspěšně řešený matematický model je tedy znalostní mapou. Existuje také paralela mezi postupem tvorby znalostní mapy a matematického modelu. Proces aplikace znalostních map ve formě ma...

Although every problem has multiple solutions, many restrictions and various ways to be addressed, there are also many techniques, methods and approaches proposed by scholars and practitioners that can be implemented to help increase our decision making effectiveness. The Forum will address this issue by engaging participants to reach a group decision using a proprietary web based platform that implements the Group Analytic Network Process (GANP), named WEB ANP SOLVER that is open for academic use. An illustrative case concerning the selection of the best candidate for a job position as a teaching associate based on given profiles and preselected criteria will be used during the Forum. The results of this game will provide significant insights for the group decision making process, explore the proposed techniques and bring out the advantages and disadvantages reported in literature.

The article deals with the effect of a human agent on the activity realization in a project. It does so from the perspective of the Theory of Constraints where the weakest point is the deadline of partial activity. Every existing activity in any project is, to a higher or lower extent, determined by the effect of the human agent. The inefficiency of a number of projects in practice is largely caused by an unsuccessful realization of partial activities. The effect of the human agent is in this respect fundamental. The human agent, as an allocated resource in the activity, is liable to a number of non-specified impacts and stimuli, and as such s/he is rather versatile in his/her behaviour. The versatility of the human agent in projects can be described by the "Student Syndrome" phenomenon and by the first "Parkinson's law". Both these qualitative phenomena create a starting point for the introduced theoretical and quantitative research. The findings in this article are based on the set of real data of work effort of the students of daily study programme on one university in the Czech Republic. The article presents, as the authors' own theoretical contribution, a mathematical model for the "Student Syndrome" phenomenon with a practical use in quantitative methods of project management. This model was derived analytically from a performed data analysis and we can assume that it will be useful for further theoretical development of quantitative methods in project management. In the article we deduce the theoretical differentiation of the "Student Syndrome" phenomenon in work effort into three terminable phases during three different types of resource work allocation. We can regard this original viewpoint as suggestive for the area of human resources 123 370 J. Bartoska, T. Subrt management in projects. Its contribution lies in delimitation of time-targeted resource stimulation, which may lead to lower project costs, besides higher work efficiency and compliance with time-targeted deadlines of activity termination. The article brings the quantification of qualitative features of the human agent in project management.