Author: Roman Šperka

The fourth edition of the conference Decision Making for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (DEMSME 2023) took place in the picturesque setting of the Chateau Petrovice near Karviná. This is a popular venue for our conference and offers a pleasant environment not only for the presentation of scientific research findings, but also for establishing new collaborations and contacts. The conference was traditionally a meeting of experts from universities and companies interested in the theory and application of decision-making processes using informatics, mathematics, business economics, management and marketing approaches in the practice of small and medium-sized enterprises. The results of the conference are published in the conference proceedings submitted to the Web of Science database or in peer-reviewed journals indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus.

A total of 37 papers from six countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, the Netherlands and Poland) were reviewed. The best papers will be selected for publication in one of the 15 partner journals (e.g. E&M Economics and Management, Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, Organizacija, Central European Business Review and others).

The focus of this year's conference was on the response of the business environment to the coronavirus pandemic and on changes in managerial decision-making. The papers reflected specifically on working from home and its impact on business performance, the impact of changes in the global business environment on Czech SMEs, supply chains, e-commerce, consumer preference and management strategy during the pandemic, creativity in decision-making processes, human resource management and communication, statistical evaluation of SME development, customer loyalty, process mining analysis, ICT tools and their use in industry 4.0, business process automation, statistical models, exchange rates in foreign trade, consumer behaviour and business performance measurement, and more. Most of the papers brought up-to-date knowledge that could be immediately implemented in the practice of SMEs. The conference was enriched by keynote speakers Prof. Yu-Wang Chen (University of Manchester, UK) with a presentation on “Business Analytics: A Brief Overview of Teaching and Research at Alliance Manchester Business School“, Prof. Anna Ujwary-Gil (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland) with her topic “Technology and Services Provided by Digital Innovation Hubs in Poland and the Czech Republic: Digital Transformation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises“ and Kristýna Pochvalitová (New Dimension, Czechia) with the topic “What changed in a business leadership after Covid-19?“.

Many thanks to the scientific committee of the conference, the organizers and partners, and first of all to the European Structural and Investment Funds (Operational Programme Research, Development and Education) and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, as the exclusive providers of financial support for the conference under the project CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_054/0014696 entitled Development of R&D capacities of the Silesian University in Opava. We believe that the fourth edition of the DEMSME conference was again successful, and we are looking forward to the next meeting after two years.

More information about the conference is available on the conference website here.