Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The common concept of karma and retribution in the general religious life of Chinese society was not only expressed in the popular literature that has flourished since the Song dynasty, but also reacted to society through the processing, refining, and deepening of popular fiction. Popular novels from the 16th to 18th centuries synchronized with the fresh ideas of New Chan Buddhism, New Daoism, and New Confucianism, which gradually developed an ethos and karma model. It used real life as a metaphor for explaining cause and effect in the construction of new business and social ethics that were urgently needed at the time. The business ethics it reflected and constructed not only included the affirmation of business and the advocacy of hard work to obtain wealth and promote fair competition, but also criticized blindly pursuing profits, especially emphasizing that wealth was determined by destiny and could not be forced. The core of the new social ethics was to establish rules connecting traditional morality and becoming rich, which not only stressed that scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and businessmen should do their parts, but also always put scholarly study as the highest pursuit; while criticizing social injustice, people still strongly desired to pass the imperial examination. This paper examines the great social changes that were occurring in the Ming dynasty, especially in the areas of business ethics and the perception of wealth, through popular literature from Ming China.

The development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is at the center of interests of the relevant authorities in the European Union and national economies across Europe. The aim of this paper was to define and quantify important economic factors that shape the quality of business environment in the SME segment, and to compare their significance in Czech and the Slovak Republics. According to the defined aim a survey-based research was conducted with the enterprises of the SME segment. Responses from 312 enterprises in Czech Republic and 329 enterprises in Slovak Republic were obtained. The Z-score method was used to verify the scientific hypotheses. The research brought some interesting findings. Slovak entrepreneurs, despite slower growth of GDP and income in Slovakia, better rated the importance of the Central bank in creating a stable business environment as well as the role commercial banks play in financing business needs. The results of this research support the perception that the quality of business environment is a complex consisting of both economic and non-economic factors. It was discovered that the overall rating of the business environment quality is lower than the rating of partial economic factors influencing it. © Foundation of International Studies, 2019.