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This paper deals with problems of rural tourism development. The works is focused on researching the situation in the area of rural tourism in the Czech Republic, on understanding the attitudes of entrepreneurial sphere and rural population to this entrepreneurship and mainly on the determination of limiting factors that prevent this form of tourism from a more distinctive development. Rural tourism in the Czech Republic is still in the initiating stage of its development and it is not as developed as in some countries in West Europe. This goal has been reached with the help of primary questionnaire inquiry among business and agricultural subjects in rural areas in the individual regions and the detail results of this questionnaire inquiry are enclosed to the following paper. These identified factors were mainly insufficient financial means and at the same time insufficient state assistance connected with this. Insufficient awareness of this support as well as its inaccessibility for small business appears to be a difficulty, too. From the other obstacles, we can mention the current legislation system, bureaucracy, the state of communication and tourist infrastructure, fears of neighbours' intolerance and losing privacy and also unfamiliarity and little experience.

The study has been elaborated on the basis of a continuous analysis of economic results of a selected sample of agricultural enterprises operating in different climatic and productional conditions. Long-term tendencies and their influencing factors are defined on the basis of this analysis. The goal of this study is to evaluate the influence of external conditions on the economy of agricultural enterprises and on their economic results and to analyze the influence of the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU on the change of economic conditions of agricultural enterprises. On the basis of this study, the authors measures which would intensify the influence of agricultural enterprising on the rural development and which would improve the quality of life of rural inhabitants.

The paper analyses the evaluation of agricultural and farm support in the OECD countries and its differentiated development in the respective countries. This is important, because the effect of subsidies on production, trade, income as well as environment, directly depends on the way how this subsidies are disbursed to the farmers. Another object of the analysis are the differences in the level of support between different commodities that may lead to deformations.

The article shows the results of the grant project of Czech Science Foundation 406/03/0896, which focused on the survey of work motivation and quality of working life issues in the Czech country. The results concern an analysis of variation and a range of coefficients and show statistically significant differences in motivational coefficients in sets that differ in the respondents size of residence. The main aim of the survey was to find out if it is possible to identify the differences in work motivation between people from large cities and people from small municipalities, namely between inhabitants of the Prague metropolitan area and smaller municipalities placed near to the national boundary. The survey was conducted by means of the EDMK questionnaire, which is described elsewhere (see references). Some specific questions were added by the present authors. Statistical analysis of the data obtained resulted in the findings, as follows: (1) questionnaire scales used are sufficiently reliable (as proved by the Cronbachs' alphas statistics); (2) statistically significant differences were identified in the motivational patterns of the Prague Metropolitan Area and small municipalities inhabitants; (3) the quality of working life in Czechia was found as a rather low; it results in lower perceived responsibility and job involvement found in the whole sample of Czech responses.

The article is dealing with the evaluation of socio-economic development in Slovakia from the point of view of urban and the rural regions in 1999-2005, based on analysis of regional socio-economic indicators. This development is characterised by deepening differentiation between the urban and rural districts in the demographic structure of population, employment, unemployment, level of wages and salaries and private enterprising activities. Demographic structure in the rural regions, compared to the urban regions, is characterised by the increase of the share of population in post-productive age, ageing index and the unfavourable index of economic burden. Employment in the rural regions decreased at a more rapid rate than in the urban regions. From the unemployment point of view, there are significant regional differences in the SR. The worst affected are the regions of Eastern and south of Central Slovakia which suffer from the underdeveloped economic infrastructure, lower level of education, bankruptcy of the dominant industrial employers and a large share of agrarian population, where impact of transformation measures was the most severe. Unemployment rate in the rural regions was 2.2 times higher than in the urban regions in 2005. Growth rate of average wages and salaries is slower in the rural regions compared to the urban ones and the average of the SR. In the period of 1999-2005, the level of average wages and salaries in the rural regions accounted for 62.4% of average wages and salaries in the urban regions, during which the time trend of increasing wage disparity was continuing all the time. The trend of utilisation of cheap labour force for short part-time jobs is evident, particularly in the rural regions, which is in contrast to the growth of the standard of living and sustainable development of underdeveloped regions. The differentiation of economic level between urban and the rural regions is expressed also in the share of entrepreneurial entities in economically active population which tells against the rural regions in spite of the diminished differentiation in this indicator in 1999-2005. The declining rate of growth in number of entrepreneurs in the urban regions is a consequence of the saturation of spatial and employment opportunities, while there is a substantially larger potential of acceleration of private enterprising in the rural regions. Continuation of this development leads to the socially unacceptable differentiation and undesirable development of dual economies in the country and that is why it is necessary to solve this issue as a priority within the framework of the strategy of economic development of the SR.

The aim of the rural development programs is the stabilisation of rural population and forming the perspectives for increasing the quality of life for all social groups in the communities as well as in the region. Less developed areas suffer for a long term from the cumulated negative factors of economic and social development. Their detailed identification which is theoretically considered in this paper can help to improve the particular measures towards the removal of the most urgent problems.

The research analyses the fundamental resources, farm structures, and composition by aim of farming, labour force and family income sources of the agricultural private holdings from the aspects of subsistence and income generation as well as of rural development. By processing the various databases, the research provides a clear picture on the situation of private holdings and groups of farms (self-supplying, marketing the surplus, commercial holdings). On the basis of the analyses, it is possible to estimate the number of competitive farms, that is, of professional farms, and the number of the producers who are not engaged in commercial production. This points out the need to extend the sphere of rural activities are connected to the other sectors of the national economy.

The paper is focused on study of information systems that can be applied in the process of marketing planning. General terms from information systems theory are examined from marketing perspective, particular examples of marketing activities support are identified on the basis of literature review and global structure of the Marketing Information System (MkIS) is proposed. The main subsystems of MkIS - internal reporting system, marketing intelligence system, marketing research system, and decision support system are discussed in higher level of detail. The main attention is paid not only to supported marketing processes but also to technologies that can be used in individual parts of MkIS. The result is the architecture that integrates isolated marketing applications into one comprehensible framework. This architecture also creates a framework for following research in the field of marketing activities support.

Production of food and beverages is one of the Czech traditional branches of processing industry. The article tries to describe the model prediction on the sector structure development oriented on labour and personal costs in food industry sector up to 2013 and it is based on the continuous monitoring of these indicators in the period 2000-2005. Except regress analysis of time orders, there was used the method of exponential smoothing. With regard to certain antagonistic tendencies, i.e. the lasting fall of the number of workers in the monitored period but at the same time the growth of personal costs, there were projected separate predictions of these indicators up to 2013, aimed namely at the set of companies with 20 and more employees. The prediction of the selected data up to the year 2013 is based on the running results of the Research Plan of the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (VÚZE). The probable development of the number of workers and personal costs in the individual branches of food industry is characterised.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the opportunities for further expansion in the segment of the functional food as highly innovative products based on market segmentation done from the consumer perspective. The survey analysed consumers and their relationship to Functional Food. The relationship between nutrition and health was evaluated as well as their trust towards some actors in the field of food, e.g. producers and retailers and their promotion claims on the one side and medical doctors and nutritional consultants and their advices on the other side. Germany, Poland, Spain and England were the analyzed countries of this survey. About 600 consumers have been interviewed. Afterwards they were grouped into five segments of buyers and three groups of non-buyers of Functional Food.

In this paper, we describe and compare the employment, wages and prices in the agricultural and other rural sectors in Central and East European countries. Together, we point out the lack of statistical information limiting the possibilities of the comparison. We comment the marked decrease in both production and employment in these sectors during the transition period. Together with low wages and the unfavourable development of the relation between the purchase and producer prices, this situation causes the retardation in the growth of the living standard of the rural population, in comparison with other sectors of the national economy. Therefore, the necessity of restructuring agricultural production arises, and first of all, the multifunctional character of the agriculture and the development of non-agricultural activities must be supported by the rural municipalities. It concerns, of course in different rates, all discussed countries.

The paper presents the results of the research projects with their applications in enterprise practice, in the sphere of strategic control of enterprise management focused on the methods of decision-making enabling an enterprise to respond to changes in the entrepreneurial environment. Rapid changes, principally in the external environment, require the business management to select new approaches and methods of decision-making and to have a well conceived algorithm enabling a flexible response to customers' wishes using findings of knowledge management. The paper presents the results of applying the methods of BSG and SPACE analysis, namely during the years 1998-2006. The sphere of business of the company is also analysed using the correlation-table analysis method. All actions are focused on obtaining and maintaining the competitive advantage of the firm.

Development assistance achieved remarkable success in different periods. For example, Botswana and South Korea reached the great development in the 60s after very bad situation, Indonesia in the 70s, Bolivia and Ghana at the end of the 80s, Uganda and Vietnam in the 90s. In these countries development assistance played important role in economic transformation in formulation of the development of politics. The development assistance contributed educational programs and financially supported the development of public sector. The "Green Revolution" - by means of innovations in agriculture, investments and political changes - improved the live conditions of millions people thanks to the collaboration of many bilateral and multilateral donors. But there are some failures with the foreign aide. While the formed dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko became one of the richest people in the world (and invested his property in abroad), the development assistance did not stop for many years, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) is only one example of the situation, where the permanent flows of assistance ignore or support the corruption and in suitable politics of governments. Tanzania received two milliards dollars for building the roads destiny the twenty years. But the roads were destroyed sooner, than the works could be finished because of insufficient maintenance. The study of World Bank brings the conclusions of the new conception of the development assistance: financial assistance works only in suitable political world; the lowering of poverty is possible only with working institutions - political and economic; effective assistance complete the private investments; receiving country is obliged to have public sector in function; the function of public sector is developing on the activity of civil society; patience and good ideas, not only money, can help to reforms in very unfavorable conditions.

This text aims to introduce the results of the ecological footprint (EF) calculations in the system of organic agriculture (OA). The EF is an alternative indicator of the human activity impact on the environment. It is not calculated in monetary units but in hectares as an area needed for resourcing certain production or activity. OA is an agricultural system which respects natural cycles in ecosystems. It is based on old traditions and nowadays, with regard to environmental degradation, comes again forward. The text contains as well the results of some other researches studying mainly energy consumption in agriculture, which is further converted into the EF. The results, however, need to be compared very carefully, since the procedures of calculations as well as the organic farming rules in various countries or particular farms conditions and quality of input data of the mentioned studies may significantly differ. The authors cite them mainly because of illustrative reasons.

This paper deals with the analysis of the trends in costs and revenues of selected agricultural products grown and bred under the conditions of organic agriculture. The analysis of the trends in revenues and costs is performed for the cattle breeding, beef cows and for the plant production of spelt, oat and potatoes. Costs are evaluated in the relationship with the direct and indirect costs. Revenues are traced with the help of per hectare yield, efficiency and market prices. Data of the selected file of the organically farming companies for the controlled commodities are compared with the same commodities of the selected file of the conventionally farming companies worked by the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (RIAE) in Prague.

How does an organization utilize knowledge for the reproduction of its culture in innovations, it was a key-point of the question for an approach based on the methodology of social process in the recent past. Then the formation of knowledge was considered a process of power politics with the consequences for knowledge management. In the framework of those projects, attempts were made in organizations to extract the knowledge from experts and specialized professionals that it might be codified and saved in extensive databases; only then the remainder of employees ought to have possibility to consult them and add the results of their own ideas to these databases. Poor success of such attempts only illustrates the methodological failure of utilizing information technologies for knowledge formation, its storage and transfer. Moreover, when a new fact was soon discovered even in the framework of the new approach, that there was an abyss-like difference between information (that information technologies operate with) and the knowledge, then the significance of personality increased again. The research that was done with the "champions of organizational learning" in the framework of knowledge management emphasized their import in catching the best experience, knowledge codification and its distribution in the organizations. Among other qualities, the knowledge is strongly personalized: it means it is connected with personal experience, attitudes, and evaluations. On the other hand, an advantage of new methodology was that the possible social actions, connected with the knowledge management, search for a strategy, and implementation were studied. These very changes in methodology have been a valuable contribution even for the research into the role of personality within this social process, however. They induce circumstances and means for studying the infrastructure of relationships that make possible the impact of individual authority in organization in general. In this paper, we also pay attention to this social process in teams as compared to collectives and how team-leaders emerge within them.

The article summarizes recent developments in the field of knowledge management and its vital influence on strategic management. Knowledge has become a resource of key importance with regard to the competitive advantage of a business. It thus strengthens the resource-based view of competitive advantage and develops it further by providing guidelines for developing, storing, and sharing knowledge within a business with the use of the concept of organisational learning. Tacit and explicit knowledge is distinguished in order to differentiate their contribution towards the competitiveness of a business. Based on these developments major trends affecting current development of strategic management are defined as well as recommendations drawn from the experience of leading subjects in the field.

The article deals with the usage of the information systems and expansion of the portals. In the part "results", there is elaborated a questionnaire applied on the agrarian sector. Today, the approach to the development of the information systems is oriented to the implementation of the portal solutions, which enables us a web access to the information and applications with an effective possibility of management and administration. Here, we are able to find typical user groups with quite specific information needs, who would find the specialized web portal very useful. This is because such kind of portal could offer them "everything at once and at one place", it means all of their needs would be satisfied immediately and users do not have to waste time with an information search at other places.

In the last two decades, the EU trails behind the USA in both the rate of economic growth and the rate of growth of productivity. In addition, in the next 25 years, the EU will experience demographic challenges in the form of the rapidly ageing population and a substantial increase in the dependency ratio. To answer these challenges, the EU needs economic policies which will facilitate the utilization of new technologies. To do that and to alleviate the growing pressures on the European social and economic model, the significant economic reforms are necessary. The key to that is the EU-wide integration of the financial sector.

The conception of the agricultural politicy of the Czech Republic is in accordance with the European model of agriculture, and one of this politicy pillars has been concentrated on the development of the multifunctional agriculture. In this contribution, several findings from the solution of the research project QF 4142 have been summarised in a synthetic form. It introduced financing and support programme of the rape methyl-esther (RME) and mixed fuel production. In the article, the availability and economic potential of the renewable energy sources till the year 2010 are shown primarily. The RME and the bio-diesel form an important part of the biomass in the Czech Republic. We describe in brief the RME characteristics in the year 1997-2004 in the following fields: production and support of the RME and mixed fuel. We have the capacity of the RME production 150 000 t in the Czech Republic with the average costs 20 CZK/l RME.

In the present development of a knowledge society and with the increasing impact of knowledge on economic growth, case studies have become vehicles of knowledge which can both store and transfer it. Knowledge based case studies describe the best practices as well as solutions of complex problems. Knowledge in case studies is described in both written and symbolic form. The content and form of knowledge based case studies should be in mutual equilibrium. Knowledge based case studies are both descriptions of methods and algorithms as well as narratives. As narratives, they should have a relevant literary quality. Case studies can involve mass media into their structure and use simulation techniques as well as techniques of entrepreneurial games. Case studies can thus be both dynamic and flexible. Users can personally influence the behaviour and evolution of the process. They can choose their role in the process and can also change it whilst performing the solution. Social, cultural and traditional values are respected during all steps leading to solutions of problems. Ecological aspects and conditions of sustainable development are taken into account when solutions are analysed, recommended and accepted. Case studies present the best practices which enable users to provide benchmarking examples of their own solutions. Data bases of case studies should provide more dimensions containing descriptors which characterize the studies. In the following article, six descriptors will be recommended: domains, objectives, critical success factors, indicators, the best practices explanations and case characteristics. These enable to sort out, categorize, classify and stratify studies in a data base and are helpful in assessing their quality. A vertical structure of the data base facilitates classification and ordering of studies according to subject areas. A horizontal structure of the database enables classification of case studies from the user point of view.

The paper is focused on the actual problems of agricultural producers' incomes. Currently these become one of the monitored descriptors of maintaining of social stability in agriculture and in the countryside. There is not judged the height and the income development in the article, but the attention is paid to their structure. Concretely, the relation between incomes, which come from the entrepreneurial activity of producers, and the supports, which farmers get in the frame of the Common Agrarian Policy, is monitored. The aim is to draw attention to the possibility of a certain future disproportion towards strengthening of subsidiary means in the total incomes, which could dampen the own entrepreneurial activities. At the same time, it is necessary in this context to solve also methodological aspects of income level monitoring in agriculture. The European Union (Eurostat) makes available several variants of monitoring. Nevertheless, it is essential that the methodology was unambiguous and transparent, so that the incomes in agrarian sector could be unambiguously quantified. Last but not least, the attention is called to a strong influence of the knowledge approach within fulfillment of the European agricultural model.

Efficient modeling of the artificial intelligence tools has become a necessity in order to cut down the development and maintenance cost associated with building application systems in the business, industrial and agriculture sectors that are frequently amendable to sudden unexpected environmental and economic conditions changes. This can be accomplished through developing an efficient modeling language which exploits the beneficial features of the emerging object-oriented technology. This research is aimed at reviewing the recent scientific aspects of the research concerning conceptual modeling of fuzzy knowledge-based system, which exhibits a large extent of applicability in last few decades due to its capability to deal with vagueness, uncertainty and subjectivity, those are inherent in real world problems. The most recent researches and applications of fuzzy expert system are surveyed. The existing knowledge modeling techniques are reviewed and the prominent ones are pinpointed. This paper is intended to identify the main and common bottlenecks of the existing knowledge modeling tools to overcome it in developing a reliable conceptual model of fuzzy expert system.

The primary goal of our analysis is to evaluate the effects of changes in the Slovak agriculture subsidy system on the selected farms located in different production areas between the years 2003 and 2004. Our comparative analysis divides the farms into two groups: The first group represents all those farms that operate in good farming conditions i.e. primarily the land is more productive (PA). The second group of farms operates in less favorable farming conditions (LFA). The regions differ from each other in terms of geographical position, location, production and climatic conditions, as well as the quality of land. We analyzed data of 119 farms.

The consumption of the organic food in the Czech Republic is, in spite of its permanent growth, still on a very low level. The reasons are both on the side of supply and demand of organic food. The reasons on the side of the supply are especially the insufficient amount and the structure of the organic products. Demand is not met especially in the case of the livestock products, further also in the fruits, vegetables, bread, pastry and others. The lack of the organic food is solved by imports. The important factor is also the lack of the processing capacities, especially for meat and dairy products. The sale is provided under the way of short-term contracts. The prices that the organic farmers get for their products fall short of the quality of products. The main distribution channels are the supermarkets. The organic products are here, however, only the marginal products. For the increase of the supply, the advertising and advertisement should be intensified. The demand is obstructed especially by the low consumer awareness, while the consumers are not sufficiently familiar with the quality of the organic products and are not willing to pay higher price for the higher quality of foodstuff.

In the Czech Republic, the sector of viniculture tried to use the period before the entry into the European Union (1^stMay 2005) for the maximum development of resources needed for its both quantitative and qualitative advancement. The legislation concerning this sector was changed and harmonised with the legislation of the EU. The total acreage of vineyards was expanded and another 7 thousand hectares were planted. The size of business units changed as well. For the time being, the production potential of this industry is 19.3 thousand ha of vineyards, more than 18 thousand wine growers were registered and there are nearly 600 producers of wine. In this sector, there are approximately 20 thousand jobs and the consumption of wine is gradually increasing and equals 16.5 litres per capita per year. As far as the prices of grapes are concerned, it was found out that they were relatively stable in the period under study and that the price of blue varietals is higher than that of white ones. The Czech wine import is constantly higher than the export, both in volume and financial value.

Intangible issues, which are often very difficult to be quantified become more and more the field of interest of social sciences. There are many research works demonstrating that various types of knowledge, institutions, social networks, and social relations have a great influence on human activities as for efficient achievement of the actors' goals. This paper relates expert knowledge (shaping professional qualification) to human capital and tacit knowledge (understood as a broader, general, and contextual knowledge) to cultural capital. Both forms of capital exist in their primary form only in concrete individual persons. Concerning collective persons (firm, community), cultural and human capitals are transformed into intellectual capital. Work with specific knowledge, tacit knowledge and capitals corresponding to them shows the role of social networks and social capital in their organization. Using the analysis of two farms based on natural experiment, the paper demonstrates the role of tacit knowledge and cultural capital (opposing to the overestimated role of expert knowledge and human capital). The conclusions outline social determination of both types of knowledge through social networks and social capital needed for an efficient work of a farm.

For many company managers, company crises are associated with the time when the very existence of the company is discussed. In literature, however, crisis is sometimes viewed as a potential opportunity for the company. This article presents the findings of the survey the purpose of which was to confirm or reject the hypothesis that crisis might become an opportunity for the company. The hypothesis being proven true, the survey further focused on the identification of factors that help companies overcome crisis situations and improve their competitive position with respect to that held before the crisis.

ThearticledescribesthelayoutofplantproductionandlivestockdensityintheCzechRepublicin2003 according to a sample survey of the Czech Statistical Office.Theproductionorientationof agriculturalenterprisesis definedas a small amount of market products that represent the predominant part of revenues. Grain crops, pork meat, milk and non-food crops represent the production orientation of Czech agriculture. Thesecommoditiesrepresentmorethan70%oftotal agricultural production in the Czech Republic. In this article, the authors have attempted to definearegionalclassification according to production orientation of agricultural enterprises and intensity of agricultural production.

The paper presents new ideas in the International SQuaRE (Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation) standardisation research project, which concerns the development of a special branch of international standards for software quality. Data can be considered as an integral part of software. The current international standard and technical report of the ISO/IEC 9126, ISO/IEC 14598 series and ISO/IEC 12119 standard covert the whole software as an indivisible entity. However, such data sets as databases and data stores have a special character and need a different structure of quality characteristic. Therefore it was decided in the SQuaRE project create a special international standard for data quality. The main idea for this standard and the critical discussion of these ideas is presented in this paper. The main part of this contribution was presented on the conference Agricultural Perspectives XIV, aligned by Czech University of Agriculture in Prague, September 20 to 21, 2005.