Scholarly record

SUPPORTING THE ECONOMIC PILLAR OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH EFFECTIVE OFFLINE NETWORKING OF COMPANIES

L. Pochobradska, P. Maresova

Abstract

Sustainable development is a way of developing a human society that aligns economic and social progress with full environmental conservation. One of its pillars is the Economic Pillar, which consists of all economic activities in a given company, interactions between them and between the environment and society. The aim of the paper is to specify and analyse the contribution and effectiveness of business co-operation through regular offline networking meetings in the given locality with an impact on the economic pillar of sustainable development. To achieve the goal, data collection was carried out in the business community for six months. In this period, data was collected at a total of 12 two-hour meetings - participants attendance, total number of participants, number of references and recommendations passed, number of 1 to 1 meetings, the trade value carried out and number of jobs occupied. The data was gathered regularly at meetings using a special questionnaire and entered into simple software that counted the statistics for the requested period. The results show that 8 local entrepreneurs invested a total of 35 hours to networking meetings and handed 122 referrals, references and tips to their businesses, introduced 24 other local entrepreneurs and earned a total trade value of 549,650 CZK and occupied 6 regional jobs. Considering the time invested, which was 33 hours, I consider the result of the impact on the economic pillar of sustainable development to be very positive. The aspects, which lead to such results that have a positive impact on the economic pillar of sustainable development, are: regularity of meetings, a schedule, given in advance and structure of meetings, which leads entrepreneurs from their introduction over giving information about the sphere, where they actually need help, whom or what they are looking for, to the outcome which is represented by handover of references, which every participant takes home written on referral tickets. A great deal of success bears the third party, which organizes the entrepreneurial meetings, thanks to its consistency in processes, the use of tools such as note sheets and the three-piece referral tickets (a special questionnaire), transforms an orally promised collaboration into a real physical collaboration.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018/1.5/S05.122

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