THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSPORT ENTERPRISES IN THE CONTEXT OF MACROECONOMIC CONDITIONS. THE CASE OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The issue of sustainable development is critical in globalization, the rapid growth of the industry, technological progress, and climate change. Sustainable development is the realization of economic, social, and environmental goals. It requires all actors of socioeconomic life, including enterprises, organizations, institutions, and countries. Sustainable development of an enterprise means improving the financial and property situation while taking care of employees and local communities' health and development and taking action to protect the natural environment. This paper aims to assess the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) in the period from 2008 to 2018. The selection of transport enterprises for the research sample is related to their high impact on economies in the analyzed countries, their significant negative impact on the natural environment. Moreover, transport enterprises play a vital role in the development of other economic sectors. The authors discuss the fundamental theoretical issues related to enterprises' sustainable development and the research result conducted in CEECs. The study results indicate a statistically significant relationship between the indicator of sustainable development and the hand of the macroeconomic condition in all analyzed countries. The highest correlation was observed in Romania, Hungary, and Slovenia, while the lowest in Croatia. The story of socio-economic development in surveyed countries plays a fundamental role in achieving sustainable development of transport enterprises.


Introduction
The concept of sustainable development of enterprises, based on a triad of economic, social, and environmental objectives -with particular emphasis on a long-term approach to protecting natural resources -seems crucial in all branches of the modern economy. Also, in the case of the transport industry, which is the fastest-growing sector from the perspective of the consumption of energy and the production of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the European Union, competing enterprises must face the challenge to behave in an environmentally sustainable and socially responsive manner while creating and increasing shareholder's wealth. The sustainable development of transport enterprises depends on several factors, external and internal. External factors include macroeconomic conditions, implemented environmental policy, climate and economic trends, the level of social and ecological awareness, technical and technological infrastructure. The internal states have the enterprise's financial and property situation, environmental awareness, implemented environmental policy. This paper is theoretical and empirical. The theoretical part describes selected problems of sustainable development of enterprises. The practical piece of this paper contains the results of the research (an econometric model of the influence of macroeconomic conditions on the sustainable development of enterprises, estimated by the Least Square Method). This paper aims to assess the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) in the period from 2008 to 2018.
identifies this phenomenon as "seeks to balance the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of development in a long-term and global perspective. It implies a broad view of human welfare, long term perspective about the consequences of today's activities, and the full involvement of civil society to reach viable solutions" (OECD 2000).
Over the last quarter of a century, a wide range of theoretical approach to sustainable development has evolvedwith several meanings (Gatto 1995;Paehlke 2005;Blewitt 2008;Ciegis 2009; Barbosa et al. 2014;Moore 2019) and no consensus on its purpose, undertaken activities and the effects of these activities. The idea of sustainable development is still flexible and open to interpretation (Prugh, Assadourian 2003;Pieloch et al. 2020).
Regardless of whether researchers are more focused on ecological roots or the prism of economic or social issues, sustainable development based on three crucial components: economic growth, social equity for meeting the needs of today's generation, and environmental protection for the ability to meet today's and future generation's needs (Behrends et al. 2008;Pieloch et al. 2020;Verga Matos et al. 2020). Fig. 1 shows the general concept and the principles of a modern view on sustainable development. Source: own study based on: Behrends et al. (2008); Ciegis, Zeleniute (2008); Gonzalez-Cabezas et al. (2018).

Crucial concept of sustainable development
Exemplary impact

Principles of sustainable development
Meeting needs of present generations Economic growth: maximum income while maintaining assets that yield these benefits Social equity: intragenerational equity, inter-generational equity, stability of social and cultural systems improving quality and living conditions, taking care of the health and safety of employees, providing food, health protection, culture and education, benefits to disadvantaged groups satisfying material human rights, creation of additional value, cost reduction (improvements and reduced energy and raw material inputs), opening and creation of a new market Sustainable development is one of the critical challenges for modern enterprises. As stressed Weidinger (2014), "without sustainable organizations, there is no sustainable development; thus, no future." The forces behind sustainable development influence the strategic playing field for business, including rapid technology development, new economic life in formerly stagnant political systems, or and rampant globalization in many industries (Hedstrom et al. 1998). International Institute for Sustainable Development (1992) takes the view that "if sustainable development is to achieve its potential, it must be integrated into the planning and measurement systems of business enterprises." Considerations as to whether firms have social or environmental responsibility beyond shareholder wealth maximization have a long history (Joshi, Lee 2016), starting with Bowen (1953), Davis (1960), Friedman (1970. The concept of sustainable development has become an important driving force in how business operations are carried out on capital markets and a determination emphasizing the pro-social sense and nature of an enterprise's activity. Because the direct motive for establishing an economic entity is the desire to meet broadly understood social needs, the managerial staff, striving to achieve a satisfactory level of productivity, profitability, product quality, economic growth, value-added, return on investment, cannot forget about: welfare, respect of human rights, health protection, social security, employee satisfaction and, on the other hand, reduction of emissions and pollution, smart use of resources, biodiversity, security ecosystems, protection of natural resources, recycling, the use of environmentally friendly production (Grudzewski et al. 2010;Grabara et al. 2015;Andryashina, et al. 2020;Abdi et al. 2020). There is no universally accepted definition of sustainable development of enterprise (Fig. 2). What is more, researchers often link this concept with terms of: "corporate sustainability," "sustainability-driven entrepreneurship," or "sustainable-minded entrepreneurship" (Majid et al. 2012;Gagnon 2012;Del Giudice et al. 2020). According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, it "means adopting business strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today while protecting, sustaining and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future."

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ISSN 2345-0282 (online) http://jssidoi.org/jesi/ 2021 Volume 8 Number 3 (March) http://doi.org/10. 9770/jesi.2021.8.3(13) 230 Oželienė (2017) defines this category as "a holistic approach of thinking of business which seeks to integrate consideration of the three aspects of sustainability -social, environmental and economical." However, individual researchers incorporate all sustainability dimensions (social, economic, ecological) into the subject matter with different emphasis. Crals and Vereeck (2004) underline that a fundamental principle of sustainable entrepreneurship involves businesses inculcating the consciousness to continually demonstrate ethical behavior and contribute to economic development while simultaneously ushering an era of improvement in the overall well-being of employees, their families, and the society at large. On the contrary, Witkowski (2010) points out that the environmental aspect seems to be the most important, probably because the non-renewable resources are the most substantial barrier to sustainable development.
The sustainable development of enterprises depends on several factors. Research results indicate the importance of external and internal conditions ). External conditions include the level of socioeconomic development, legal, environmental regulations, membership of countries in international organizations related to environment conservation, financial and institutional support for pro-ecological activities, and ecological awareness. Internal conditions include financial and property situation of enterprises, profitability, financial liquidity, productivity, environmental awareness of the management staff, type of business activity, accumulated human capital, innovation (Lorenc, Sorokina, 2015;Misztal, 2019).
Macroeconomic conditions create opportunities for enterprises and set requirements and restrictions for them. A higher level of macroeconomic development is associated with greater access to knowledge, a better-educated society, and a higher awareness of the negative impact of economic activity on the natural environment. It seems to us that the more economically and socially developed countries are, the more significant pressure on companies to comply with standards in the care of the social environment and social issues.

Sustainable development of transport enterprisesselected problems
Concerning the more empirical studies focused on sustainable development of enterprises conducting activities in the transport sector, it is noticeable that investigators analyze the mentioned issues from a different context. As evidenced by Gudmundsson (2004), two major approaches to sustainable development in transport can be distinguished: the first one, that deal with sustainability (with concerns only for the future generations), and the second one -which tackle sustainable development (with concerns for both present and future generations). In this paper, special attention has been focused primarily on the results of research from recent years.
Generally, it is worth emphasizing the lack of broader research on macroeconomic conditions of the sustainable development of transport enterprises, such as the country's economic development, macroeconomic stability, the stability of legal regulations, and support for pro-ecological activities, ecological awareness of people. From this perspective, mainly interest seems to be research carried by Mihai et al. (2019), who test holistically whether the transport sector is heading away from or towards sustainability in a panel of 35 countries in the reference period 1994-2014. They add to the literature new insights concerning the relationship between gross domestic product and various aspects of transport sustainability (such as carbon footprint, carbon intensity, or transport safety). Misztal (2019) devotes her research to the statistical analysis of Polish transport companies' sustainable development. The study results made it possible to assess that the sustainable development of transport companies in 2009-2015 takes place, andwhat is morethis development is more rapid compared to the average development of the entire enterprise sector.
One of the biggest problems and the most important things is measuring sustainable development because indicators are crucial to understanding the complexity of environmental, economic, and social actions undertaken to achieve development goals (White et al. 2019;Fried 2020;Winter, Stephan 2020). Thus, there are noticeable numerous empirical studies on transport sustainability indicators (Gudmundsson 2004;Litman 2009;Castillo, Andersson, Forslund 2018;Kochov et al. 2020;Nazam et al. 2020). Oberhofer and Fürst (2013), using their model based on an extensive literature review, gather evidence that although decision-makers' attitudes have a significant influence on the companies' actual environmental performance, firm size, and sector affiliation show a more significant contribution. Moreover, they prove that attitude and environmental behavior scored slightly lower among transport companies than in other industries. Next year, Oberhofer and Dieplinger (2014) prove that many companies in the transport sector seem to lack environmental measures. They explained it in two ways: firstly, transport companies seldom face direct end-user contact and are lagging with implement and communicate sustainable behavior; secondlymany enterprises realize that sustainable performance is not always a "necessary evil" but can result in an added value in the long run.
Various studies focus their attention on the narrow "sub-areas" of the transport sector. For example, Behrends et al. (2008) present a definition of sustainable urban freight transport and develop a spectrum of measures detailing it, consisting of two levels of indicators: impact ratios that describe how the urban freight transport violates the principles of sustainability and, on the other hand, performance ratios which provide specific different categories determining the characteristics and performance of the urban transport system. Rai et al. (2018) propose a comprehensive indicator approach to manage sustainable urban freight transport from a local authority perspective. The underlined set of factors develop not only the three conventional pillars of sustainable development (which include: social, environmental, and economic considerations) (Arvidson et al., 2013). Eventually, Bask et al. (2018) examine the role of environmental sustainability in transport operations in Shipper-Logistics Service Provider. Their findings indicate that globally-operating transport companies are particularly interested in environmental issues, and it is caused partly due to the external pressures and partly because they see the greening of transport as a potential source of competitive advantage. On the other side, on account of the lack of widely accepted methods for measuring the environmental impact of transports, these enterprises cannot easily share the costs and benefits of environmental initiatives between supply chain members nor use such initiatives as marketing arguments to differentiate their offerings.

Methodology of the research
The research has been conducted on a sample of transport enterprises from Central and Eastern European Countries (data come from Eurostat), which are members of the European Union. Considering this, we focus on the eleven countries, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. These countries have a similar geographical location, a shared history, and a similar socio-economic development level.
The authors focus on transport enterprises for the research sample due to their immense importance for analyzing countries' enterprise and economic development. Not without significance is the fact that transport companies harm the environment. Moreover, transport enterprises play a vital role in the development of other economic sectors.
The research's main aim is to assess the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) in the period from 2008 to 2018. In connection with this, the hypothesis is formulated as follows: "Macroeconomic conditions have a statistically significant impact on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 2008 to 2018". Assumption:  macroeconomic condition is one of the critical factors influencing the social and ecological investments of transport enterprises,  macroeconomic conditions play a vital role in the development of enterprises in developing economies,

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ISSN 2345-0282 (online) http://jssidoi.org/jesi/ 2021 Volume 8 Number 3 (March) http://doi.org/10. 9770/jesi.2021.8.3(13)  the analysis discusses the impact of one factor; it should be noted that sustainable development depends on several internal and qualitative variables (this is a fundamental limitation of the study). We also formulate the sub hypotheses as follows: Justification for the H2 hypothesis: the improvement in macroeconomic conditions is mainly due to the recovery from the economic slowdown and the global economic upturn,  H3: "The highest average value of the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE) shows in countries with the highest average value of macroeconomic conditions (Mi)." Justification for the H3 hypothesis: a higher level of socio-economic development leads to enterprises' faster sustainable development. To verify our research hypothesis, we use the Pearson correlation coefficient and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) because it is the most common estimation method for linear models (our model satisfies the OLS assumptions for linear regression). Our research consists of four stages (Fig. 3). The innovation of the economy We use the Pearson's correlation to examine the strength and direction of a linear relationship between the macroeconomic conditions of the studied countries and the sustainable development of transport enterprises.
To assess the links between the sustainable development of transport enterprises and macroeconomic condition, we apply a regression analysis. 233 repeated information. As the threshold value, we adopt the Pearson correlation coefficient at |0,75| (Dziekański, 2017). The selection of variables base on the literature, as well as results from the data availability.
To calculate the indicators of economic, social, and environmental development of transport enterprises (SDTE), we use 25 explanatory variables, which have met the statistical, substantial, and formal criteria (Table 1). To calculate SDTE, we use the following formula: SDTE= EDTE + SODTE + ENVDTE = y1 +… + y8 + y9 +… + y18 + y19 +… + y25 where: EDTE is the indicator of economic development of transport enterprises; SODTE means the indicator of social development; ENVDTE is the indicator of environmental development; y1,…,y25-diagnostic variables We want to create a simple and transparent measure that refers to such key areas as the level of economic development, the level of unemployment, the innovation of the economy, and public finances (Table 2).  Current account balance percentage of GDP x x7

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Labour productivity and unit labour costs x x8 Final consumption expenditure of households and non-profit institutions serving households Exports of goods and services x x10 Imports of goods and services x x11 External balance of goods and services x x12 R&D expenditure Then, we transform the explanatory variables to unify their measuring scales using the following formulas (Szanduła 2014):  for the stimulants:  for the enterprise sustainable development indicator: ;  for the macroeconomic indicator: ;  for the destimulants:  for the enterprise sustainable development indicator: .  for the macroeconomic indicator: .
where: zij stands for the normalized value of the j-th variable in the i-th year; xij is the value of the j-th variable in the ithyear; / is the lowest value of the j-th variable in the i-th year; is the highest value of the j-th variable in the i-th year.
To calculate the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE), as well as its sub-indices (EDTE, SODTE, and ENVDTE), and the macroeconomic condition indicator (Mi) we assume the same impact of different indices on the aggregate measure. We use the following formula: where: SIi stands for the indicator in the i-year; n is the number of metrics; others as above.

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In the next step, we examine the strength and direction of a linear relationship between the macroeconomic conditions of the studied countries (Mi) and the sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE). To do this, we use the Pearson's correlation coefficient given by the formula (Ahlgren et al. 2003;Asuero et al. 2006;Engle 2009): where: stands for the Pearson's correlation coefficient; is the sample size; are the individual sample points indexed with i; are the sample means. In order to provide details concerning the correct interpretation of correlation results, we adopt the ranges of correlation strength that were suggested by Evans (1996): |rxy| = 0no correlation; 0 <|rxy| ≤ 0.19very weak; 0.20 ≤|rxy| ≤ 0.39 -weak; 0.40 ≤|rxy| ≤ 0.59 -moderate; 0.60≤|rxy| ≤ 0.79 -strong; 0.80≤|rxy| ≤ 1.00very strong. Moreover, we adopt statistical significance at 0.05.
Fourth, in order to assess the links between the sustainable development of enterprises and macroeconomic stabilization, we apply a regression analysis. The simple linear regression of y on x is given by the following formula (Freund et al. 2006;Yan, Su 2009;Schmidheiny 2019): where: yi is an dependent variable; xi is an independent variable; α0 is the intercept, α1 is the slope; εi denotes the i-th residual; I is an observation index.
The estimated model is given by the equation: so the residual for each observation is as follows: For regression analysis, we use the most common estimation method for linear models called the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The OLS procedure minimizes the sum of squared residuals (Raykov, Marcoulides 2013): Solving the minimization problem results in the following expressions (Freund et al. 2006 Like many statistical analyses, the OLS regression has underlying assumptions (Wilcox 2009), i.e.: a) the regression model is linear in the coefficients and the error term; b) the error term has a population mean of zero; c) all independent variables are uncorrelated with the error term; d) the observations of the error term are uncorrelated with each other; e) the error term has a constant variance (no heteroscedasticity); f) no independent variable is a perfect linear function of other explanatory variables; g) the error term is normally distributed (this assumption is optional). Our regression model satisfies the above assumptions. The calculation is carried out using GRETL, Statistica and Excel.

The result of research
The research has been conducted on transport enterprises operating in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) in 2008-2018. The highest average share is in Poland (44%). From 2008 to 2018, the number of transport enterprises in the CEECs increased by 55 015 (Table 3).     In all countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises presents a positive trend. The highest factor before the variable time (t) occurs in Hungary (∝1 = 0,0548) (Fig.4).  (Table 5).  In all countries of the CEECs, the indicator of macroeconomics condition presents a positive trend. The highest factor before the variable time (t) occurs in Poland (∝1 = 0,0575). Fig. 5 shows parameters for equating the trend line for the indicator of macroeconomics condition in the CEECs.

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ISSN 2345-0282 (online) http://jssidoi.org/jesi/ 2021 Volume 8 Number 3 (March) http://doi.org/10. 9770/jesi.2021.8.3(13) 241 The Pearson's Correlation Coefficient between the indicator of macroeconomics condition (Mi) and the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE) is statistically significant in all analyzed countries (p <0.05). The highest level of correlation is in Romania (0.94), while the lowest is in Croatia (0.59) (Fig. 6). In all countries of the CEECs, the indicator of macroeconomics condition (Mi) has a positive impact on the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE), and a significant relationship between the variables studied. (Table 6).

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The research result allows for adopting the central research hypothesis (H) presented in the introduction because "Macroeconomic conditions have a statistically significant impact on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 2008 to 2018". In all countries, this relationship shows a high level of statistical significance. The indicator of macroeconomics condition's highest impact on the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises is in Latvia (1.388). In contrast, the lowest impact of the indicator of macroeconomics condition on the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises is in Romania (0.489). The coefficient of determination (R2) is in the range from 0.343 (the relationship between the indicator of macroeconomics conditions and the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises in Croatia) to 0.875 (the relationship between macroeconomics condition and the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises in Romania).
The high level of the analyzed dependence indicates that the state authorities should undertake actions supporting the country's socio-economic development. It is important to take initiatives and actions to support entrepreneurship and environmental protection. Financial and substantive programs of the European Union focused on innovations, new technologies, and environmental programs should play a key role here.
The first sub-hypothesis (H1) is also true, "the indicator of sustainable development of enterprises (SDTE) in the Central and Eastern European countries shows the positive dynamics in the period from 2008 to 2018". Sustainable development of transport enterprises is due to the undertaken actions and ecological initiatives, financial support programs, increased awareness of society, and consumers' quality and expectations resulting from economic conditions. The second sub-hypothesis (H2) is true, "the indicator of macroeconomic conditions (Mi) in the Central and Eastern European countries shows the positive dynamics in the period from 2008 to 2018". The macroeconomic conditions improve due to the recovery from the crisis, the global economic boom, and consumer moods.
The third sub-hypothesis (H3) could not be confirmed, it is not true that "The highest average value of the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE) shows in countries with the highest average value of macroeconomic conditions (Mi)". Sustainable development is a holistic concept that depends on several factors omitted in the study, including internal and external conditions, both quantitative and qualitative.

Conclusions
The rapid development of industry has led to environmental degradation and climate change. It has become necessary to counteract the negative impact of economic activity on the natural environment. Based on socioeconomic changes and the increase of ecological awareness, the concept of sustainable development was born. The main issues focus on conserving natural resources for present and future generations by achieving economic, social, and environmental goals.
The effectiveness and efficiency of implementing the concept of sustainable development require the commitment of all actors of socio-economic life, including enterprises, organizations, institutions, and individual countries. Sustainable development of the enterprise means improving the financial and property situation, taking care of the work conditions and the health of employees, and implementing activities to protect the natural environment.
The implementation of sustainable development goals depends significantly on the level of socio-economic development of countries. In enterprises, apart from macroeconomic conditions, the type, size, scale of operations, and management awareness are also necessary.
In this paper, we assume that macroeconomic determinants' impact on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe Countries in the period from 2008 to 2018. We analyzed the transport enterprise sector due to its negative impact on the natural environment and their role in analyzing countries' economies with a similar geographical location, a shared history, and a similar level of socio-economic development. The transformation of business conditions after joining the European Union is also crucial. The research period's definition is associated with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 to the EU and the appearance of symptoms of an economic slowdown. We adopted the assumption, based on research conducted so far, that socio-economic development is fundamental for enterprises' sustainable development in developing countries. To verify the research hypothesis (Macroeconomic conditions have a statistically significant impact on the sustainable development of transport enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 2008 to 2018), we create indicators of sustainable development of transport enterprises and indicators of macroeconomic conditions and examine the relationships between them (we use the Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Ordinary Least Squares Method).
The results of the research show that the central hypothesis (H) is correct. In all countries of the CEECs, it is a positive impact of macroeconomic conditions on the sustainable development of transport enterprises. The highest degree of Pearson's Correlation Coefficient between macroeconomic conditions and sustainable development of enterprises occurs in Romania (0.94), Hungary (0.93), and Slovenia (0,91), while the lowest in Croatia (0.59). The estimation of model parameters using the OLS method also indicates a statistically significant relationship between variables. The highest impact is in Latvia (1.388), the lowest in Romania (0.489).
The first sub-hypothesis (H1), "the indicator of sustainable development of enterprises (SDTE) in the Central and Eastern European countries shows the positive dynamics in the period from 2008 to 2018" is correct. It is a positive phenomenon resulting from the increased environmental awareness of society and the good economic situation and financial programs supporting the natural environment's protection.
The second sub-hypothesis (H2), "the indicator of macroeconomic conditions (Mi) in the Central and Eastern European countries shows the positive dynamics in the period from 2008 to 2018" is correct. The main factors here are the slow recovery from the economic crisis and the good economic situation.
The third sub-hypothesis (H3) it is not true that "The highest average value of the indicator of sustainable development of transport enterprises (SDTE) shows in countries with the highest average value of macroeconomic conditions (Mi)". Sustainable development is a holistic concept that depends on several factors omitted in the study, including internal and external conditions, both quantitative and qualitative.
Determinants of sustainable development of enterprises are exciting and complex research issues. Several factors, including macroeconomic conditions, determine them. The more economically and socially developed countries are, the more significant pressure on enterprises to comply with environmental protection and social issues. Therefore, it seems crucial to create favorable conditions for doing business in harmony with nature. From that point of view, financial and institutional support from international institutions and social pressure to take ecological actions are necessary for enterprises' sustainable development, especially in developing countries. Further research will be conducted to assess the impact of internal and external conditions on enterprises' sustainable development in the European Union