Editorial:

The special issue Current Challenges of Smart Cities and Internet of Things is dealing with up-to-date topic of globalization challenges in the area of Internet of Things and management. Globalization, rapidly changing technologies and stronger competition put pressure on enterprises to increase innovation rates. Knowledge and intellectual capital are considered to be a source of strategic importance and an engine for innovation in the enterprises. Focus is put on innovation, especially social innovation, mobility to create a platform for sustainable solutions of smart city agenda and other related thematic areas in global multicultural managerial environment.

This special issue features six high quality papers. The first paper “Decentralized Networks: The Future Internet” deals with up to date topic blockchain technology as a pillar and leading concept within decentralized networks. Blockchain technology offers solutions to increase security, verifiability and transparency concerns into order to create cultivating, shared and trusted digital environment. The technology can be used in industries where direct information flow and network security are priority concerns mostly in areas as logistics value chains, quality control in the manufacturing stream, and transparency in maintenance model ranging from simple to sophisticated equipment.

In the second paper “Intellectual Capital as a Key Factor in the Automotive Industry”, the authors of the paper consider intellectual capital to be the key asset of an enterprise in today’s dynamically developing, knowledge-intensive and informative environment. The aim of the paper is to point out the relationship between intellectual capital and innovations in the automotive industry, on the example of Volkswagen Slovakia, a.s.

The third paper “The Security Challenges Emerging from the Technological Developments” focuses on the organizations which continually evaluate the security risks their staff are exposed to when performing their job tasks. The paper presents a case study to assess the private and public Portuguese organizations security related practices followed by their staff.

The next paper “Application of Exact Methods in Employee Selection in Accordance with the Age Management Concept” presents the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as one of the method that can be used in exact decision making. The method was used to solve employee selection in accordance with the Age management concept basis of defined criteria.

The fifth paper “Social Innovations in Smart Cities – Case of Poprad” discusses the concept of smart cities in the context of social innovations. The paper examines smart cities and focuses on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as tools for reaching the objective of better and sustainable cities and achieving change in citizens behaviour and improve the quality of life in the city of Poprad in Slovakia.

The main aim of the last paper “The Analysis of the Slovak Citizens’ Awareness about the Smart City Concept” is to analyze the awareness of regional cities’ citizens in the Slovak Republic about the Smart City concept and to propose the recommendations for improving the implementation of the Smart City elements into cities. The conducted survey showed that despite the efforts of local governments to improve residents’ lives through various projects oriented on smart elements, the issue of the lack of citizens’ awareness about the Smart City concept remains.