Impact of advanced technologies utilization on manufacturing firms´ efficiency in times of economic decline

The article deals with an assumption that application of advanced technologies in manufacturing firms brings them higher ability to face up to problems linked with economic crises. It means that manufacturing firms-users of advanced technologies should have the better economic results than manufacturing firms, non-users of advanced technologies. The assumption was tested on the base of results of the survey conducted among Czech manufacturing companies and on the base of their financial reports for the years 2007 and 2009. The relevant economic indicators were computed for the both years and for the group of firms-users of advanced technology and the group of non-users separately. Our results showed that the non-users of advanced technologies reached better results in the field of efficiency, especially in terms of return on equity and return on sales. The last part of our article is devoted to analysis and explanation of these rather unexpected results.