English abstract This dissertation thesis deals with an entrepreneur as an engaged social agent that wants to shape society, creating not only a successful business venture but also a societal vision. This research focused on the Czech example of Tomáš and Jan Antonín Baťa while utilizing case studies of American entrepreneurs Henry Ford and Milton Hershey. These business owners are examples of social agents that realized their entrepreneurial plans, while their enterprise also allowed them to create a desired societal vision. The goal of the dissertation thesis is to discover how the studied entrepreneurs tried to influence the community of their employees and their company towns. The examination will include the ways they tried to influence wider society, through areas such as politics, philanthropy, and support of education. The goal is to identify and evaluate their motivations, goals, and ideas they used to shape society. The intent of the thesis is to present engaged Czech entrepreneurs through comparison with their American counterparts. This thesis is focused on the first 40 years of the 20th century. It was a time that immediately followed the societal changes connected with industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. The studied entrepreneurs lived in an era of massive social changes,...

This thesis aims to contribute new knowledge to the debate on corporate urbanism. Generally, it seeks to identify the process and implications of globalization tendencies on the development of industrial and postindustrial cities while exploring the aspects that this specific production of space entails. Specifically it studies the case of the Baťa shoe company, whose model of an „ideal industrial town“, its production and export, has been one of the first examples of enforcement/implementation of corporate urbanism on a global scale. The 1930s model of the Indian enterprise city, Batanagar, is since 2006 being replaced by a new one: the model of a city-venture, in which the actual production of shoes is strictly separated from the new production of lifestyle. This model can today be found on the outskirts of large cities throughout the world, and especially in countries of the global south, where it clearly reflects the socio-economic transformation of the whole society, from a production driven, to a consumption driven society.