Industry 4.0, Smart Products, Smart Data – But what do we make out of it now? In the past years, intelligent systems and products were developed. They are connected to each other and react rapidly to specific situations. Thus, they produce a huge amount of data. In order to collect those data, a software is provided which visualizes it. Beyond that, a software which is able to analyze the data in order to improve performances and systems exists. Today the point is reached where the potential is almost fully exhausted. Therefore, this article deals with the upcoming trend of Smart Services. The development of Smart Services will be illustrated at the lowest stage/level of the technical infrastructure, followed by the existence of Smart Products and the application of Smart Data. As those are the requirements needed for the implementation of Smart Services, they are clarified by specific scenarios.
Nowadays the sustainability is one of the primary concerns worldwide, especially in the construction industry, taking into account that the buildings have a major impact on the overall energy use and greenhouse gases emissions. There are many studies focusing on particular aspects of the topic, but a holistic, interdisciplinary and long-term approach is needed in order to reconcile the competitive objectives. Starting from a literature research, the authors have formulated a decision making algorithm aiming to respond to professionals needs to apply a structured model in their daily activities. In the second part it is presented how this model can be applied, using a practical case-study – a building in the renovation phase, emphasizing how to optimize the project even when dealing with conflicting criteria.
Our paperwork seeks to analyze the difference between the labor cost and the net wage (representing labor tax wedge) in correlation with the unemployment rate and employment rate, as the idea that a high labor cost produces distortions in the labor market is widely accepted. With this purpose in mind, we used the hierarchical cluster analysis on a sample of 41 countries (being about OECD and EU countries). Following this analysis, we concluded that the countries can be divided in two big categories based on the unemployment rate, employment rate and the difference between the labor cost and the net wage (labor tax wedge). For countries characterized by a large gap between labor costs and net wage and which also present a high level of unemployment there is a need to adopt fiscal measures for reducing labor cost.
Our study goal – Modern management is paying more and more attention to new research directions that aim a compound approach of the human psychology and, implicitly, its role in achieving an organizational framework auspicious for performance. Due to this context, our study aims to highlight the correlations between the Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) in the Romanian academic environment. Research methodology – Data presented, resulted from a sociological investigation, based on a questionnaire and accomplished during 2016 on a representative sample of students from the Romanian Academy of Economic Studies (Bucharest), form the Management Faculty. Information obtained were processed by econometric methods, by/with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), the most used statistical software for social sciences. Ascertainment – This study identifies and measures the intensity between OCB (including its components) and Cultural Intelligence (CQ), links. The results obtained, highlight the existence of some influences of the OCB components, on CQ, but the intensity of the influences is weak. In this situation, OCB can't be considered a CQ predictor. Research limits – Our study research are available only on the analysed sample. To increase the results applicability, we consider as necessary an extension of the sample, by including foreign students that learn in the Romanian academic environment. Practical Involvement – Our final goal is to boat for Romanian Universities, particular methods and techniques to increase the adaptation capacity of the students from the Romanian Universities to intercultural environments. Originality – Our researches are the first one at national level that aim to demonstrate de link between the Organisational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and the Cultural Intelligence (CQ).
The conception of smart homes exceeds the boundaries of a simple design process. It becomes mainly a managerial, multidisciplinary process in which added value depends on the measure in which these answer, in an adequate manner, to a set of requirements raised by a target group of users and stakeholders with specific needs.
Since 2014, when the entrepreneurship education became a strategic direction for the EU policies in education, the EU has been providing increasing support to national policymakers in education, to universities and schools, in order to improve their approaches in entrepreneurship education. In 2016, the EntreComp Framework was launched, being not only a landmark for the public authorities but also a tool for analyzing the entrepreneurial orientation of various curricula. This paper aims to make an analysis of the current curriculum for bachelor degree from a faculty, from the perspective of the EntreComp framework, through a comparative method. The intention is to point out the gap between what is already being taught and what should be taught regarding entrepreneurship as a transversal competence and to question the framework's level that the faculty should aim for through its curriculum.
Microgrids represent a means of improving the conventional electrical grid network, making it more reliable, secure, cooperative, efficient and, especially cleaner. This paper presents the management of a hierarchical DC-coupled microgrid with distributed architecture implemented in a microgrid laboratory containing two renewable sources, namely wind and hydro. Power supply management strategies are applied in order to supply a critical, non-dispatchable load. Due to effective management, the microgrid is robust and capable of handling most of the problems that are associated with renewable energies.
The Politehnica University of Timisoara integrates information technologies into education. It adapted its teaching and learning processes by introducing a blended learning system. This paper represents an inside-out approach of the Virtual Campus Moodle based platform. Integrating the Virtual Campus into teaching meant: online, constant and continuous academic and communication support, communication tools, tools for supporting / developing / teaching the activity, improving the academic activity as well as the involvement and motivation of the students. The rate of success of students ‘presence on the Virtual Campus (VC) can be discussed and explored after analyzing the correlation between their activity on the VC and the grades obtained. To do so, we have analyzed the grades of the 2nd year students from all 3 specializations ran by the eLearning Centre: Informatics; Electronics and Telecommunication; and Communication and Public Relations. We have conducted a study case aimed to find correlations between the activity on VC and the final grades of the 2nd year students, by the end of the first semester. This study case raises awareness upon finding more efficient communication tools/ways between students, teachers and administrative staff.
The paper discusses the entrepreneurial university as a trend in the development and transformation of higher education institutions (HEI). The debate is about the different possible approaches to entrepreneurship for HEIs, the reason, relevance and the importance of an entrepreneurial university, which are the entrepreneurship components and what are the mission, objectives, strategies needed to become an entrepreneurial university. A case study of a university is considered, with the analysis of a survey results. A proposal for a roadmap is also presented, illustrating the way to become an entrepreneurial university.
In this paper, we presented how schools perceive the introduction of the free market and market mechanisms through deregulation policies and privatisation schemes. We also discussed the consequences and traps of the free market. The research presents how education personnel see changes in education; and how managers versus other school workers understand the free market and what their attitude is towards public education. There are many different perspectives on the position and role of education in society, in particular whether education is a public good and should be protected at all costs or if education should be subject to monitoring and efficient organisation, as advocated by neoliberals. From this research, it is clear that school system employees believe that public education is a public good and should be protected as such. The results also show that school managers (comparing them with other school workers) are the most favorable to the claim that ‘public education is subject to monitoring and efficiently organized’ and to the claim that ‘public education is a public good and therefore has to be protected at all costs’. Education is a relatively large and important part of the public sector, and one of the key problems of modern society is how to find a way to reform positive common social goals which are not only limited to the optimisation of the education system.
Knowledge management started to be perceived as a scientific discipline relatively recently. Since its beginnings in the 1990s, the interest for this research field has been constantly growing especially in the past two decades. However, it seems that the peak of interest has already passed. In this paper, we provided the review of the most important research documents that are related with this topic, all collected from the Web of Science. The most important scholars and journals in the field are identified via documents and citations among them. In addition, the purpose of this paper is also to analyse the existing linkage between knowledge management and innovation. For this purpose, a network of keywords was constructed with keywords performing as actors in the network and the co-occurrence as a relation. The network obtained of keywords is undirected and weighted by the number of documents in which adjacent keywords which co-occurred on the topic of knowledge management. The content analysis with traditional network analytic techniques was used. In other fields, similar methods were already applied; however, this is the first attempt to construct this kind of research in knowledge management related to the topic of innovation. The results revealed significant linkage between knowledge management and innovation in the documents which were analyzed. We believe that the network analytic procedures used in this paper provide an excellent tool to study such a relevant phenomenon.
Cloud computing is today's edge of ICT, being present in quite all fields of economy, society and human life: education, medicine, industry, communication, etc., offering services and applications that are used daily by everyone connected to the internet. The quality of these services is a cutting subject for all stakeholders. This paper synthesizes some relevant researches focusing on quality management approaches in software services using remote assistance as tool and cloud as support of this service. As first step, the literature review focuses on cloud as being the most emerging and comprehensive subject on the deck, then extends the research on software services supported by cloud, identifying quality interventions in these cases and in the end, is looking for quality related demarches in remote assistance of these services. The research tries to identify how quality could influence cloud products in favor of the customer, targeting better cloud-connected services and applications. Proposing an exploratory research, the paper's intended contribution is placed mainly in clarifying the mentioned concepts and the way they are correlated in the practical world.
The Central and Eastern European (CEE) wine industry is reduced as compared to that of the largest European Union (EU) producers such as Italy, France or Spain, but it has a high development potential. Countries like Romania and Hungary are nowadays well placed in the EU ranking in terms of wine production. However, after the outburst of the recent economic crisis, the level of wine production has considerably fluctuated in the CEE countries, and the same happened with the investment in this industry. We may think that the poor financial management performances of these firms have triggered these fluctuations. Against this background, the present paper attempts to investigate the impact of companies’ financial performances, assessed through capitalization, liquidity and profitability, on their investment dynamics. Applying a panel data analysis for 106 firms, over the time-span 2007 to 2014, and using AMADEUS statistics for the selected CEE countries, we show that the level of capitalization negatively influences the wine industry investment, although this result lacks in robustness. Moreover, the profitability has a positive influence on investment, while the level of liquidity has no significant influence. Our findings may be explained by the fact that in post-crisis periods, firms are tempted to increase their capitalization ratio in order to prevent the manifestation of financial risks.
This study examined the impact of the stakeholder management model on diverse stakeholders’ satisfaction variables and the organizational culture of three schools: A’ in which the stakeholder management model was assimilated; B’, a school which experiments with the model for three years; and C’, a school which has not adopted the model.
This paper tests the relationship between cash flow and the investment decision of firms from the Romanian agriculture sector. Although the role of cash flow in influencing the investment decision is explained by the financial frictions theory, the investment – cash flow nexus is controversial in empirical investigations. However, only few studies address the bidirectional relationship between the investment decision and the cash flow level. Using a large data set of 739 firms and a panel VAR approach for the period 2006 to 2014, we report a bidirectional causality between investment and cash flow. We find that firm's cash flow positively influences the level of investment in the next period, and we show therefore that the access to liquidity is important for the investment decision. At the same time, investment in fixed assets enhances the cash flow level only for the subsequent period, but it does not generate a series of cash flows as expected. The results are less conclusive if we use investment dynamics instead of investment level in our empirical analysis.
Eco-innovation has been wildly accepted as a method for improving the environmental performance of enterprises and for supporting them to improve their products; as well as to advance to more sustainable business models, and as a driver of business success and competitive advantage at the firm level. Implementing eco-innovation is a challenging process and will not be suitable for all organizations. Therefore understating barriers and drivers at the national and business level, as well as the main gaps in policy and education, could build a better picture of the necessary framework conditions for eco-innovation to be created in Romania. The paper reflects on existing opportunities in the country and demonstrates that eco-innovation potential needs to be addressed. Our research identified existing premises and drivers for eco-innovation that could boost the application of eco-innovation in companies, entail policy changes, and boost cooperation between stakeholders from R&D, academia, businesses, clusters and policy makers. The success of eco-innovation depends on the awareness that will be created among businesses through dissemination of strong business cases, the adjustment of the policy framework that should stimulate and reward the market for eco-innovative solutions and the capacity of experts to convince the companies’ management of the financial and environmental benefits of eco-innovation, to explain the need for continuous application of eco-innovative strategies and how they can be mainstreamed in the overall enterprise strategy and overall management. Through its objectives, the ECO Partner project contributes to install a model of cooperation between main actors interested din eco-innovation and build cooperation between the main stakeholders by initiating the Romanian Eco-Innovation Network (RE-IN). The role of the RE-IN is to develop and strength the partnership and to become the main partner in Romania for policy makers, businesses, academia and experts with common interests in eco-innovation.
In the current globalised academic world, merger between universities has emerged as a way to increase their competitiveness in the last decades. This paper aims to develop a framework for successfully managing mergers as a way to increase the international competitiveness of Romanian universities. Several cases of mergers between universities around the world were analyzed and presented. Consequently, successful practices of merger actions were detached and interpreted in the context of Romanian universities characteristics. Consequently, we have built a general framework that could facilitate the management of universities fusion in Romanian higher education context. Possible limitations of the study and directions for future research are also discussed and analyzed.
Rural population migration in the urban area attracts a high rate of mobility, especially in cities with university centers and renowned companies. The emergence of these transitions also generates some saturation problems, such as socio-economic and social issues. The need for improvement in transport services are mandatory to change the travel behaviour. This paper provides solutions and ways to improve public transport services by using intermodal passenger transport. Transport services for the population need to be met at a higher level, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The paper illustrates the steps of integrating the Theory of Constraints Thinking Process (TOCTP) by diagnosing the problems encountered, designing the solution plan, and integrating the solution plan to resolve constraints. The paper explains how the TOCTP application detects reliable solutions to solve urban population saturation problems by identifying alternatives to public transport mobility benefits using intermodal passenger transport.
The mergіng оf оrgаnіzаtіоnаl leаrnіng theоry аnd knоwledge mаnаgement іn recent yeаrs hаs gіven rіse tо іmроrtаnt іnsіghts regаrdіng the leаrnіng рrоcess аnd knоwledge trаnsfer thаt stіll requіres much reflectіоn іn оrder tо be іntegrаted іntо рrаctіce. However, few studies could be found in literature which focuse on what and how the influencing factors are related to organizational learning and knowledge sharing taken as a synergistic process. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influencing factors and outcomes of the learning by sharing process within small and medium organizations located in Nord-East region of Romania. The reseаrch tаrget рорulаtіоn cоnsіsts оf emрlоyees frоm рrіvаte sectоr, regаrdless the dіmensіоn оr fіeld оf аctіvіty, with a sample of 280 filed questіоnnаіres. Thus, the article presents a statistical analysis of the relationship between the influencing factor as inputs, learning by sharing as process, and outcomes. The prаctіcаl іmрlіcаtіоn оf thіs study іs tо рrоmоte the understаndіng оf hоw оrgаnіzаtіоnаl knоwledge-bаsed resоurces cаn іs grоwn аnd used by рrоmоtіng оf strаtegіes bаsed оn knоwledge mаnаgement аnd оrgаnіzаtіоnаl leаrnіng іnіtіаtіves.
The issues of formation of corporate control and management have always been at the center of studies by both theorists and representatives of the real sector of economy, which is due to the importance of the corporate sector for the national economy. But on the other hand, the constant interest in the topic is fueled by the contradictions and dualism in theoretical works. The article is proposed as a review paper devoted to the research problems of the efficiency of the corporation's capital concentration, based on the discussion of these problems, the authors plan to develop a universal system of criterion indicators for a comprehensive assessment of the corporation's development results. Since it is impossible to separate the economic and institutional aspects of concentration, the interests of owners and investors in modern conditions, the formation of a universal evaluation system will make comparable the efficiency assessment of corporations of different scales, form of ownership, ownership structure and will answer one of the most important questions about the existence of an objective limit of expediency of further capital concentration. It is new that as the main result of the criterion for managing the capital concentration, the authors suggest harmonization of relations between investors, and in this connection an attempt is made to identify and analyze the contradictions arising between the interests of minority and majority investors in connection with the use of financial resources of corporations. The authors also hope to develop recommendations for the efficiency assessment of capital concentration from the point of view of the minority investor and use the available methods, as well as suggest a number of measures to smooth out the revealed contradictions. The most significant result of the implementation of this method should be an increase in the investment attractiveness of corporations as a result of the formation of the more comfortable investment environment.
