Regional Formation and Development Studies

Like in all other journal numbers, in this journal also there are articles strongly connected with journal topic. There are some regional problems aspects, evaluating them in organizational and governmental level. There are some articles about problems in rural areas. A. Aleksandravičius analyzes models of public electronic services organization in the rural areas; V. Atkočiūnienė describes factors determining labour places sustainable development in Lithuanian rural regions; A. Župerka, E. Župerkienė describe entrepreneurship factors in rural areas of Lithuanian cross-border regions. Some authors, how A. Kozlovskaja and T. Q. Dinh, H. Hilmarsson analyzes relevance of risk factors for Lithuanian agricultural producers and also food processing in Vietnam. For public administration people would be interesting some articles like M. Grigaliūnas article about the official values-level attitudes of EU to volunteering; V. Burkšienė, E. Račaitė article about organizational learning in ministries of Republic of Lithuania; I. Normantė article about public services liberalization. If we continue to read articles about quality of services in organizational level, we can mention V. Grublienė, E. Ambraziūnaitė, L. Venckevičė article. A. Kutkaitis, A. Petrulis evaluate leadership styles, A. Giedraitis describe management of ergonomic risk factors in organization. Transport and international trade problems are described in two articles: I. Gumenyuk, T. Kuznetsova and E. Spiriajevas. Articles for sustainable development and the better country development description are in these articles: R. Čiegis, A. Dilius, A. Mikalauskienė bei L. Šimanskienė, A. Petrulis describe aspects of sustainability; A. B. Knašas analyzes the development of scientific-technical progress in terms of published patent applications; A. Homutinin analyzes system dynamics modeling of social economic development in Latvia and M. Norkevičius describes analysis of regionalization processes in Latin America. So this journal number should be interesting for different field of scientists and business people.

State and local municipalities have certainly provided public services to every state resident. Public services have to transferrable by information and communication technologies to the electronic environment. Electronic public services are significantly important to the rural population, as this innovative supply method of public services allows some service without ever leaving home to get directly. Furthermore, the development of e-services in rural areas decreases societal and digital exclusion evolving and knowledge society development.The first part of research paper is oriented on the characteristics analysis of the organization of e-services in rural municipalities, and the second part – on public e-services organization model analysis. However, the high investment into the physical infrastructure of communications, which creates the possibility of information and communication technologies use in rural areas, includes social exclusion of rural residents because they do not need and the inner tendency to seek to use information and communication technologies. This circumstance creates barriers for faster people integration into the labor market. Moreover, these social groups of rural population with poor computer literacy reduce their access to e-services. The results of scientific literature analysis suggest that the success of e-services organization in the rural municipalities of the necessary conditions is not only suitable for e-service users with level of computer literacy and available information and communication technologies infrastructure, but even with properly selected e-services organization model.Therefore, this research paper examines the theoretical e-service organization models and their organization in the rural municipalities. The object of research – electronic public service organization models. The aim – under the analysis of electronic public service organization models, to submit proposals for the improvement organization it in rural municipalities. The objectives of research: 1) to identify the peculiarities of e-service organization in rural municipalities; 2) to analysis the organization process of public e-services organization models. The following methods used in research paper: literature analysis and comparative analysis, the analysis of secondary statistical data, aggregation, logical analysis and synthesis, the graph depiction method.In summary of research paper presented a study results for making proposals that e-services organization features in rural areas in the fact that:1) e-services can be provided for different customer segments;2) not all e-services can be uniformly transferred to the electronic environment, and are identified five levels of e-services;3) organization of e-services can be added and applied by public and private institutions.In summary, the analysis of e-service models leads to the conclusion that all consider models describe what e-services can be provided for whom, and determine their electronic transfer level to users, in order to obtain e-services characterized by the process of organizing participants and the technology use.

Labour places sustainable development in rural regions are determinate the stratification internal and external, from different management levels, environment. The environment factors constantly changeable and interdependent. The open labour places development process is not self-contained, there is need professional management of the process considering many factors, which can be ascribable to the internal (near and distant) and external (near and distant) environment (regional, national, EU) factors groups. The aim of this research is to identify the factors of labour places sustainable development in Lithuanian rural regions. There were used analysis and synthesis, graphic depiction, logical and systematic thinking, comparison, SWOT, structured interviews, deep personal interviews, abstraction and other methods. In the research were analysed labour places sustainable development theoretical aspects, defined labour places sustainable development, identified determining factors of labour places sustainable development in Lithuanian rural regions, was find the possibilities for sustaining development of labour places and the benefits of rapprochement between working positions and place of residence. Interaction of all above factors (synergy) must be considered during the investigation along with the above factors in order initiate development and employment cycle of rural areas.Executed pilot SWOT analysis of job development in rural areas has shown that there are some restricted ranges of issues that abandon job development in rural areas. Liberality of labour forces, non-focused employment of the above resources, and lack of competitive advantage relevancy needed for territory development, absence of sustained and balanced development could be named as common subjects of all municipalities. For a long time workplaces and employment rates have been non-core preferences in case of decision making and implementation of strategic solutions, social and development policies. Implementation of measures, established within Lithuanian rural area development programmes, has been directed towards solution of problems occurred long time ago (not to development of countryside potential). Yet the problem could conceal the opportunity, not all figures involved in the development of rural areas could identify it, it means that long-term development of rural areas could show only initial signs of sustained development, and the balance between other development directions and (or) targets, i. e. economic, social and environmental, used for implementation of active work places is rather weak.Integrated employment development remains the main challenge based on the ongoing monitoring and responding to external changes. Research area is broad and complicated, but it is necessary to investigate vitality and resilience of labour places, the degree of labour places sustainability in the future.

Organizational learning is evaluated as issue of essential importance in modern organizations performing in contemporary society of knowledge. It is claimed that organizational learning is a very appropriate tool for adapting to the changing environment and for integration of various innovations into organizational activities. Different authors emphasize that learning in organizations occurs in individual, group or collective and organizational levels. But only learning formalized and documented in official organization legislation is named as organizational learning and is meant to be necessary for an organization for gaining its new knowledge.

The article discusses economic growth influence to sustainable development. According to the collected theoretical material, it analyzes the impact of economic growth to social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The analysis of statistical data using integrated index of sustainable development allowed evaluating the impact of economic growth to sustainable development in in Lithuania on 2000−2011. Studies carried out in foreign universities confirmed a hypothesis that further extensive studies are necessary in order to understand the essence and evaluation of the concept of sustainable development. The basic idea behind the scientific problem studied in the paper can be described as the following: what are the regularities of the concept of sustainable development and its evaluation, that allow assess the economic growth influence to dimensions of sustainability and to sustainable development of the country. The main problem of the paper is stated as follows: how to achieve economic growth considering economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development? Research object – the impact of economic growth to dimensions of sustainable development. Research aim is to analyze and assess dynamics of sustainable development dimensions in Lithuania. Research tasks: theoretically to analyze the influence of economic growth to social and environmental dimensions; after methodological calculations of indicators of sustainable development in Lithuania, to evaluate the tendencies of changes of sustainable development dimensions and to forecast perpectives. Research methods contributing to this paper are: systematic scientific literature analysis, statistical data and comparative analysis, regression analysis, use of SPSS 17 (Statistical Package for Social Science) and Package Microsoft Excel. Theoretical analysis done in the paper quit well show, that systems of assessment of influence of economic growth to sustainable development must take in account three closely related dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Integrated sustainable development index and trend were used and evaluated that the biggest increasing of index was noticed by given stable inflation rate. Analysis done in the paper quit well show, that for problems solving can be used fiscal instrument – taxes.

Vietnam is an emerging market country in South East Asia. Like many countries in the region Vietnam hasadopted a strategy of export lead growth. Recently Vietnam became a lower middle income country but its goal eventually is to reach high income status. Vietnam is a large food producer and exporter. To reach a higher income level Vietnam needs to increase the value added of its products and export more to high income countries. Is it feasible for producers of advanced food processing solutions, including from Europe, to market their products in Vietnam? This article analyses and assesses the seafood and livestock markets. The conclusions show that there are real opportunities for advanced processing solution providers to sell their products in both fisheries and livestock sectors. Growth potential for these providers in the short run seem to be in fisheries sector, while the medium or long term potential, seems to be in the livestock sector.

Theoretical analysis of research literature has revealed that prevention of risk or at least mitigation of the negative impact of risk factors on the company‘s employees requires reliable management of ergonomic factors risk, which can occur due to insufficient management of processes, quality, possible emergency situations, accidents. The above aim can be achieved by various preventive measures, just keeping in mind that the procedures of the management of ergonomic risk factors are based on assessment of ergonomic risk factors and priorities focusing on the relevant occupational safety aspects in the business company. However, prior to drafting an accident prevention plan, each company should consider the general environment of the company, conditions, and available resources.

The article and the research presented here relies on the fact that the Law of Voluntary Activity, adopted in Lithuania, has been prepared during the European year of volunteering, so a presumption may be held, that the text of the Lithuanian Law of Voluntary Activity has been influenced significantly by the intensive political and valuable discourse of EU of volunteering promotion, which could been observed in Lithuania as well as in the whole EU in 2011. So the fallowing questions, which describe the scientific problem of the article, may be raised: how much the regulations of the volunteering promotion discourse of EU reflect in the text of the Law, which must create definitional-regulating conditions for the volunteering practice in the country by its content and functions? How did the valuable position of EU, which could been observed in the public space of EU in 2011, influence the definitions of volunteering and the regulating attitudes towards it in the text of the Lithuanian Law of Voluntary Activity? How does Lithuania contribute to the official position of EU towards understanding of volunteering?

In this paper correlation of competitiveness and service quality are analyzed in theoretical and practical regard. It is emphasized that competitiveness might be evaluated according to different levels and formats. When preparing this paper scientific sources were analyzed and summarized, organizations were evaluated employing the methods of competitive profile analysis and surveying. Total of 316 Lithuanian insurance companies’ clients from various regions and towns of the country were surveyed. During the evaluation of the organizations direct and indirect factors influencing competitiveness were accentuated. Factors determining quality of service were also evaluated. Results of the research confirmed the hypothesis that competitiveness of service providing companies is mostly determined by the factor of service quality. Correlation between service quality and competitiveness of service providing companies was determined.

This article analyses the availability of transport infrastructure objects in the Baltic macroregion. With the help of the cluster and integral assessment methods, the authors differentiate and classify mesoregions of the Baltic macroregion according to the level of development of both individual transport types and the transport system as a whole. The theoretical contribution of the study lies in the revision of the existing integral indices of transport infrastructure object availability, whereas the practical contribution of the study relates to the possibility to apply the results obtained in developing and adjusting regional and industry-specific transport development programmes. An important conclusion of the study is the practical confirmation of the significant underdevelopment of the regions of North-West Russia (within the Baltic region) as to the availability of transport infrastructure objects in comparison to most mesoregions of the Baltic macroregion.