Regional Formation and Development Studies

Convergence is one the main targets of enlarged EU. According to the analysis of the main sustainable consumption and productionindicators, except domestic material consumption, convergence has been taking place in new EU member states over the period ofeconomic growth in 2000–2007. However, as indicated by the results due to the global economic crisis in 2009 differences betweenthe countries have increased: the convergence rate – the coefficient of variation – increased. In overall terms, countries in CEE haveimproved in most cases and converged to the average of the group. However, in terms of sustainable development, convergencenot always indicates positive changes. New EU member states while striving to reach higher economic level should maintain lowerlevels of consumption, waste generation and pollution. Much more attention to energy and resource efficiency and decoupling ofeconomic growth and resource consumption is to be paid.

There is the one of the biggest problem in the world- not sustainable development of countries, regions. The governments of different countries were trying to solve economical differences between some countries and regions only using economic measures in last century. It should be noted that economic development orientations and concepts cannot satisfy the humanity’s needs and they have only a limited application spectrum in environmental protection studies. The situation supposes the necessity to propose new approaches and to define the essence of economic theory, its potential role and tasks, in solving issues related to critical human existence and civilization survival in the future. Sustainable development is based on three dimensions: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. But still there are big scientific problem – how to change mentality of people through the world? How to find measures that would be understandable for everybody? How to change people thinking to use less? How to explain for managers of organizations, that to be sustainable – to be successful? These and other questions were analyzed in this article. The aim of this paper is to describe benefit of sustainable development in organizations. Object of research – sustainable organizations. The tasks of the article: to analyze the concepts of sustainable development in organizational level; to analyze concept of sustainable organization and to show benefit for organizations to sustainable. Used methods are- the analysis of scientific articles, comparison, and observation.

Wherewith actualisation of health promotion as an important aspect in the context of public health maintenance, the questions which are connected to public joint responsibility in their health maintenance and improvement attain even greater importance. Taking into consideration the insufficient health quality of Latvian population which ranks Latvia in one of the last places among the European countries, actualisation and implementation of individual responsibility dimension in the health care financing model, is viewed as a possibility of improvement of the current situation. The research overlooked the approaches of individual responsibility integration in health care models employed by the developed countries, classifying those several parameters, established the insufficient Latvian population involvement level which is characterised by large health influencing harmful habit prevalence and low involvement level in illness prevention measures, as well as marked the main challenges and possibilities, introducing individual responsibility dimension in Latvian health care financing model which are referred to both increasing the payment solidarity and lifestyle and behaviour changes.

Innovation is not only an economic mechanism, or a technical process. It is primarily a social phenomenon in which the motivation and participation of employees are determinants of success in the process. Hence, many authors emphasise the social dimension of innovation. The paper summarizes the conclusions of the studies conducted among employees from Polish companies on identification of “soft” determinants of innovation processes in the organization, such as human resources, innovative climate and culture conducive to innovation.

In this study authors compare the demographic, socio-economic andagriculture activity indicators in the municipalities of different degrees ofrurality, highlight the causes of uneven distribution of social and economicindicators and show trends of change for 2009 – 2012. Authors proposed newindicators and justify the using of these indicators as backgroundcharacteristics in analysing the rurality of municipalities.

The online economy takes a huge role in today’s globalized world. Internet as a general purpose technology changes how companiesoperate, but it also changes the markets. The online economy has a huge effect on people’s everyday life, private and public companiesas well. The goal of this paper is to analyse the global online economy by countries of origin answering the question whichcountries dominate the internet. After deep literature survey on the subject the Alexa Top 500 database is used to analyse it by themost visited websites in the world. The analysis shows the online economy is dominated by the USA and China. Correlation analysisconfirms that GDP correlates with websites originating from that country. This means highly developed countries have better onlineeconomy with more websites, dominating the online economy.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos vietos turizmo galimybės. Kadangi visame pasaulyje prognozuojamas turizmo srautų augimas, šalims svarbu pritraukti kuo daugiau vietos ir užsienio šalių turistų. Tad turizmo organizatoriams, siekiant išskirtinumo, reikia ieškoti unikalių aspektų vietos turizmo rinkodaros komunikacijos požiūriu. Šiuo straipsniu siekiama atskleisti, kaip socialinės medijų formos funkcionuoja renkantis vietos turizmo organizatorių keliones. Nustatyta, kad socialinės medijos laikomos vienos perspektyviausių ir labiausiai naudojamų pasaulyje rinkodaros priemonių vietos turizmo plėtrai. Nors įvairūs socialinių medijų rinkodaros aspektai turizme sulaukia vis daugiau tyrėjų dėmesio, dažniau įtraukiami ir į Lietuvos turizmo rinkodaros strategijas, tačiau nėra išsamesnių teorinių ir pirminių jų naudojimo tikslingumo tyrimų, netirtas ir ryšys su vietos kelionės tikslu. Straipsnyje pastebima, kad vis sudėtingiau socialines medijas atsirinkti. Atliekant tyrimą taikyti šie metodai: mokslinės literatūros lyginamoji analizė ir sintezė, anketinė apklausa, grafinio modeliavimo metodas. Identifikuotos įtaigiausios Lietuvos keliautojams socialinių medijų formos, kurios ateityje iš vietos turizmo organizatorių pareikalaus ne tik efektyviai veikiančių rinkodaros priemonių, bet ir jose pateikiamo įdomaus, netradiciniais sprendimais paremto keliones pristatančio informacijos turinio.

The research andanalysis of strengths and weaknesses of national innovation system is extremelyimportant to successful and efficient innovation support policymaking.Innovation support policies should take into consideration all specifies ofnational innovation system in the country, not being one-size-fits-all. Untilnow, little analysis on the Latvian innovation system was made. The paper aimsto show Latvian innovative performance and to propose factors forwell-functioning innovation system of Latvia. This research gives apossibility to researchers and policy-makers to investigate the mismatchbetween policies and problems and identify policy gaps.

The subject of this paper is to present the shape, the legal basis and the prospects for the development of the European Union regional policy. This policy assumes great importance in the face of weakening of state’s structures due to the European Union bodies and decentralization of management of local affairs. The EU regional policy is a very problematic area and requires extensive studies. Thus, I confined myself to analyze the development of basis of the EU regional policy primarily through the prism of treaty law. The analysis showed a rate of development which process still continues. Despite a good legal basis, the EU regional policy still requires constant adjustment, especially when it comes to rationalizing subsidies. The passive regional policy leads to promote only the economically under developed areas. Therefore, it is necessary for the implementation of programs to support the innovation, especially in highly developed regions, which are the engine of the whole European Union economy.

“The book “Small States In A Global Economy: Crisis, Cooperation and Contributions” written by Professor Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson is informative and basically about a wide range of economic issues of Iceland and the Baltic States during pre, per and post 2008 financial crisis.Professor Hilmarsson has applied case study method in order to analyse various economic issues with the use of qualitative and quantitative data. In his writings, he has used his observation and experience of working for the World Bank for 12 years in three continents and working as a Special Advisor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Iceland. Besides, the author has used data provided by International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, International Finance Corporation, European Union, Statistics Iceland etc. Besides, scholarly articles, books and e-mail etc. have been used as a valuable source for the writings.