Klaipėdos universitetas

Tourism is a sophisticated activity of any national economy. The originality of regional tourism impacts the application of special mix of means concerning insufficient professional knowledge and competences of enterpreneurs in the frame of providence of high quality services, hence, the regional tourism development interferens with specific problems. By current driven factors in regional tourism, such as high entrepreneurship, investments, variety of serviness, warrant a new era of local economy and serve for the strategic tourism development as tools and specific scenario. Sustainable tourism sector accesses new stock of acitivities concerning competitiveness amplification and popularization or implication of new resources. The current task of research is to identify the impacts of sustainable tourism development in the frame of amplification of new tourism resources concerning business range and sustainability of regional development.

The folk song culture of southern Ukraine has only fragmentarily been studied. One of the most annoying blank spots is the traditions in areas where Ukrainian Cossack culture formed, the area of the Dnieper rapids and the adjacent territories (the lands of the modern Dnipropetrovsk region). Several expeditions were conducted there by ethnomusicologists from the 1990s to the 2020s. The article provides an overview of the main song genres obtained during these expeditions, and a general look at local song styles at the beginning of the 21st century.

The following article is devoted to determine what the main tendencies are concerning the Environmental Management Systems’ certification in the accordance with ISO 14001 and EMAS’ registrations in the years 1999–2013 from a different countries’ perspective. Giving examples of representative quantitative data, the author presents dynamics of the growth of environmental management systems and also absolute positional qualifications (describing numbers of certificates and registrations), as well as relative qualifications (presenting numbers of certificates and registrations per million residents) in various European countries. The quantitative analyses that have been conducted show a general increasing tendency regarding the number of certificates and registrations. Looking from a perspective of different European countries, Italy and Spain have gained highest evaluation concerning the certification of environmental management systems according ISO 14001 and registration in EMAS.

The laws regulating the educational system of the Republic of Lithuania guard the right of every person to receive eligible education meeting the needs and abilities of such persons. It is emphasised that the compulsory education should be accessible to all children irrespective of their abilities and needs. Thus one of the fundamental features of educational system is to create conditions for children with developmental disorders for learning according to programs adjusted to their needs and abilities and to seek optimal learning achievements by applying special teaching aids and methods. Many recent research works go deeper into various phenomena of integrated learning process. There is an obvious necessity to analyse the possible educational solutions for integrated learning of concrete subjects by students with various impairments. The present article deals with special aspects of teaching geography to students with mild intellectual disabilities.

The technological revolution gives the opportunity to upgrade the quality in education, through new ways of learning. Self-regulated learning is an active and constructive process where self regulated learning proposes learning strategies in monitoring regulations. The aim of this study was to investigate the process and the benefits of the application of self-regulated learning to groups of learners. Findings of this study, demonstrated that self regulated learning in groups of students effectively regulated the learning process of all participants in the study.

The subject of the research is the entrepreneurial potential of young people in the development of rural green tourism in Ukraine. Studies of trends in the rural labour market in terms of modernisation of the agrarian sector and the impact of world trends in transforming the role of rural territories have been taken into account. The development of entrepreneurship in the agricultural and industrial complex, including rural tourism, is one way of solving the youth employment problem. In the study, the authors rely on an assessment of the potential of rural green tourism in Ukraine, which is significant. The main directions of youth entrepreneurship in rural green tourism are identified. The article focuses on promoting the realisation of the potential of youth in rural green tourism businesses. Specific examples show features of labour motivation and highlight opportunities for its increase in entrepreneurship in rural green tourism. It is proposed to create conditions for the activation of youth entrepreneurship in rural green tourism. The authors come to the conclusion that modern youth, as a specific socio-demographic group, are a reserve for the multiplication of the labour force in the agricultural sector, and are a strategic resource for the development of rural areas through entrepreneurship in various fields, including rural green tourism.

The article deals the beliefs about the whirlwind in Ukrainian demonology. On the basis of the empiric materials the аuthor considered the features of human behavior at a meeting with whirlwind and consequent after contact’s with him; retraces whirlwind’s connection with other mythological characters – a devil, a sorcerer, a witch, self-murderer spirits and others.

The article analyses the management of a virtual project team in international companies. It provides a theoretical overview of virtual project team management, and the results of the research are presented. A qualitative study was carried out in which a structured interview was used to interview managers working in international companies who lead virtual project teams. The study involved nine informants, working in Lithuania, the United Kingdom, the United States, Bangladesh, France, Malaysia and Poland. The results of the study revealed the influence of information and communication technologies in managing a virtual project team, how emotional and motivational processes are managed, the importance of trust to a virtual project team, and how team management is improving. To summarise the research, the results provide a virtual project team management model that benefits companies and virtual project team managers who strive for the productive management of these teams.

The book The Economic Crisis and its Aftermath in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Do As We Say and Not As We Do written by Professor Dr. Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson is unique in many respects. It provides a broad view about the Nordic-Baltic countries, their response to the crisis of 2008/09 and the post-crisis consequences. Both regional and international aspects have been analyzed, namely regional institutions such as the European Union (EU) and global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the operational sphere where policy choices of these nations get influenced. The author points out that Barry Eichengreen (Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley) suggested that the title of this book should include: ‘Do as we say and not as we do’, reflecting author’s view mainly to a comparison between how Nordic countries may want the Baltic States to respond to crisis as compared to how they would respond themselves in comparable situations. In order to support this statement, the author mentions some instances, for example, comparison of how Finland and Sweden responded to the banking crisis they experienced in the early 1990s with how the Baltic States responded to the 2008/09 global economic and financial crisis, arguably under Nordic (mainly Swedish) influence. All those countries are then influenced by regional and global institutions. Thus, the author framed the title of the book as “The Economic Crisis and its Aftermath in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Do as we say and not as we do”.

This article examines a specific kind of sacrifice to the pagan Lithuanian and Prussian gods recorded in the written sources of the 16th and 17th centuries, sacrifices made in and by water. There is a total of just ten such records known. Both Lithuanian and Prussian tribes practiced this kind of sacrifice. It is noteworthy that sacrifices involving water were not made to a single deity, but rather to several different gods; that the kind of sacrifice varied and that the most diverse sorts of intentions were pursued in making the sacrifice.