Regional Formation and Development Studies

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.

Definitions and sets of indicators as wellas approaches on sustainable development are compiled, discussed and evaluated inthis paper. The researched region embraces forfive urban and district municipalities in western Lithuaniaand Latviain the total area of 1393.93 km2. The scheme of steps of assessmentof sustainability with selected sets of indicators relevant for the sea shoreregion of Lithuania and Latviais presented and discussed.

The article reflects on the attitude, understanding and knowledge on sustainable marketing, as well as the essence of sustainable marketing,the strategy of its practical use and the concept of development. As a result of research, definitions of sustainable developmentand sustainable marketing and a model of concept of motivation of its use at a company were developed and the strategy of practicaluse of a sustainable marketing and the motivation of use at Latvian companies was ascertained, confirming the initially advancedhypotheses. In order to fulfil the purpose and objectives, the authors used the following quantitative and qualitative methods ofeconomic research: polls, comparisons, grouping. The study is based on scientific papers published by Latvian and foreign scholars,general and special literature, periodicals. The authors performed an assessment, market research, comparative analysis, arrangedan expert examination and used the computer software MS Excel for the analysis and processing of data. The article is based on theresults of the author’s research in 2013. The authors used examination and monitoring in their research.

The sustainable city debate is gaining ground in recent years, featuring as a prominent issue in several policy documents of the European Commission, and enjoying support by the main organisations and institutions at international level. At the same time, improving local governance standards by involving citizens in local decision-making is a recurring issue in the debate on local democracy and enhancement of community cohesion. This paper presents an analysis of the European experience and best practice relating sustainable development to the day-to-day practice of spatial planning. The overall purpose is creating a proposal of indicators for measuring the sustainability of planning actions in urban environments.

This article reflects the impact of regulatory decisions of the Republic of Latvia on the food retail sector and sustainable product supply provided by food retail chains, as well as on operational trends. Attention has been drawn to the law of the Republic of Latvia on the key characteristics of foodstuffs and sales on the market. The research covers development of classification of the main instruments characterizing the products subject to the national regulation, as well as development of a scheme of the impact of the Latvian authorities on the operation of food retail chains. To implement the goal and tasks of the research, the authors have applied quantitative and qualitative research methods of economics, i.e., comparison, grouping, graphical, assessment and analytical methods. The research is based on the results of the previous research conducted by the authors so far, the law of the Republic of Latvia, scientific works published by other scientists, general and special literature and periodicals. The authors have summarized the findings and conducted comparative analysis of the regulatory decisions of the Republic of Latvia as well as presented a market survey within the research.