Regional Formation and Development Studies

The paper deals with the situation of entrepreneurship in three rural cross-border regions of Lithuania bordering on Kaliningrad Region and Poland, i.e. with Jurbarkas, Šilutė, and Vilkaviškis districts. The entrepreneurship factors in rural areas have been summarised, the outcomes of the research in the entrepreneurship factors of the rural areas of Lithuanian cross-border regions have been presented, and the factors impeding business development in the region have been named. In the contemporary society, the significance of the impact of entrepreneurship in economic, social, and psychological processes of the society development has been increasing. The direction of the society progress and the trajectory of its development is related to its members’ entrepreneurship abilities and opportunities. Individual’s entrepreneurship contributes to the perception and identification of the new opportunities of activity development, thus increasing the social welfare.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the aspects of integration of entrepreneurship into higher education (Educational sciences) in Lithuania and Latvia. The article maintains that proper entrepreneurial competencies are required to successfully start, operate and ensure the new business in the marketplace. From an educational perspective, scholars are primarily concerned with the development of individual-level competencies for entrepreneurship. Therefore the following question arises: what competencies for entrepreneurship should individuals be able to manifest when facing an entrepreneurial venture? More specifically, from educational and higher education perspectives, the question is: what competencies for entrepreneurship should universities address in their curricula for graduate programmes specifically in Educational sciences. Models of students’ entrepreneurial competencies are highlighted theoretically and some empirical insights on which competencies students in Educational sciences from Lithuanian and Latvian universities would like to have acquired are provided. The article presupposes that competence–based education can be designed to promote entrepreneurial activity among university students.

The aim of the article is to analyse the determinants and good practices in using knowledge as a factor in the development of entrepreneurship at local level. The article consists of three sections. In the first section, the authors discuss the genesis of perceiving knowledge as a factor of socio-economic development. In the second part, the understanding of the concept of local development in the view of various economic theories is presented. Finally, section three provides an overview of international research and experience in the modelling of development based on knowledge and entrepreneurship.

This article examines the attitudeof young people of age 18 to 30 from Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Norway towards the national costume. The aim of this article is to analyze and determine how national costume is appreciated by the youth of countries mentioned before. The article briefly presents the preconditions for the emergence and creation of a nationalcostume; it analyzes what kind of information is lacking about national costume. The research was made in 2017-2018. Information was provided by 156 respondents. In conclusion, the worst situation is is between Finnish youth and the deepest traditions of costume‘s wearing has Norway. The results of Lithuanians reveal that national costume is not very important tradition, Latvians show the growing interest in the costume.

Until the 2015 elections, youth policy in Poland was treated as a separate domain. There is no uniform legal basis concerned with the matters of young people. Youth rights are dealt with in several articles of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland as well as a number of Acts: on Public Administration Branches, on the Education System, on Higher Education, on Employment Promotion and Labour Market Institutions, on NFZ General Health Insurance, on Combating Domestic Violence, on Social Employment, on Public Benefit Organisations and Voluntary Service, along with the Labour Code and certain government regulations. The first consistent document concerned with youth issues was the National strategy for young people for 2003–2014, adopted in 2003. Thereafter, the matters of youth policy were discussed in the report entitled Youth 2011, the document Poland 2030 – Third Wave of Modernity, the Long-Term National Development Strategy, and the Government Program for Social Activity of Youth for the years 2015–2016. Following the 2015 parliamentary elections, youth issues were given a lower priority. In the election manifesto of PIS (Law and Justice party), much attention was devoted to family policy, with youth policy being regarded as part thereof. Consequently, on 13 February 2018, the Family, Senior and Social Policy Committee of the Senate of the Republic of Poland adopted a Resolution on “Integrated youth policy”, presenting it as one of the areas of family policy.