Rethinking Business for Sustainable Leadership in a VUCA World

Maritime transport is one of the main drivers of economic growth and its role is essential to the consolidation of international trade. At the same time, maritime transport is a major polluter and has been facing increased pressure to lower its carbon footprint. The shipping industry has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with the provisions enforced by its global regulator, the International Maritime Organization. Aligned with long-term strategic objectives ratified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global shipping industry has made significant progress with regard to the strengthening of its overall sustainability measures. Although recent efforts may seem slow and disarrayed, there is strong belief that the shipping industry will achieve its decarbonisation targets by 2050. The current economic conditions are particularly challenging with inflationary pressures continuing to rise, global debt at record highs and skyrocketing energy prices. Beyond doubt, distress is substantial and all industries are seeking ways to mitigate risks and build resilience. Turmoil is pervasive, but the shipping industry is accustomed to extensive threats and high levels of risk, for it is inherently linked to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity−against which it has managed to deploy exceptional adaptive capabilities. As the current climate crisis continues to magnify its impact, sustainability-driven ambitions are gaining traction in worldwide shipping. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive assessment of the progress made towards the decarbonisation of maritime transport. The analysis focuses on benchmarking relevant performance records against short- and long-term formal targets, and further identifies several measures aimed at accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Key findings are outlined in detail and concluding remarks are explicitly set forth.

This study aims at identifying the dynamics of research on corporate governance under economic and pandemic crisis conditions. The main objective is to conduct a longitudinal analysis over the last 15 years (2008−2022). Bibliometric analysis research method is combined with frequency, descriptive and statistical analysis using SPSS to obtain relevant results for academic and business environments. A final sample of 1688 scientific papers included in Web of Science database were considered in examining the research questions. First, ordering the studies by year and type, the evolution of publication is analyzed for the field of corporate governance research under crisis conditions. An upward trend is observed, especially for the studies published in journals. Next, the most relevant articles are identified based on the times cited in various databases, and the characteristics measured by the cited reference count and the number of pages, complementing the research. Results emphasize the highest values for studies published in journals compared with books or conference proceedings, as well as significant correlations between variables. Muchmore, a significant difference between groups of publications is noticed. These findings assessed the relevance of corporate governance studies published over the last 15 years, their scientific validation, and accuracy of the results. Finally, the current state of collaboration between authors is displayed based on a network visualization technique implemented in VOSviewer. The co-authorship analysis suggests the intensity of authors’ collaboration. This study represents a useful resource for research area development and contributes to capturing the evolution of academic environment.

The main focus point of this paper has been chosen based on today’s trends in the Information Technology field, as companies’ interest in automating manual processes is a continuous investment. Specifically, this article focuses on the Robotic Process Automation concept and the way this technology is perceived among companies at present. As part of the scientific research, a questionnaire has been addressed to people working with Robotic Process Automation in different fields, in order to bring to attention different behaviors that Robotic Process Automation teams express today. The objective of this paper is to analyze the responses and interpret the results according to theoretical concepts, chosen as point of reference. The questionnaire was designed to reflect preferences among Robotic Process Automation providers, areas with automation potential, as well as possible drawbacks of the technology, that could reside in potentially areas of improvement. As highlights of the research, it has been identified what are employees’ preferences in terms of tools used for project implementation, challenges that employees who work with Robotic Process Automation every day are facing, as well as a general perspective on how this technology is currently affecting internal business processes and it is expected to evolve in the near future.

The paper aims to provide a framework for understanding and analyzing the practices associated with competitive intelligence in young democracies. It starts from the premise that in the last decade we have witnessed a gradual but slight reduction of the gap between the consistent development of competitive intelligence—in the Anglosphere and Western Europe—and the South-Eastern Europe. In this sense, Romania represents a good example as it provides an intimate view on not only the geographical impacting variables, but also on the historical, cultural, and economic specificities. From a methodological perspective, in order to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the Romanian case, the paper will apply a qualitative case study research design. The results can be further on use for the understanding of the impact on national variables on the competitive intelligence function as well as for future comparison surveys seeking to shed light on the development of private intelligence practices.

A clusters’ role in stimulating, creating, and expanding a region's competitiveness is axiomatic. The research questions that have steered our study are: which are the Romanian industries with the highest potential for cluster development? How did the European top-ranked agricultural clusters integrate intelligence systems into their operations? How could we adapt those intelligent systems to develop Romania's agro-clusters? The results were obtained by employing a two-fold methodology: (1) to evaluate Romania's cluster potential, we have used the Cluster Index of Sternberg and Litzenberger, and (2) to design sustainable policies meant to spur the sector's competitiveness, we have used the benchmarking for 14 agricultural clusters awarded with Gold Label by the European Cluster Excellence Initiative. We learned that over half of the Romanian counties have the highest potential to develop clusters in the primary industry—the agriculture, forestry and fishing, and mining and quarrying sectors. The counties that registered the most significant Cluster Index on the agriculture sector are Bihor, Covasna, Harghita, Botoșani, Neamț, and Vaslui.

Concerning the stimulation of the cluster's competitiveness, we concluded that Romania needs a robust investment in knowledge and innovation, implementation of intelligent systems among the value chain, and facilitation of national and international collaboration. Our conclusions could represent a starting point for regional policymakers, cluster directors, and governments to create new strategies to support Romania's agricultural industry and clusters.

This study presents a bibliometric analysis and a debate on the ongoing interest in European directives and international initiatives on corporate sustainability reporting. The objective of the study is to observe the interest of researchers in various topics related to sustainability reporting requirements over the last five years. The data used in this research was selected based on the PRISMA method to Web of Science (WOS) database. The database generated a total number of 572 articles. A plethora of features characterizing the research on sustainability reporting over the last five years reveal interesting results. The most researched topic in sustainability reporting research is Global Reporting Initiative, followed by non-financial reporting directives and integrated reporting framework. A VOS Viewer representation of the most used keywords related to sustainability reporting have been performed for the sampled data. The overall conclusion is that GRI is the favorite of companies that want to present their sustainability performance and the favorite topic approached by researchers. These results point out that authors affiliated to the Bucharest University of Economic Studies made a significant contribution especially to the GRI research. The main contribution of this study resides in the two-fold analysis of sustainability reporting, mirroring the continuous development of guidelines, initiatives, standards, and regulations at international and European levels in academics’ research addressed from companies’ perspectives and practices.

According to recent research in International Business state-owned multinationals represent some of the world’s most active cross-border investors. This phenomenon is specific to emerging markets where governments support the internationalization of state-owned enterprises. In this manuscript, we answer the research question: How does state ownership affect the strategies and performance of multinationals? To answer the research question, an analysis of the 20 largest Chinese state-owned multinationals listed in the Fortune Global 500 has been employed. We use quantitative research methods to conclude that state ownership plays a crucial role in the Chinese state-owned multinationals’ cross-border strategies, especially under the project Belt and Road Initiative. We have identified a correlation between the active internationalization of Chinese state-owned enterprises and the implementation of the grandiose project Belt and Road Initiative. We argue that state-owned multinationals represent hybrid enterprises and can be considered a strategic form of corporate ownership. We contribute to internationalization theory by arguing that state-owned enterprises differ from private firms in their foreign entry modes and state-owned multinationals represent strategic entities to enter foreign markets. This research paper presents implications for practitioners and policymakers who are concerned about the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises from countries with a high concentration of state ownership, like China in particular.

Currently, communities are considered an essential factor in the development of entrepreneurship. More specifically, the characteristics and features of the community not only contribute to maintaining, but also promote and support the development of entrepreneurship in the locality. Therefore, investing in community features and characteristics is meaningful in many countries. However, the impact of each community characteristic is different in entrepreneurship. This study aimed to explore the evaluations of community characteristics in supporting and developing entrepreneurship. From this, we can have a specific view of the relationship between community and entrepreneurship. The study was conducted based on an online questionnaire survey of 201 community members in Vietnam. Importance-Performance Analysis method was used to assess the influence of community characteristics. The results of the IPA analysis show that “Finance and community funds” is a feature that is considered important and needs to be developed. Other community features about Community policies, Networks and relationships, Training and education activities, Security guaranteed, and Rules of the community should be maintained and steadily developed. Other characteristics of the community regarding the Organizational structure of the community, Culture and social norms, Social capital from the community, and Assessment and testing activities should limit development. Finally, communities should reduce their investment in the Space and working environment of the community in Vietnam. These results contribute to a better understanding of the role of community characteristics in entrepreneurship. Through this research, stakeholders such as communities, local managers, and policymakers will have solutions to improve the role and effectiveness of community characteristics. Furthermore, this study promotes potential research on community and entrepreneurship in the future. The paper ends with a discussion of the results and implications of the study.

In general, the paper questions interventionist economic policy approach by emphasizing the privatization policy of State-owned enterprises in the telecommunication sector of Ethiopia. Specifically, it investigates the impact of privatization policy on the cost-efficiency of Ethio-Telecom by comparing it with other telecom operators in liberal markets. Moreover, it also identifies sources of inefficiency and indicates paths for improvement. The study used secondary panel data of three decision-making units (DMU) or Organizations employing cluster sampling techniques for the years between 2007 and 2015. The study employs a Cost efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis to compare the impact of State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) to that of privately-owned enterprises in a competitive market. The results show that Ethio Telecom is inefficient as compared to the benchmark operators selected. Moreover, the main source of inefficiency comes from issues related to resource allocation. Furthermore, slack movements recommended to reduce capital expenditure and employee number while increasing total assets to attain 94% of the cost efficiency realized by a benchmark DMU.

The current study focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) products for car damage detection and repair price estimation in the insurance industry. The opportunity to introduce such products in the Romanian local market is highlighted following a scoping review of potential benefits and challenges, existing commercial solutions, and existing market research. The lack of market research data concerning the challenges faced by Romanian customers and employees of insurance companies during the insurance claim process is identified as a gap. To address it, the current work presents the results of a pilot survey-based market research that sought to understand the challenges faced by two main Romanian stakeholders of the insurance claim process, namely drivers involved in car accidents (N = 20) and car damage inspectors (N = 15). The result are used to define and advance a novel architecture for an AI system for car damage detection and repair price estimation (InsureAI) that aims to: (a) streamline the communication process between customers and representatives of insurance companies, (b) minimize appointment and traveling challenges related to car damage inspection, (c) reduce the complexity of the repair decision and price estimation related to the insurance claim procedure, (d) address the challenges of customers of car insurance companies in organizing and filing in the necessary information for starting a new claims file, as well as (e) enhance the overall process transparency. Additionally, we detail the envisioned user flow and the user interface prototype.

The current paper aims to explore various methods and strategies for preparing students for successful careers in a changing business society, with a focus on students from a private high school in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. The literature review highlights the importance of equipping students with the necessary skills and knowledge in an increasingly complex and dynamic job market, and how traditional education methods may fall short in this regard. The research methodology used in this paper is based on the teachers’ responses to an online questionnaire, on a quantitative research, with the aim of analyzing current practices and trends in education and career development, specifically in the context of a private high school from Bucharest. The main results of this study demonstrate that incorporating real-world experiences through internships, teaching critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and promoting lifelong learning and personal development are effective methods for preparing students for successful business careers. Additionally, the use of technology and digital tools in education is found to enhance students’ career prospects in the business sector. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the research and its contributions to the fiels of education and career development, providing insights and recommendations for educators and policymakers to improve the preparation of students for success in a constantly changing society.

In dynamic business environments and with the growing influence of multiple generations, employees expect a valuable, attractive, and satisfying work experience based on their preferences. This expectation makes the way employees experience work more important in many companies. Companies are developing integrated strategies to enhance their employees’ experience in the workplace. Although much research states the positive effect of employee experience, there is a lack of focus on the effect toward employee performance. This study compared the impact of employee experience strategy (consisting of technological environment, physical environment, and cultural environment) on Generation X and Generation Y toward their performance. The study sample size was 194; the sampling method was simple random sampling. The collected data was examined using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The empirical findings demonstrated that employee experience had a significant impact on employee performance for both generations while Generation X had a higher significant impact compared with Generation Y. The findings also showed that the higher value of cultural environment will impact the higher value of adaptive performance for both Generation X and Generation Y. This study contributes new findings about the positive impact of employee experience on employee performance.

HR functions also have become progressively data-centric, while organizations have higher expectation for HR in providing important insights to improve overall productivity. This expectation should be shown in higher adoption HR Analytics by HR professionals. Organization should prioritize HR analytics adoption but there was slow progress towards adopting the technology. The objective of this paper is to determine the factors influencing attitude of HR professionals towards Human Resources analytics in Jakarta. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to confirm the model based on data compiled from HR professionals. This study examines the effect of technology self-efficacy and tool trialability on attitude towards Human Resources Analytics. The result shows a significant effect of technology self-efficacy on attitude towards Human Resources analytics. However, tool trialability does not have effect on attitude towards Human Resources analytics. The findings of this study suggest an important message for organizations to focus on technology self-efficacy in increasing attitude towards Human Resources analytics, this would strengthen the implement HR Analytics successfully. It also concludes that internal motivation should drive the personal intention on adoption of HR Analytics. This empirical study contributes to a better understanding about the factors of HR professionals in adopting HR analytics as needed by their organizations and essential for competitiveness.

The pension systems are an important object of public policy for many reasons, first of all because they concern in each country millions of retired people who’s well-being depends on it. In the last 3–4 decades the interest for the reform, especially for a structural one, is growing having as main motivation the sustainability risks implied by the system of defined benefits which is still dominant, at least, in the European Union. By analyzing the drivers of the structural reform from the perspective of the capitalist economy evolution I found that the interest of main players-as World Bank, and International Monetary Fund-promoting the reform concern not only the sustainability of the pension systems, but also the attraction in the financial circuit of the pensions’ money deposits. We consider this phenomenon to be a symptom of the capitalism’s financialization. Backed by a larger analysis of such financialization symptoms, I consider the international financial institutions’ strive for a structural reform of the pension systems as a particular, specific symptom of the capitalist financialization present in all the contemporary varieties of the capitalism. One doesn’t make value judgements, adopting a neutral position and even avoiding causal explanations; we only signal a characteristic of the present financial capitalism and put it in the framework of the problems concerning retirement compensations.

Companies, as well as individuals, believe that they should be in competition with others around them and rarely consider cooperation. We constantly feel that we have to outdo the other player and that the credit is ours. When a company develops its strategy, it must consider what decisions and strategies its competitor is also initiating. Until a black swan appears in the market, companies often do not initiate strategies for a good position in the market. Large companies around the world manage to make a real impact in communities and reduce poverty across vast areas. It is assumed that over time leadership has been greatly undervalued, but at the same time it has now come to be overvalued, considering that it can bring about real change in the organization. The reality is that without a sufficiently good strategy, no leader will be able to bring added value to the organization. In this lesson we will address some theoretical aspects of strategy, as well as game theory. Also, in the second part we will analyze the impact it can have for players who are going to develop a strategy, but there are also some examples and simulations done hypothetically with two players. In the last part of the paper, we will present a series of conclusions and recommendations in what game theory means in the practical life of large companies.

The paper explores the potential impact of prosumers on household energy consumption in Europe and at global level until 2030 and provides a centralised summary of their current status. Also, it analyses the official forecasts of international organisations for residential consumption, with a focus on Europe and beyond, and examines the trend of becoming a prosumer and its potential impact on future trends of consumption, production and prices. According to the results, the number of prosumers worldwide is expected to grow rapidly and, by 2030, they could potentially account for a significant share of electricity production (5% in the European Union and 14% globally). Using applied research and statistical analysis, the paper also finds that while the number of prosumers in Europe is expected to continue growing, the rate of growth is impacted by economic incentives. Financial advantages are one of the main drivers of prosumption, followed by environmental and social benefits—and, following on this, prosumers could help reduce carbon emissions and improve energy security, with a high degree of flexibility. Overall, the paper concludes that while the impact of prosumers on household energy consumption may be limited in the short term, the trend towards prosumption could have significant long-term implications for the way in which we consume, produce and pay for energy. It is thus important to carefully monitor and regulate the trend towards prosumption to ensure a smooth transition to a more sustainable energy system.

Recently, the circular economy concept has been almost seamlessly integrated into all key strategies, action plans, and policies across international institutions. An example in this case is represented by the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan, along with Sankey’s Diagram of Material Flows, which will both describe in detail the potential and necessary transition to the new economic framework. Based on that, in the current paper, we have proposed a model that splits the diagram into inputs and outputs, with two correspondent datasets and two research objectives: identify the main producers and owners of materials, and highlight the main types of actors concerning the outflow systems. To reach these objectives, we have computed the Unsupervised Possibilistic Fuzzy C-Means Clustering (UFPC) algorithm. As a result, in the case of the inputs dataset, the computation allocated the 27 member states of the European Union into four clusters, as follows: high-scale, medium-scale, and low-scale resource owners and producers, and importers. When referring to the output data, we have also obtained four allocations, three of those based on the volume of emissions and the performance of the waste recovery system (high, medium, low), and one showing the outlier countries with the highest volumes of waste landfills. Therefore, the constructed model will be relevant for the current European context, while also filling in the gap in terms of using fuzzy clustering as a machine learning algorithm.

Due to the continually evolving nature of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the technology itself, this paper analyzes the ability for companies to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) into complying with the international financial reporting standards (IFRS). The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the gap in existing literature pertaining to the intersection of financial reporting and artificial intelligence, while also showcasing the innovative methods that companies have developed to facilitate accurate and efficient preparation of financial reporting disclosures. This paper seeks to answer the questions related to (1) the considerations for incorporating AI into a company's financial reporting disclosures and (2) Which International Financial Reporting Standards may indeed be facilitated by artificial intelligence. The results of the study indicate that many companies are still in the early stages of integrating artificial intelligence into IFRS, and ongoing development is necessary to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of financial reporting disclosures. The tools utilized by companies are relatively new and continue to evolve, propelled by the widespread recognition of AI applications across the globe. Nevertheless, uncertainty remains regarding the reliability and appropriateness of using artificial intelligence, considering the privacy and security challenges that accounting companies face.

Considering sustainable travel accommodation as a mechanism to increase the sustainability of the whole tourism industry, this paper explores whether demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, occupation, and income, influence tourists’ green purchasing behavior. We adopted a quantitative approach to test the hypotheses concerning the relationship between consumer demographics and measures of green purchasing behavior (intention, actual behavior, and willingness to pay a price premium). The study surveyed 747 tourists who have visited the Canary Islands at least once. The research results indicate that gender plays a significant role in sustainable travel accommodation booking intention. Younger travelers tend to have a stronger intention and willingness to pay a premium price compared to older ones. Additionally, higher income is related to lower booking intention, actual booking behavior, and willingness to pay a premium price. These findings suggest that demographic variables can explain travelers’ sustainable accommodation booking behavior to some extent.

In the informational society, national and european, the modern history of Europe describes the industrial revolution as a factor that triggered the new economic order, through the scientific and technical progress made. While modernity as a term refers to a new social order, created as a result of the movement called Enlightenment. Through the totality and extent of the changes produced at the political and social level, summarized in the transfer of the individual from ancestral work to the activities corresponding to the urban industry, modernity became the first way of social organization that managed to dominate at the global level. Modernity is characterized by major transformations, which penetrated deeply into all levels of human life, in all economic, political and social spheres. The distinction between public and private life, the privileging of urban space, to the detriment of rural areas, specializations and qualifications on the labor market, increasing productivity and mass production, abandoning or at least minimizing conventional, traditional methods, and replacing them with new methods based on science, by reason, “on the new lights”, all being legacies of modernity that laid the foundations for a present characterized by a new model of society, in which the purely industrial phase has been overcome, and production is replaced by services, knowledge and global information technologies, summarized under a term meant to describe this new structure, namely the informational society. The post-industrial society emphasizes, not on the production of goods, but on the preponderance of the use of services, depending to a large extent on the use of technology.

Seaports are an indispensable element of world maritime trade. All activities in the world that deal with problems such as global warming and the deteriorating ecological balance should prioritize the environment and be sustainable. The concept of the green port has inherently emerged in this direction. Various indicators can be used to assess the environmental performance of ports in a country. Seaports evaluated according to these indicators can obtain the green port title and certification. Seaports with the highest environmental sustainability performance can be scored and ranked according to the weights of the indicators. Fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are useful in calculating the importance of these indicators and ranking the alternative ports. Linguistic views and responses of experts can be placed as data for the proposed MCDM with a fuzzy approach. In this study, a novel methodology including circular intuitionistic fuzzy sets (C-IFS), which is newly introduced to the literature, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach is proposed. It is aimed that the criteria weights and alternative ranking obtained as a result of this study contribute to the appraisement of the seaports in terms of environmental sustainability and enable the emergence of the aspects that are required to be improved.

The paper aims to study knowledge vulnerabilities correlations with the knowledge economy, focusing on identifying knowledge vulnerabilities considering new challenges in the knowledge economy. The purpose is to analyze and understand the knowledge vulnerabilities, focusing our research on identifying some vulnerabilities in the organizational knowledge dynamics. In order to achieve our goal, we propose KVSS method that may be used in the identification and analysis process of knowledge vulnerabilities. The process will be beneficial for a correct analysis of knowledge vulnerabilities and the impact in the knowledge economy, completing the research with some solutions that may reduce negative consequences for organizations that are an active component in the knowledge economy. In today knowledge economy were knowledge has become essential for every organization and disruptions are happening frequently which gives organizations less time to manage the change and the fact that they are almost constrained to develop new strategies to answer the challenges of the changing business environment, identifying knowledge vulnerabilities will increase visibility on organizational knowledge given the opportunity to threat weakness point identified and in the end to achieve the goal to strengthen the organization. The knowledge economy has evolved more than was predicted in a short time period, adding notable value to the knowledge economy. On other side, this fast evolution in the knowledge economy revealed that some components were not fully covered, leaving some gaps that may be exploited. Our research is focused on identifying these gaps in the knowledge economy, especially on knowledge vulnerabilities.