Keywords: foreign trade; export; import; trade balance
In this paper we have analysed a “special” period in the history of Romania’s trade, namely the period when market economy was replaced by the state economy. It is the period preceding the transition. We analysed how Romania’s exports and imports have evolved between 1945 and 1989, highlighting the events that influenced trade, and also what changes occurred in the structure of exports and imports by product groups and, not least, who were the main external partners of Romania.
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Keywords: Danube River;
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Keywords: economic crisis; survival strategies; emigration;
More...Keywords: EU pre-accession funds - Romania; capital account liberalization - Romania;
In terms of macroeconomic performance, 2002 was Romania’s best year since 1989, highlights the Economy section. However, in order to sustain such performance in the period ahead, the Government should pay more attention particularly to improving financial discipline and increasing the country’s absorptive capacity of EU pre-accession funds.
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The article discusses how the class of nouns is described in Polish WordNet (plWN) — lexico-semantic relation database project. There are presented the principles of the nominal description in the Princeton WordNet (WN), the related project — EuroWordNet (EWN) and the basic solutions in the plWN. The paper describes some specific problems that occurred during development of the plWN, especially concerning top ontology classes, vagueness of the definitions of lexicosemantic relations and some difficulties with rich Polish morphology. Finally we present some numeric data for nouns in the plWN.
More...Keywords: consumption; tea; drinking; urban; consumption spaces; prosumer
This paper examines the increase of public, non-domestic tea consumption in Bucharest. In order to offer a full picture, I approached the consumer engines in terms of both teahouses’ owners and consumers. I found that most entrepreneurs have established their business in an effort to have a place of their own, quiet, where to practice their passions with people who share the same values and interests. Consumers, in turn, are attracted primarily by the interior space of the teahouses. Their reasons are the most diverse: for relaxation and dreaming, to escape from the city’s violent stimuli, for introspection, for new bodily experiences, to strengthen or build friendship, romantic or business relationships, as well as for the ‘dream’ characteristics of the teahouses’ environment. Both the teahouses’ owners and their consumers may be regarded as varieties of prosumers.
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Keywords: drug users; drugs; HIV; AIDS; Gypsy; addiction; street workers; Romodrom; Unemployment; poverty; Dzeno
High levels of drug use and unprotected sex create a looming crisis for a Czech ethnic community.
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Keywords: proximity; organizational proximity; innovation networks; collaboration
The networking and cooperation processes became one of the main research directions in the field of management. One of the interesting and quite new research areas within these processes is the proximity concept, and, to be more precise, the organizational dimension of proximity. The organizational proximity is particularly important for the effectiveness and performance of such processes as knowledge creation, knowledge exchange and knowledge absorption. However, despite its positive impact on growth, quality and content of interorganizational relationships, the organizational proximity has not been investigated in a holistic way so far. The article summarizes both theoretical and empirical literature on organizational proximity. Moreover, based on that literature some proposals for the operationalization of organizational proximity were formulated.
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Keywords: UNHCR; refugees; Soviet Union; Azerbaijan; Armenia; Nagorno-Karabakh; Karabakhi economy; Karabakh refugees; Norwegian Refugee Council
Sixteen years after they began arriving, there are still 240,000 registered refugees in Armenia. Why are they not accepting Armenian passports?
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I don’t know why on that Friday, having returned home from work around three p.m., I started to pack hurriedly, throwing my clothes at random into the suitcase on wheels, which had been sitting in the dust under the window sill since my last visit to Vienna. I don’t know why I finally decided to take that train from Zagreb to Osijek, which leaves from platform one at exactly five-oh-five, according to the age-long timetable. Only an hour, an hour and half earlier, I was attending to a plump, doll-like baroque angel from a parish church in Zagorje, I was gluing its fallen, thin skin which was peeling on all sides and revealing the wooden base that irresistibly reminded me of the dried muscles of mummies. While I was caressing its round, plump buttocks, my Mum and Osijek didn’t even cross my mind, not for a second. Really, I don’t know why I finally did it. Just as I didn’t know why, some ten years ago, I popped a handful of sleeping pills down my throat. I do, however, remember the mild and calm, almost effeminate doctor Risjak, who was leaning into my face as if I were a small, irascible child, and urging me repeatedly to open up to him and tell him what was wrong.
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This article is an ethnographic study of the spatial aspects of the everyday life of neighborhood police officers, based on participant observation conducted in Kazan' in 2007. It analyzes forms of neighborhood policemen’s professional activities and four types of professional spaces where their work takes place: (1) the precinct—the primary (often spatially disordered) area of the officer’s supervision and the space for basic practices of self-presentation to the controlled population; (2) the neighborhood in general and, in particular, the space of the precinct station where officers’ primary professional solidarity is formed and where, as a rule, structured interactions with the local population happen; (3) the space of the district police department, which usually appears to the “ordinary” neighborhood police officer as “the bosses’ territory” and therefore as “other” and “hostile” space; (4) the citywide space beyond the precinct, where professional duties are often perceived negatively and treated as a violation of policemen’s labor rights. In Russian, extensive summary in English.
More...Keywords: Employee motivation; customer loyalty; employee loyalty; commitment; customer orientation
The customer loyalization process represents a very complex endeavor which involves engaging a large number of variables in the most unexpected combinations. Loyalty seen as a particular expression of customer behavior is itself a dynamic concept, in the loyalty equation an important role being played by a series of antecedents, including employees motivation, commitment and performance. The paper proposes a holistic approach regarding connections that can be made between organisational culture-management involvement-motivation and satisfaction of employees-employee loyalty-customer loyalty, in the retail activity context. A number of three different studies have been made regarding the customer loyalty of a retail chain store, research that provide a double perspective on the subject – the customer perception about loyalty and employee‘s motivation and the employee‘s perception about customer loyalty and their own degree of motivation. The results have shown that in the context of retail activity relationship between employee intrinsic motivation, satisfaction and loyalty for the organization on one hand and customer loyalty and satisfaction on the other hand is a complex one and it is potentiated by the customer orientation at the level of the organisational management. For the particular chain store investigated, the research point out the importance of the self image of the employees based on the perception of the customers
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The review article focuses on the objectives set by the European Union in the Cyprus conflict to reconcile the island, promote cross-border collaboration, and end the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots. Subsequently it assesses in how far these objectives correspond to the measures taken and how far the aims have actually been met. It concludes that EU measures generally do not always meet the set objectives. This is because of a lack of coherence between the measures taken in the north and in the south of the island as a result of often poorly implemented regulations, as highlighted in the reports of the European Commission.
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Keywords: technological development; financial mechanism; statistical analysis; profit; profitability
On the basis of a financial analysis of the technological sectors in Ukraine’s economy, the author reveals financial preconditions for the change of technological orders. The article shows the limited character of the theoretical concept for the technological evolution of economic systems, which fails to hold true under the conditions of transition economy. Under the unstable conditions of transition economies, the technological advancement regenerates into its antipode, i.e. technological degradation of the production with a greatly financial basis. Due to the limited character of the existing market mechanisms, the author justifies the need to create a financial mechanism for technological development of the national economy with the use of state regulation.
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On 14 June 1982, a statue of Béla Bartók was dedicated in Paris. The bronze sculpture by Imre Varga, of which several versions exist, was a gift from Budapest to the City of Paris on the occasion of the naming of a public area in the 15th arrondissement after the Hungarian composer. The inauguration address was delivered by none other than Jacques Chirac (future Prime Minister, later President of the French Republic, and Mayor of Paris at the time) with his hallmark verve and empathy. I recall being surprised by the length at which he dwelled on the Kossuth Symphony, dissecting a work that was hardly ever performed in those days, and one which Bartók had composed at the age of twenty-two as a vehicle for his passionate feelings about his Hungarian national identity. It was a splendid speech that made me marvel at the genius of speechwriters in the service of the Mayor.
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Keywords: innovation management; small business strategies; strategic management; research and development (R&D).
Innovation management in SMEs means not only the operational control of processes, but also the strategic management of the company. A fundamental component of strategic innovation management is the long-term decision to innovate, which is accompanied by the need to establish structures and to provide resources for the acquisition of technology. Therefore, continuous research and development (R&D) is decisive in driving the success of the innovation process onto the market. The empirical analyses of R&D management and innovation success in SMEs uses data from the Third and Fourth Community Innovation Survey (CIS3 and CIS4), and discusses the following topics: firstly, some descriptive statistics on R&D in European SME’s, and in this context a brief discussion of R&D as a core business competence; secondly, the determining factors of R&D in SME’s; finally, the influence of R&D on market success.
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