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This article centers on the specific algorithm, devised to help students select the theme of the qualifying paper. The article also reviews the contents of the customs affairs specialists qualifying paper. The method of selecting the theme of the qualifying paper using the mind-map is offered. The Mind-map offers a convenient scheme for a student to select his or her own research advisor, work experience placement, object and subject of the qualifying paper. This article represents an analysis of example of student's qualifying paper on currency control theme choice, lays out the contents of theoretical and practical parts of the qualifying paper named “Institutional analysis of currency control on the territory of the Chelyabinsk region”. Methods of currency control scientific analysis with the aid of statistical methods and graphic techniques are offered.

In this paper, we first outline the Thales EC-supported project INVENVORG, which investigates the effects of the environmental factors on non-treated organic materials, namely bone, woolen textile, parchment, paper and wood. The project planning includes an accelerated ageing study (with exposure to elevated temperatures and relative humidities, light and pollutants) and then a natural ageing study in monitored museums environments, followed by the statistical correlation analysis of the material properties after accelerated and natural ageing with the environmental stresses, in order to determine the real life relative contribution of the various environmental parameters to material ageing. After a literature review concerning the exhaustive research on the accelerated ageing of paper, the experimental design pertaining to paper is presented. Accelerated ageing will be used for the production of artificially aged samples that emulate aged paper in a controlled manner. A preliminary ageing experiment will help determine the most suitable conditions, and will provide data that will be correlated to those produced by natural ageing. Virgin and artificially aged samples will then be exposed for 2 years to closely monitored museums environments. Tearing strength, degree of polymerization determined by viscometry, pH and the color coordinates of the CIEL*a*b* colour system will be determined and used for the statistical analysis.

This paper discusses two of the established tenets in paper conservation that permeate the existing relevant literature and define the conservation practice, in the light of recent findings. The idea that washing and deacidification can only be beneficial and that effects on ink and colours excluded, there are no negative side effects to paper properties, has been openly expressed and supported in many publications. New research and scattered uncommented results in the relevant literature though indicate that aqueous treatments may have a detrimental effect on the mechanical properties of paper, especially tensile strength and folding endurance. It is suggested that according to the principle of minimum intervention, washing and deacidification should be applied to acidic paper, and then followed by consolidation. Another tenet with important implications on conservation and preservation decision making concerns the rate of ageing. Research based exclusively on accelerated ageing tests has shown that ageing is at first a linear process which decelerates after a certain point. Nevertheless, the applicability of this scheme to the natural process of paper ageing has been argued, and another model based on accelerated ageing tests done in closed environments has been proposed which is believed to simulate natural ageing better than the previous one. In the early stages of ageing, both models give similar results, but overall, the linear model dramatically overestimates the useful life of paper. The newer model indicates that natural paper ageing in libraries and archives can be an accelerating process and puts to question the foundations of conservation research and preservation practice.

This paper presents the process of developing a web-based concordance search system for supporting university students to write papers in English, their target language. The development of this system was based on a preliminary study of lexical analysis of a corpus of English graduation papers written by Japanese university students. The preliminary study is presented including a description of the data accumulated for this study consisting of approximately 900,000 words taken from 212 student graduation papers submitted over the last five years. The data compiled was divided into 10 sub-corpora by discipline, and further into four sub-corpora by rhetorical structure. 98.6% of the words in the AWL were found in the corpus, along with the 998 basic words in BWL 1, and 922 out of 988 in BWL 2, suggesting the corpus is suitable for concordance work with future students. A concordance system was developed on a self-study network accessible on and off campus. It was designed so that the users can study the collocation information for each search word or phrase in a cross-sectional way by discipline and/or rhetorical structure. The effectiveness of the system will be examined based on actual use by students after further development.

This study explored how undergraduate students and their tutors in an English Language Teaching Department of a Turkish university conceptualised a good research paper and whether there was a match between the conceptions of both parties. In line with this purpose, the study specifically sought answers to what the students’ concerns and what their tutors’ views were on students’ potential problems during the process of writing a research paper. The findings revealed a match between the students’ and tutors’ perceptions of a good research paper. However, the parties conceived the constructs valued and problems faced differently.

This paper explores the theoretical review of technological innovation on SME survival by looking at literature review with SME studies. Previous reference on survival is still scarce even it is the key benchmark to measure business performance. It has been demonstrated within the literature that the practice of technological innovation is significantly associated with business performance but its effect towards SME survival is underexplored. SME survival refers to the year of business operation, availability of future plans and diversity of product/service range. According to social scientists and management experts, among the main technological innovations highlighted in literatures are namely sophisticated machines and equipments, fusion of different technologies, gadgets machines and equipments, fusion of different technologies, and gadgets as tools of innovation. By looking at the technological innovation scope by Diaconu (2011) ; social networking, computerized record, online marketing can be categorized under the current technological innovation as these mediums are based on technology and influence the development intensity with new or improved process or products. Apart from this justification, among other approaches, these three mediums are close to the business and its potentials are yet to be optimized. In short, the critical discussion provided in this paper would help to strengthen the body of knowledge on SME studies, besides to act as a reference for research in other countries. Findings from this review shed some lights on the potential of social networking as part of online marketing; as the online customers are greater than the typical offline customers. Also, the effect of online marketing via social media is more powerful and diverse due to its ability to reach customers regardless of geographical locations.

This study was conducted to identify and analyze some significant features that influence students and teachers about computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-and-pencil tests (P&P) at the context of the PAULEX Project. In order to do that, a large experiment has been developed at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Polytechnic University of Valencia), Spain, in which several students and professors have answered a validated questionnaire about their usage of technology, feelings and experiences. They also compared their preferences after doing two similar basic tests, CBT and P&P.

The aim of the scientific paper is to deepen into the domain analysis and network analysis of the bibliography about professional competences from the perspective of organizational psychology, looking for the existing relations between authors and trends, significant because of their direct influence on the members of an organization. The techniques used, network analysis and domain analysis, allow getting clusters that group data with similar features considering units of measure such as co-citation and co-occurrence. As a result, the characteristics of the competence models related to organizational psychology, their limitations, initial development, evolution and trends are presented.

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in carbon information disclosure. This research aims to examine carbon reporting practices of Malaysian companies. Further analysis will be conducted to examine the influence of internal organizational factors on the carbon reporting practices. The relationship between carbon performance, carbon reporting and firm performance will be investigated. This paper also explores the moderating effect of the corporate governance quality on the relationship between carbon reporting practices and firm performance. The findings from this study have a significant contribution to carbon reporting literature, Malaysian companies, government and accounting regulation body.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting services and impact on SMEs performance in manufacturing sector from East Coast Region of Malaysia. This paper aims the extend of differences in service quality factors among accountant firm and SMEs. A conceptual framework was developed to highlight the relationship between SMEs in accounting services. This paper presents a gap model of services, Resource-based Theory (RBT) and Principal Agent Theory as an approach to be examined. The AMOS (SEM) and NVivo Software will be used to tabulate the data gather form the research question. There appears a relationship on service quality and performance of SMEs and also accountant firms. This paper is limited among selected manufacturing sectors and accountant firms from East Coast Region of Malaysia. This paper has implication for accountant firms, SMEs, academic and also to the company involve and handle in service quality. This paper should be contributed the gap model and the entrepreneurial development policy for SMEs and accounting firms to sustain the national economy.

d Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Abstract The recognition of training as an important development of human resource in implementing the quality of its human capital needs is no longer a new issue. However, despite several attempts trying to improve the success of training transfer onto the job, majority of the employees attending training had indicated that they had less successfully transferred the knowledge, skills and attitudes they have learnt and even further minimal change in behavior in their job-related performance. In this paper, the qualitative and quantitative investigation was conducted to examine the extent of training transfer knowledge activities (in compiling, gathering, collating and synthesising the employees experience, knowledge, skills and abilities) among executives at selected agribusiness and agro-technology based organizations. Final knowledge on training transfer performance and program were further formulated with feedback from training transfer expert. This paper contributes to the alternate model in favour of innovative and sustainable governance of a holistic agribusiness policy framework.

This conceptual research paper is about Malaysians’ perceptions toward products made in Malaysia versus products made in China. Local products are generally perceived as being of lesser quality compared to others. It is now common for most products to have the label “Made in China”; unfortunately, products made in China are also not renowned for their quality. With this in mind, what would Malaysians’ choices be? Products made in China are often cheaper compared to locally made products, mainly due to China's massive production industry. Apart from price, other factors that will be tested in this study are ethnocentrism and product quality (including aesthetics, performance and durability) that might affect consumers’ purchase decisions toward products made in China or Malaysia.

Realising that the National Vision and National Agricultural Policy to make Malaysia a major world producer of food and agricultural products; agricultural institutions in Malaysia have been given the task to help to improve the income of target groups that covers the rural areas farmer, and the poor income group nationwide. This is line with the National Key Result Area (NKRA), which may require all departments and agencies under the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to improve the income levels, and hence the quality of life of these rural areas farmers. In order to enhance the level of income, and create wealth in economy among these target groups, it is critical to build innovative governance model for the rural transformation center so as to improve sales of agro-based industry products. Hence, the objective of this paper is to focus on reviewing successful governance related to managing the agribusiness products from rural farmers, planters, and low income groups of producers. The expected outcomes highlight to formulate new policy, practice and reliable ways of assessing the innovative and sustainable governance model for global agribusiness Institutions.

The sociotechnical regime of the print-on-paper prevails as the main medium of textual communication despite concerns on its environmental implications. Radical innovation in the form of application of generic technologies is required to address these sustainability concerns. Electronic book technologies are seen as those applications of IT providing an alternative form of textual display. According to sociotechnical transitions theory the electronic book is positioned as a niche in relation to the print-on-paper regime. SNA is applied in order to describe the niche as a sociotechnical network. It emerges that network substructures indicate potential sociotechnical trajectories regarding the development of the electronic book niche.

SMEs in Malaysia are an important segment of the nation s wealth creation and for employment. Approximately 99.2% of the total established businesses in Malaysia are SMEs and the total employment share is 59.5%. The Malaysian government is confident that the Economic Transformation Plan framework will boost the SMEs to become the driving force in building the nation. In view of this, the primary aim of this research is to delve into the predictor that encourages the practice of market orientation from the perspective of entrepreneurial attitude orientation of the Malaysian entrepreneurs. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on market orientation by having a better understanding of the specific factors which are crucial for SMEs to assist in the nation wealth creation.

Solid waste always produce negative impacts to the environment, thus effective solutions must be implemented. However, most people are not concerned of the importance of recycling. At the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) which has already launched the sustainable campus programme in 2007, the initiative to managing the solid waste and conducting the recycling programs were advocated through the Zero Waste Campus Initiative (ZWCI), where the team are committed to do the awareness, practices and enforcement regarding solid waste management in UKM. It would be undesirable if these initiatives to educate the majority of the community of UKM were not put into practice. To solve this problem, a study has been conducted to determine an effective method of recycling management at UKM in providing quality service that encouraged UKM's community to recycle. The effectiveness of recycling programs is influenced by a number of factors such as proper service facilities and good management system. Paper recycling boxes in each office which is one of recycling component that play important role to educate UKM staff and awareness of importance recycling system in waste management campus. This paper discusses the efforts carried out at UKM to create an operational system and implement efficient recycling management by improving the current management system.

This paper reports on an on-going action research that enquires into the academic writing of a project paper by international post-graduate students enrolled at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Preliminary observations reveal that many of these students are underprepared for the task, citing cross-cultural limitations stemming from differences in teaching and learning styles vis-avis here and their home countries. They also claim that they are not prepared for the autonomy that is presented in the data collecting process and the writing of the paper. This action research aims to address the problem with a focus on the Statement of Problem. Data for the study were collected through semi-structured questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. The researchers believe that if intervention is provided at the early stages of the writing, these novice writers should be able to achieve academic socialization.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between users’ characteristics towards adopting the LLMTG. These relations were found correlated in its intention to adopt this type of glass in building structures. Despite the indication provided by numerous empirical studies, the organizations that adopt the LLMTG will gain more competitive advantage and improvement. It is strongly believed that this attempt would contribute both to knowledge of the diffusion of innovation and to implications for practice by assisting the industry to understand the important factors when adopting innovation. Rich data will be collected using questionnaire among managers from all industrial in Malaysia.

Thus far no effort has been undertaken to facilitate foodservice operators to measure their performance, identify and deploy appropriate measures to improve the requirements and expectations of a Halalan Toyyiban Foodservice modus operandi. This paper looks into developing the tools to measure the Halal Foodservice Service Quality based on previous literature and in-depth interviews to be conducted among selected Muslim Clergies and the general public followed by validation process using statistical analysis. This tool could be used to minimize the occurrence of halal service failures, improve recovery efforts, increase customer satisfaction, and generate positive re-patronage behaviour at food service establishments.

Current studies agree on the need of training university students in various competences. Among them, writing stands out as an essential competence. This study analyzes the abstract produced by Spanish PhD candidates in the context of an academic writing workshop. These abstracts were rewritten as a result of peers’ and supervisors’ reviews. The purpose is to analyze the construction of this type of text in relation to its content categories. The results attest a series of challenges faced by students and help teachers in the design of their teaching instruction.

Negotiation is a pervasive feature of relationships among auditor-clients, buyer-sellers, as well as being a part of tax audits. Various forms of negotiations occur between the taxpayer and the tax authorities but nothing is mentioned in the literatures on the processes and procedures of how both parties arrive at a settlement that is amicable to both parties. This study reviews the literature on how concession timing negotiation strategies adopted by the tax authorities and the tax practitioners’ aggressiveness impact negotiation outcomes.

Ethics and communication with patients are basic transversal skills for the Degrees in Medicine, Physiotherapy and Nutrition. In this model, senior students use video to create simulated clinical cases with ethics and communication components, and conduct academic mentoring using these cases. To ensure quality video recordings, the students are introduced to visual language by students of the Master's in Communication, thus completing the learning cycle.

Eucalyptus forest area and total production of eucalyptus oil on Buru Island are the largest in Indonesia. The revenue of eucalyptus oil industry in Buru decreased in the last 5 years and is still managed conventionally. The increasing production capacity and value added is necessary, because eucalyptus oil is the leading commodity in Buru. Therefore, the development of agro-processing eucalyptus oil is one solution to the economic development in Buru. This research which is done through: determining the factors that influence the development of agro-processing eucalyptus oil; clustering potential development of agro-processing; and the preparation of the development of agro-processing of eucalyptus oil. The result of this research, there are 6 development clusters and 2 phases of the roadmap, namely: establishment of new industrial cluster, optimization of raw materials cluster, and the increasing of production capacity efficiently cluster (Factor-Driven); raw material efficiency cluster, industrial activity maintenance cluster, and product differentiation cluster (Capital-Driven).

This publication presents subject matter connected with the role of seaports as integrated logistics centers in the development of sustainable distribution of goods in urban areas. Seaports as integrated logistics centers and multifunctional socio-economic spaces are the key components of the European and global transport system. They carry out the functions and services necessary for the efficiency of supply chains, and their final elements include the distribution of goods from the places of production to places of consumption. Seaports cover the transport, logistic, distribution and spatial functions, which influence city development, while logistics centers cover the distribution function. The development of seaports is a result of their multifunctionality and multimodality focused on the widening of the range of services, which allows them to meet different demands of the environment. Thus, seaports and logistics centers have become elements of urban transport systems included in the EU policy of sustainable development of transport. Particularly important here is the latest implementation of the objectives of the EU White Paper on the development of resource-efficient and low-carbon transport in ecological urban transport. The publication presents existing solutions and possible directions concerning the activity of seaports as logistics centers in the area of urban logistics.

Employability denotes skills and attributes that make an individual desirable to potential employers. Owing to the dramatic increase in enrollment rate of higher education, a diploma is no longer a guarantee of employment and higher education institutes are expected to equip students with employability skills and attributes. However, the mandatory inclusion of employability skills and attributes in higher education has provoked considerable debate and controversy. Although the connection between employability and employment is well-documented, it is not clear whether employability skills have potential impacts on academic performance of graduate students. This study investigated the relationship between academic publication and perceived employability of graduate students in business and management by analyzing data from Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) in Taiwan. Of the 6,876 graduate students in business and management responding to the survey, 2,015 (29.3%) and 508 (7.4%) of them submitted at least one conference paper or peer-reviewed journal article, respectively. Logistic regression was used to evaluate the associations between paper/article submission and perceived employability of graduate students, controlled for student attributes. The findings suggest that 4 employability skills are significantly associated with academic publication of graduate students, including “foreign language ability”, “computer literacy”, “application of theory to work”, and “stability and pressure resistance”. All control factors, including “school type”, “gender”, “entrance exam for graduate school”, “years in graduate school”, “full-time student”, and “participation in academic community”, have significantly connection with academic publication. The results imply that employability is not only associated with employment processes but also related to academic publication of graduate students and provide insights into the potential benefits of enhancing employability to both students and universities.

At the end of 2011, the Association of Lithuanian Serials initiated a survey, which aimed to ascertain whether Lithuanian journal editors, reviewers and authors encountered plagiarism, self-plagiarism and how they understood originality of a paper. Additionally, the survey looked at methods used for plagiarism prevention by editors and reviewers as well as ways, in which editors managed issues related to plagiarism. The survey suggests that no unanimous decision exists regarding the originality of a manuscript and that editors expect reviewers to identify plagiarism with little use of technologies. While answering to survey questions, respondents provided numerous comments. This demonstrates that plagiarism is a burning issue and scientific misconduct policy is needed in Lithuania. The survey was conducted during the period when the Lithuanian Research Council initiated the procedure for establishing the Ombudsman position. The Lithuanian Research Council funded several projects in 2012 and 2013, the aim of which was to familiarise the Lithuanian academic community with plagiarism prevention technologies and ethical aspects in academic publishing. The projects administrated by the Association of Lithuanian Serials provide research journal publishers and researchers related to journal publishing with a possibility of using CrossCheck system and discussing editorial policies.

Handicrafts, essentially, are activities resulting from the wish to satisfy the basic needs of humans; which can be built by very simple tools and appliances, uses easily obtainable materials or leftovers as raw materials, demands intense effort and creation power. Moreover, handicrafts are work fields, which merge features of being functional, aesthetical, and economical, and mostly are free tune activities that can also be main activities. IIandicrafts matter in country development and promotion. Therefore the education given about handicrafts becomes prominent. Private and public institutions conduct handicrafts educations. In this research, the education given by profession acquirement courses organized by Ankara Kecioren Municipality branch's of his action (wire breaking, five needles lace knitting, decorative wood adornments, needle lace, stone dolls and tragacanth dolls, jeweler design, felt making, leather processing, paper marbling (ebru in Turkish), ornamentation, calligraphy, ceramic glaze, patchwork etc.), the produces obtained from courses will be categorized and presented with photographs. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Forecasts indicate that it is not possible to reduce total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport to fulfill the target of two degrees global warming with technology means alone. It is possible to reduce GHG-emissions for all modes but still rail will be the most efficient mode by 2050. Rail has a modest market share in the European Union (EU) in comparison with ‘best practice’ rail systems in the world. There is a big potential if the rail system is developed with new high speed rail and freight corridors as well as an upgraded conventional network and intermodal systems. This paper presents an estimation of the effects of a partial mode shift to rail transport applying world's ‘best practice’ by the year 2050. It is shown that such a mode shift to rail can reduce EU transport GHG emissions over land by about 20%, compared with a baseline scenario. In combination with low-carbon electricity production a reduction of about 30% may be achieved. A developed rail system can thus substantially contribute to the EU target of reducing GHG emissions in the transport sector by 60% below 1990 levels. To enable such a mode shift and to manage the demand for capacity, there is a need for investments. This will also maintain and increase mobility for passengers and freight transport.

This study investigates the effect of hypermedia-hypertext and paper-pencil type concept maps created in the Basic Chemistry I course for the subject of atom and bonding on students’ meaningful learning. The research was conducted with a total of 30 students enrolled in Basic Chemistry I at Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education. An atom-bonding knowledge test and concept maps were used as data collection tools in this study. It was established that concept maps created using the hypermedia-hypertext technique contribute to the students’ meaningful learning.

The rise of the Internet has drastically changed the means by which people obtain information and communicate in the Malaysian society. The Internet has become possibly the most popular medium to connect with others particularly through social networking tools, like Facebook, Twitter and other. For the field of counseling, the Internet offers a new way to reach, facilitate and communicate with individuals who need help from all over the world. Little is known, however, about the implications of interacting with clients online. The purpose of this writing, therefore, is to address the possible advantages and disadvantages of online counseling, as well as ethical and legal considerations in the use of online counseling by summarizing the past research. Additionally, suggestions for better practice are also discussed so that counselors and therapists are able to have a better preparation before practicing online counseling. Overall, this writing has several important implications for counseling practitioners in Malaysia and beyond. It contributes to a better understanding of the role of the Internet in counseling practice in an increasingly electronic world.

The differences in communicating methods between teachers who have learned to study in paper based context and students who are more familiar with screen based context can cause problems in classrooms. This paper discusses issues and concerns in interacting with students who grew up surrounded by multimedia and digital devices, in other words, screenagers, in classrooms. Based on the recent projects and research findings, four key themes are discussed regarding interacting through personal learning devices, communicating with the students in the way they do using social media, appropriate amount of exposure when using audiovisual resources, and possible side effects of using personal learning devices. Finally, teachers’ roles and responsibilities in dealing with screenagers are discussed, and suggestion for using teaching models and teacher training are provided.

The Resource-based View (RBV) of the firm is a strategic management theory that is widely used by managers in project management. The RBV has to date been a promising theory that examines how resources can drive competitive advantage, especially project management (PM) capabilities that have been customized to a specific organizational environment and developed over time. However, Despite the advantages offered by the RBV to practitioners and scholars alike, the theory has been under attack by opponents claiming that there is an overenthusiasm for what the theory can deliver, especially concerning a lack of criteria for generalizability and definitional ailments. This position paper will give an overview of the supporters and opponents of the application of the RBV in PM practice and research. The position of the authors of this paper, which is in favour of the continued application of the theory to PM contexts, will be detailed and supported by conceptual and empirical findings from the literature. This paper will end with future research recommendations that will highlight research that can be done to curb criticisms of the theory and enhance and rejuvenate its use in practice.

The development of alternative energy fuel technology at present many are produced from biological resources, eg the manufacture of biodiesel and biodiesel as a fuel substitute for gasoline. This study aims to obtain biogas from chocolate rind that can be used as an alternative energy and find operating conditions that produce appropriate levels of CH4 in the standard Indonesian. The first stage is done by preparing 1 liter of raw materials chocolate rind and water are then mixed with a starter (cow dung) 10% of the volume of raw materials and the addition of yeast and grass after it is mixed until blended. Then put into containers/bottles that have been fitted hose, water manometer, and the gas holder. The research was done in stages with the conditions that you run. Variables that run is a comparison of raw material (1:1; 1:1.5; 1:2; 1.5:1; 2:1), observation time (5 days, 10 days, 15 days, 20 days, 25 days, 30 days), and the variable addition of grass (50 gr, 100 gr, 150 gr, 200 gr). From the results of this reasearch found the greatest level of 74.22% in comparison 1 (water): 1.5 (chocolate rind) with the addition of 150 g of grass while low levels of 60.04% in comparison 2 (water): 1 (chocolate rind) with the addition of 200 g of grass.

The purpose of this work is to confirm theoretical findings in the field of management of higher education (institutions) and contribute with our own findings on the elements, mechanisms and instruments that affect the quality and effectiveness of managing and organizing higher education at the national and institutional level, and thus contribute to a more efficient and effective higher education. This work will also clarify interdisciplinary connections between various segments of the above mentioned management of higher education (institutions) field, which has not been explained yet. In the introduction of the paper, the impact of higher education on economic development and on knowledge society is explained briefly. Further on, the background of the work is illustrated and the definition of the working problem is explained, which basically refers to the inefficiency of (mostly) publicly-funded higher education and lack of proper managerial solutions and skills at higher education institutions. Furthermore, the role of higher education and major trends in higher education are introduced and discussed. The main contribution of the paper is the matrix of higher education objectives which have to be realized in order to implement a successful higher education and institutions, mainly from managerial and financial perspectives.

Knowledge management started to be perceived as a scientific discipline relatively recently. Since its beginnings in the 1990s, the interest for this research field has been constantly growing especially in the past two decades. However, it seems that the peak of interest has already passed. In this paper, we provided the review of the most important research documents that are related with this topic, all collected from the Web of Science. The most important scholars and journals in the field are identified via documents and citations among them. In addition, the purpose of this paper is also to analyse the existing linkage between knowledge management and innovation. For this purpose, a network of keywords was constructed with keywords performing as actors in the network and the co-occurrence as a relation. The network obtained of keywords is undirected and weighted by the number of documents in which adjacent keywords which co-occurred on the topic of knowledge management. The content analysis with traditional network analytic techniques was used. In other fields, similar methods were already applied; however, this is the first attempt to construct this kind of research in knowledge management related to the topic of innovation. The results revealed significant linkage between knowledge management and innovation in the documents which were analyzed. We believe that the network analytic procedures used in this paper provide an excellent tool to study such a relevant phenomenon.

This paper presents an investigation on the current market conditions in sales based in the automotive industry and a new approache triggered by the digitization in this industry. Various studies prove that the behavior of the customers has changed drastically. By this customer experience, management becomes a central strategy in the digital age to reach long-term customer loyalty and enterprise growth. It is therefore necessary to adapt the function of the car dealers and, in general, innovative sales formats and technologies for communication with the customer. This paper describes how Daimler AG is reacting to these market changes with the concept of “Mercedes Me”.

Changing technologies, where development time for a new work product must be decreased with each year due to a higher customer competition, also leads to a change in mindset in the way in which product development is currently done. Gamification models are one of this “game-changing” strategies that was considered suitable to also be implemented in the automotive software product development topic, but not only in this area. This paper describes the current situation in adopting on large scale the product development phases as gamified scenario, together with the presentation of the results of several questionnaires applied on automotive project team members. The aim of the paper is to present a procedure for obtaining a gamification application on an automotive project describing in detail each step which needs to be fulfilled in an iterative way. As a starting point for the model, the DMA (Design – Mechanics – Aesthetic) procedure was used, supported with elements from the PC/game console development, but also the existing tools/frameworks were taken into consideration. The obtained method can be applied on each automotive project, but there are the steps/iterations which still need to be performed, while also the positive and negative aspects are presented.

Cloud computing is today's edge of ICT, being present in quite all fields of economy, society and human life: education, medicine, industry, communication, etc., offering services and applications that are used daily by everyone connected to the internet. The quality of these services is a cutting subject for all stakeholders. This paper synthesizes some relevant researches focusing on quality management approaches in software services using remote assistance as tool and cloud as support of this service. As first step, the literature review focuses on cloud as being the most emerging and comprehensive subject on the deck, then extends the research on software services supported by cloud, identifying quality interventions in these cases and in the end, is looking for quality related demarches in remote assistance of these services. The research tries to identify how quality could influence cloud products in favor of the customer, targeting better cloud-connected services and applications. Proposing an exploratory research, the paper's intended contribution is placed mainly in clarifying the mentioned concepts and the way they are correlated in the practical world.

This scientific paper conducts a study meant to improve the quality management of the thermosonic welding process of gold wires in the automotive industry. Within the large amount of electronic products manufactured worldwide, the gold wire bonding is the preferred technology for creating the needed interconnections in the microelectronic industry. In this paper, the quality management improving starts with an experimental research in the automotive industry, based on the gold wire thermosonic bonding, in terms of: conformal structuring, robustness and integrity of the electrical contacts. The experimental research is based on the processing parameters and on the independent variables and objective processing functions. In order to highlight the impact which one or more factors have on the quality of the thermosonic bonding, the dispersion analysis method was used. According to this, the importance of each factor, but also each factor's optimization, was underlined. The final goal was to reach a high reliability and quality of the finished goods.

Sustainability is a concept adopted and approached in public and private organizations as a guiding principle that contributes to organizational development. However, the greatest challenge for organizations is its real implementation and the steps to be taken in this respect. At the same time, another challenge is how this sustainable development performance can be measured (for products and processes). These concepts are addressed in a competitive business environment, where differentiation and attraction of customers are among the main directions of action. In this context, the present paper presents Life cycle sustainability assessment of products in the context of competitiveness. At the end of the paper, an approach for the interpretation of the results obtained from the Life cycle sustainability assessment is presented.

Crisis management represents a multidisciplinary topic in many sciences. Social sciences, state affairs, medicine, engineering and many others are interested to handle unforeseen major great impact events. The paper presents some differences and common topics of crisis management using two different approaches. The first is Public Relations (PR), as part of the communication sciences; and the second is the Holonic Multi-Agent (HMAS) Concept, which is a research topic belonging to software engineering and computational sciences. We have two different approaches, but one common goal: providing the feasible support for the crisis management team under abnormal working conditions. Dealing with the holonic approach, the paper suggests a centralized distributed crises management, a non-linear approach in which the human factor's intuition, skills and expertise are key elements.

Rural population migration in the urban area attracts a high rate of mobility, especially in cities with university centers and renowned companies. The emergence of these transitions also generates some saturation problems, such as socio-economic and social issues. The need for improvement in transport services are mandatory to change the travel behaviour. This paper provides solutions and ways to improve public transport services by using intermodal passenger transport. Transport services for the population need to be met at a higher level, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The paper illustrates the steps of integrating the Theory of Constraints Thinking Process (TOCTP) by diagnosing the problems encountered, designing the solution plan, and integrating the solution plan to resolve constraints. The paper explains how the TOCTP application detects reliable solutions to solve urban population saturation problems by identifying alternatives to public transport mobility benefits using intermodal passenger transport.

The paper presents the model of training for preschool and primary school teachers with the aim of preparing them to become the mentors for their colleagues at school - novice teachers in Zlin region in Czech Republic. The project includes sixteen differentiated instructional modules regarding the actual needs of teachers' professional development. The project is implemented by the Faculty of Humanities at Tomas Bata University in Zlin in Czech Republic since 2014 so this paper presents already the experiences with creating a platform for teachers' training as well with results from selected modules. The author concentrates on the instructional module focused on the case of creating a school team for good working and healthy school climate and the paper also presents the partial outcomes of the project evaluation. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd., Education Policy of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic

Applied informatics engineering students of the undergraduate course Programming I get acquainted with the basic programming knowledge (structured programming) in C. Our earlier personal experiences in Higher Education showed that the majority of the students can not acquire the algorithmic thinking by following the traditional teaching process and they do not have too much chance to pass it. Our starting hypothesis was that the group where the students followed the game oriented exercises would achieve better results in the papers. After the semester we collected the paper results by groups and we tried to analyze whether this method was helpful or not for the students. The traditional way to teach programming for applied informatics engineering students was not so successful than the game-based examples. The students were more motivated to write game programs and more students could pass the test. It means by same learning material and test exercises the student who learned programming in game-based method could get more than one mark better paper results and pass the test in higher percent.

The paper explores the potential of ICT-based visual resources for developing non-language students’ skills in the area of language and culture mediation in domain specific area. The legal administrative settings are taken as an example. The paper integrates the previous research findings regarding the visualization role in education and latest developments in the field under study. The research framework maps the concepts of visualization and cross-cultural mediation within the educational environment that is supposed to meet the multicultural society needs and challenges. The paper highlights qualitative analysis findings regarding the students’ use of visual resources with the view to their academic progress and professional development. The paper argues the ICT-based visualization in training language and culture mediation skills could facilitate information processing and domain specific knowledge acquisition in a foreign language$ the relevant resources use could enhance students’ professional background, their abilities to meet the labor market requirements regarding applied and research-focused task. The paper provides the relevant literature analysis, a detailed description of the research methodology, and commentary students’ pilot training outcomes, including the data of cluster and factor types of analysis and students’ survey results.

The paper explores the higher education institution experience activities regarding minors’ protection against abuse and exploitation within the international framework of the challenge under study. The research stands on the comparative analysis of the Lanzarote Committee documents, explored Parties’ replies to Question 2 (Education for children) of the Thematic Questionnaire and Question 8(a) (Education, awareness raising and training), first indent, of the General Overview Questionnaire. The analysis also took into account Academia's publications on the issue under study. The Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) faculty members’ participation in the Lanzarote Committee work also contributed to the research. The paper highlights qualitative analysis findings that cover such issues as the education contexts for preventive information delivery, their contents, tools and forms of disseminating preventive information, terminology used, parents’ engagement, situations of risks, etc. The above aspects are considered through the lenses of university engagement in the analysis. The paper argues that the university can contribute to capacity-building measures for minors’ education to prevent their abuse and exploitation; the university capacity to perform the relevant activities rests on its multiprofiled structure, comprehensive nature, and opportunities to collaborate with various agencies and engage specialists in pedagogy, law, medicine, psychology and psychiatry, etc. The research findings reveal that the university might play a significant role in shaping information, bridging institutional responses, coordinating the legislation, government policies and the public initiatives to promote action plans towards the nation-wide and international levels to protect minors and combat against their abuse and exploitation.

The paper presents a descriptive study that analyzes the relationship between science and common culture in the social representations of problems arising from climate change, stressing the importance of promoting adequate communication and education on climate risks and their implications for health. The global climate change on Earth due to natural and anthropogenic causes that occurs at different time scales is a matter of controversy among scientists, policy makers and especially among ordinary citizens who are informed, generally, for the most common means of communication, creating a common culture in relation to this aspect that reveals very interesting facts about what is meant and is known for Climate Change and the consequences that such knowledge can lead to mitigate or otherwise increase. The construction of the common culture on climate change and the problems that entails is comprised of different construction way scientific element; so that knowledge of the common culture on Climate Change can improve education and communication about the threat of it to health. The study was conducted from the selection of a significant sample of 512 university students taking as independent variables the branch of knowledge and the course. Has been used as a tool for data collection a questionnaire with 45 questions of closed type, of which the first 32 questions are made with the intention of assessing students' knowledge regarding Climate Change and the remaining 13 questions are related personal and subjective aspects This paper is part of the research RESCLIMA project supported by the Ministry of Economy & Competitiveness, Government of Spain (EDU2015-63572-P) SI

The paper examines the potential of flipped classroom applying in foreign language teaching. The authors look back at the history of emerging of the method, analyse its advantages over other traditional approaches. Among the advantages it should be mentioned time extension between the teacher and the student; increase of responsibility and self-reliance of the latter; personified approach to each learner; teacher's capability to create authorized mini lectures, taking into account the peculiarities of vocationally-orientated teaching, as well as age peculiarities and other features of each learning group; possibility for each student to work according to his/her personal pace, using time more effectively relative to the students and the teacher; increasing creativity and critical thinking; potential for permanent data archiving; positive transformation of teacher/students’ role relations when a student becomes a protagonist and creator of his/her own knowledge, at the same time the teacher becomes the guide and councilor; advancement of the learner's motivation; improvement of the atmosphere in the classroom that becomes more friendly and comfortable; chance for better concentration in the classroom. The paper describes flipped classroom method in graphics and proposes some practical examples of its application.

This paper revisits the existing literature on the concept of citizenship in digital age. It provides a detailed discussion on the proponents and opponents of technological determinism. The paper should be read as an effort to reinitiate an important debate in the scholarship, which has been largely undermined while studying the Internet phenomenon in the information age. Thus, instead of offering a solution-oriented conclusion, the paper sets the stage to invite mass media and communication scholars’ attention back to revisit the important ideological concepts, so as to evolve and improve our existing theories on communication and change in the society.

Today's highly competitive and rapidly changing environment makes innovation more challenging, costly and risky for companies. To overcome these challenges and to decrease the cost and the risk of innovation, companies, including SMEs, have adopted a new approach called Open Innovation, which was proven by academic studies to be useful for SMEs to improve their innovativeness. However, studies about the openness of SMEs or the adoption level of open innovation approach by SMEs give conflicting results. We argue that these conflicting results stem from the different conditions in developing countries and developed countries. Main aim of this paper is to define factors that motivate or prevent the adoption of open innovation approach by SMEs operating in developing countries, and to suggest policy requirements and actions need to be taken to ease the creation of an open innovation ecosystems that support SMEs. Incentive to leverage SME-university and SME-LE collaboration, creating innovation hubs to improve networking ability of SMEs, free IP consulting, conducting external search on behalf of SMEs are some of the actions suggested in this paper.

With the emergence of strategy literature both strategic aspect of human resource management and entrepreneurial activities in the organizations have been among the most remarkable subjects of research papers. In the literature the effect of strategic human resource management (SHRM) on firm performance has been extensively examined. The latest papers started to extensively investigate the effects of third variables in this relationship. Also, in recent years some researchers have studied and shown significant interactions between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and human resource practices. In this study we focus on the important role of entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between SHRM and firm performance. For this purpose a questionnaire was prepared and data were collected from the firms that operate in different industries in Istanbul. The collected data from questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS and AMOS software programs. Analyses results indicated that entrepreneurial orientation mediated the relationship between strategic human resource management and firm performance (both financial performance and employee performance).

Strategic planning in higher education has become one of the most important factors of today's education system. State of the Republic of Turkey, which is aware of importance of this trend in the world, made the preparation and implementation of five-year strategic plans mandatory for higher education institutions. However, when examining the strategic plans made by universities in Turkey in general, it draws attention that strategy development techniques are not used in development processes. Strategies at different levels in universities are not taken in consideration, and strategies are not determined by high participation and not formed and implemented in a conscious way. Marmara University has developed a different and unique approach by considering these facts when doing researches to develop strategies to be effective in the next five-year period. In this notification, it is aimed to reveal strategical approach developed exclusive to universities in 2017-2021 strategic plan of Marmara University, and strategy development process model formed for the purpose of being internalized of strategy in institution. In this respect, in study; it is mentioned how participation of academic and administrative personnel is provided, in which way it is focused on creating value for all stakeholders, how internal and external environment analysis are made with which scientific research projects and how corporate learning is supported in every stage of the process. This paper tries to highlight a case from Marmara University's strategy development process indicating how strategic plan on “the paper” can be changed into internalized strategy creating change, momentum and dynamism trough the both implementation of a new approach to strategy and strategy development process.

Conditions in which contemporary employee teams are created and operate undergo dynamic changes. This paper presents research in the field of intergenerational cooperation in Polish organisations in the context of the observed demographic trends, based on literature studies and research conducted by the authors. The main aim of this paper is to attempt to answer the question: Is the age of employees reflected in the approach to intergenerational cooperation in Polish organisations? Therefore, statistical analyses were carried out to verify the research hypotheses. The statistical analysis was based on authors’ own pilot study on the age management in Polish small and medium-sized enterprises. The results of this research have approximate characteristics and refer only to the examined sample size.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the forms of economic challenges for the joint venture infrastructure projects. Economic challenges are divided into internal and external challenges. The methodology applied is quantitative approach. The outcome of the research indicates that the critical internal economic challenge is vague financial documentation and the external economic challenge was legal conditions. Thus, this paper encouraged the joint venture company to implement the post counteractive act plan as an innovative business tactic to continue the joint venture's survival to augment the quality of life among contractors that execute joint venture on the other.

The aim of this paper is to suggest a specific teaching approach which employs a critical thinking model, as well as to show the possibilities for structuring professional knowledge and enhancing learning efficiency. Entering the world of global competition, the emphasis is on the need to prepare students to be communicative, collaborative, creative, innovative, to think critically and analytically, and to be able to effectively solve real-world problems. With higher-order thinking skills, which are essential for absorbing knowledge as well as for work performance, students will become effective communicators, critical and dynamic thinkers, competent problem solvers and career experts. By utilizing innovative pedagogy to support teaching and learning goals, students will be more likely to achieve their full potential and have their voices heard. The paper focuses on critical thinking for undergraduate ESP engineering students. Those students need strong critical thinking skills which are essential to get to the root of problems and find reasonable solutions. A model of critical thinking is designed to help those students to develop their thinking skills and prepare for a global, complex society.

This paper discusses the necessity to include translation practices into a compulsory language course intended for PhD students, which entailed thorough reviewing and overhauling programs and syllabi currently in use in tertiary technical education in Russia. The methods applied involve (1) student and teacher survey to identify the needs of program graduates and (2) a correlation analysis to examine the content of FL courses within technical PhD programs. The paper also proposes reallocation of contact hours, which should provide ameliorative interference to allow universities to get closer to the objectives set.

ESP (English for Specific Purposes) is prevailing in China nowadays, but with the traditional teaching model, its development has been blocked by the limitation of the traditional teaching. Researchers are exploring the new model for English teaching, they combine ESP with MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) and ⿿Flipped Classroom⿿(a reversal of traditional teaching) theoretically instead of practically. With the theory of constructivism, the paper focuses especially on the implementation of the new model. The new model is taken into practice with the combination of ESP, MOOC and ⿿Flipped classroom⿿. According to Tyler, the father of the curriculum theory, the paper shows the new model in four parts: Purpose, content, teaching organization and teaching evaluation. The new model has been implemented for a term, the author collects students objective and subjective feedback and makes the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the effects of the new model with the software SPSS. The paper makes the conclusion of three advantages of the new model and gives suggestions to the education of English in the future.

In this paper are discussed the tools of marketing communication which the Department of communication of The Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications of Zilinska univerzita v Ziline uses in its activities. Specifically, we pay attention to various areas as advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion. The paper presents a survey of customer satisfaction with the presentation of the Department of communications. We have used a direct survey method, specifically the marketing research. The aim was to find out how students of selected classes perceive level of marketing activities in the field of communication at their department. This set out four key proposals arising from the previous stages of research and analysis. It is an informative brochure for potential students, informative board, innovation of the department's website, and suggestion for promotional products. Planning of marketing activities can be targeted at different defined objectives. In the case of the communication policy of the Department of Communications, this planning is designed to increase the effectiveness of marketing presentations. Through a detailed marketing plan drawn up by the various instruments of communication mix their introduction into the process of using will facilitate.

The transition of the Slovak economy to a market-driven has caused more changes also in the organizational structure of tourism on national, regional and local level. The aim of the paper is to analyse the current organizational structure of destination management in Slovakia, the activities and financing of the destination management organizations (DMOs) and to evaluate the impact of state subsidies on tourism development in Slovakia. The majority of governmental subsidies are given to destinations with the highest developed infrastructure and the newly introduced Act no. 91/2010 Coll. about the support of tourism in Slovakia itself contributes to the deepening of regional disparities. The micro-regional DMOs are up to now financed mainly from the state budget and in case, that the funding from the government will be decreased, it is still the question of the sustainability of newly created DMOs. The Slovak DMOs should try to focus more on the increase of the revenues from their own activities, but this solution is limited by existing act, they should try to get more members or the other possibility is the merger of existing micro-regional DMOs into larger organizations covering the larger territory. According to the results of the analysis based on the research of task and resources, size and dominance, the paper proposes new geographical distribution of the micro-regional DMOs on the territory of 8 self-government regions.

Transnational corporations are one of the most important subjects of international economics. They are directly affecting new trends in international business, global competitiveness on international markets as well as economies of states, nations. This paper will analyze how the internationalization is implemented into competitiveness enhancement of transnational corporations, how important role transnational corporations play within the current global economic turbulent processes to assure sustainable economic growth in the world economy and enhance the competitiveness within the world economy environment. By means of analysis, comparative analysis methods followed by logical deduction the main aim of this paper is to figure out how and in what way the transnational corporations implementation processes within the business environment can affect the international economics system in terms of social and economic development. The issue is also to find out the proper involvement of TNCs in international and national environment along with the possible risks and benefits for particular economies and other stakeholders. The goal of all those efforts is supposed to lead to sustainable social and economic development and better quality of life in the global world economy environment.

The essential part of the hotel that wants to be successful are satisfied and loyal employees. The role of management is to lead employees to the success of the progressive achievement of the hotels goals. To achieve the general goal of the hotel that is to increase profits and maximize employee performance is not possible without systematic process of motivation. In view of the singularity of each employee is motivating difficult but desirable process. It is important to know and examine motivation factors, based on which we can establish suitable motivation tools. The most applied tools are motivation programs. It is not enough to design, but also to apply program so that its components act positively on employees and motivate them to achieve maximum performance. This paper deals with clarification of tools and factors of work motivation in hotels in Slovakia. The aim of this paper is to present a model that will serve hotel managers in cooperation with experts and employees draw up motivation programs to improve work motivation of employees in hotels.

This paper aims to examine the influence of business intelligence on organizational agility through Partial mediating variable Empowerment. The statistical population of the study is consisted of Tehran Construction Engineering Organization (TCEO) and ETKA Organization Industries co. 102 questionnaires have been distributed among managers and stakeholders of information systems and these have been analyzed via SPSS and Smart PLS software. Within this paper the Popovic business intelligence questionnaire (2012), Sharifi& Zhang Organizational Agility and Spreitzer Empowerment have been used. The hypothesis of study is: Business Intelligence has direct and indirect influence through empowerment on organizational agility. Secondary hypothesis seek to examine the impact of business intelligence on organizational agility, business intelligence on empowerment and examining the impact of empowerment on organizational agility. Research studies imply the confirmation of study primary and secondary hypothesis.

For the evaluation of performance at the national level are used the different indicators in comparison with business level. The paper is focused on evaluation of indicators of national health systems’ performance at the level WHO “better health”. The aim of paper is to define the specifics of selected health systems in European Union, analyze and evaluate the selected indicators of performance of these systems which are used by WHO, compare the results of the analysis in these health systems and determine the position of the Czech health system in the set of indicators “better health” in comparison with other countries. The indicators are evaluated in the time series.

This paper presents a description and evaluation of an innovative teaching experience carried out through a service-learning methodology within the university Degree in Social Education at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). It compiles data collected from 62 students from 3 rd year, who were attending the subject “Socio-educational intervention with adults, elders and people with special needs” in the year 2011-2012 and 2012-2013. The international theoretical basis related to the development and impact of this methodology within higher education, a description of the design and the development of the case of study and a quantitative evaluation are presented in this paper. The results have been analyzed through a questionnaire that seeks the opinion of the students about their teachers. We conclude providing evidences about the impact this learning process has had over the students, mainly in aspects such as involvement, motivation and reflexive attitude.

Increased population and urban growth have made converting open spaces that can cause flooding. Thailand and Indonesia are two of the most prone areas to various types of disaster but especially to floods. However, the climate change is the significance factor impact to floods risk. The climate change makes direct and indirect effects to floods. In addition, adaptation and mitigation to climate change are an important aspect to reduce and prevent the impact of floods. This paper tries to explore flood management in Ayutthaya, Thailand and Samarinda, Indonesia. Primary and secondary data are used in this paper. This objective of this paper is done by using qualitative analysis. This paper shows that the flood risk on both cities has same characteristics and indicates that the role of government of Ayutthaya also stronger than Samarinda. The comparison shows that flood management especially on adaptation is main challenges for Indonesia government that will require further plan to establish how manage water, and increase adaptive capacity for reduce the flood damage. This paper provides us to understand the important of climate change adaptation in real cases. As flood hazard, we learn about the impact of big flood causing to damage loss in many sectors, and we also learn to assess the risk by assess vulnerability and adaptive capacity.

Large classes are becoming a common feature of higher education. Although the dynamics of these classes are very different from smaller classes, the learning principles are still the same. Active learning and students’ engagement provide better learning outcomes. There are strategies developed to overcome the limitations of large classes. This paper presents the result of the implementation of two teaching strategies – guided sequential exercises, and collection of instantaneous student responses. The student responses were collected through a Personal Response System (PRS). The strategies have been implemented in a large project management class. The student feedbacks have been used to investigate the effectiveness of these strategies. 323 students participated in formal surveys over four years. The results of these surveys showed that they found the teaching method very effective and the learning experience very interesting. They believed the best aspect of the course was the lecture and its interactive nature. The paper demonstrates how a conventional setting of lecture delivery can be transcended to a pleasant and effective learning experience. The sequential exercises and Personal Response System articulated in the paper can be adopted in other technical courses.

This paper presents some of the results of a broader research project on how formative assessment affects the development of specific and generic competences in teacher training subjects at higher education level. The aim of the paper is to describe the impact of formative assessment on the development of learning-to-learn skills, in a sample of 143 students on teacher training bachelor's degrees at the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia. The results are from a quasi-experimental pre-post study, without a control group and follow-up, that used a quantitative method. Formative assessment was implemented in four subjects of the bachelor's degrees in Teacher in Primary Education (MEP) and Teacher in Early Childhood Education (MEI), in the second semester. At the start and end of each subject, students were asked to complete an ad hoc questionnaire to assess the effect of formative assessment on various competences, including learning-to-learn. The degree of independence and awareness that students perceived about what they had to learn increased significantly, but there were no significant differences in the level of demands on themselves. Therefore, the results suggest that formative assessment could increase students’ independence and awareness about learning.

This auto-ethnographic paper intends to bring forward trust and control issues in a practical setting of a communications department of a Dutch municipal organization. The current situation entails that management in the municipality approaches IT projects from a linear and reductionist perspective, assuming that the world is controllable, predictable and manageable. Experience has shown that these projects often do not lead to the desired results. In this paper we discuss the balance between trust and control that is essential for sustainable change management, but it is important to note that this balance is context dependent and can only be achieved by learning from our own behavior by reflecting on our thoughts and actions. This approach, which puts practical experience in the centre, is based on insights from complex responsive processes theory, could lead to more sustainable project management, and allows us to explore what is really going on within the municipal organization.

There seems to be a common understanding that the Norwegian construction industry faces challenges concerning the presence of delays and defects in the handover process. However, little research has been found regarding countermeasures to avoid these problems. This paper forms a part of a research project on handover processes in Norwegian construction projects, initiated by the municipality of Trondheim. It is supposed to work as a pilot study for further research, and examines: 1) Consequences of delays and defects, 2) the causes of them and 3) potential countermeasures that can be implemented. The case studied was the expansion of a shopping centre in Norway, a complex project, both structurally and organisationally. In addition to a literature review and a documentation study, nine semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted. All of the interviews were case-specific, with client, contractor and user representatives respectively. The consequences of delays and defects were severe and resulted in additional costs, lower quality on the final product and psychological strain for the involved actors. Short construction period, diffuse contractual relationships, lack of quality assurance and a high degree of alteration work are found to constitute the most crucial causes. On the basis of the observed challenges different countermeasures are suggested. Building commissioning, realistic project plans, control on deliveries and independent control are recommended as countermeasures. The findings indicate a great potential for improvement by keeping the control throughout the whole project. Further experiments are needed to substantiate the recommendations of this paper.

This paper addresses intercultural competence to carry-out projects in North-Africa with success, taking the example of Algeria and Morocco. There are only few publications related to project management in North Africa and even less related to intercultural competence. The paper makes a modest attempt to help close this knowledge gap. The case study approach taken offers a trans-disciplinary approach to a vast subject and facilitates the transition from an academic /model-driven approach to the day-to-day practical challenges of the project manager's profession in a North African context. The objective of the paper is to underline the importance of intercultural competence to create a non-for profit project management organisations in Algeria and Morocco. The paper refers to existing models and examines behavioural elements of the intercultural competence by giving tangible examples collected in the field. Finally the paper comes up with recommendations to be considered before and during project start, in order to manage projects successfully.

The concept of Value has been studied and developed in different contexts. There are numerous definitions of value depending on which context it has been studied in. Value management has been introduced to the construction projects, real estate and facility management business during the last decades. The long lasting life cycle of buildings and constant change in user's needs suggest that the concept of value and value management should be focused on users’ as well as owners’ needs in order to maximize the value creation and caption. An understanding of the concept of the value for users and owners of buildings will contribute to successful projects, sustainable buildings and greater value creation. The objective of this paper is first, to draw a map of how value is defined in different contexts and second, to establish an understanding of the concept of value which can be related to value creation for users and owners of buildings. This paper is exploring the literature within the following contexts: - Industrial economics and manufacturing - Consumer economics and marketing - Psychology and sociology - Real Estate (RE) and Facility management (FM) business The paper starts with providing an overview of theories and literature within the over mentioned contexts. Thereafter, the common ground in defining “value” in different contexts is discussed. The concept of value is then related to users and owners of buildings.

This paper examines the proposals for the improvement of university classrooms from the perspective of Spanish students with disabilities. Using the biographic-narrative methodology, data was collected and analysed applying a system of categories and codes. The following instruments were used: group and individual interviews, lifelines, self-reporting, photographs, a day in their lives and interviews with key people for the life of the students. These are the most important characteristics of an ideal classroom for the participating students: physical accessibility for everyone, participative teaching methodologies and the use of the many technological resources, positive attitudes on behalf of faculty regarding disability and specific academic-training in disability and new technologies. The conclusions section includes a series of suggestions to design accessible university classrooms for everyone. The proposals for improving the university environment as provided by the students are precisely the main contribution of this paper beyond previous research, which focused exclusively on analyzing barriers and resources as identified by students with disabilities.

This paper will explore the possibilities of reactivating the disused site of Coryton Oil Refinery in Thurrock, UK as a cultural heritage site through analysis of its relationship with landscape, people and their interrelated processes. The oil refinery was closed in 2012, leaving behind an impressive 586 acres of industrial as well as cultural history. The tangible and intangible factors effected by the industrial sites, as well as people's perceptions and awareness towards industrial heritage as places of production, collective and personal memory and place identity will be investigated in this research paper.

Project as an object of project management inevitably conceives a certain end goal to attain, which represents human dreams, hopes, and visions for the future. This paper attempts to offer a philosophical interpretation of project as a phenomenon that is open toward changeable and uncertain time and space that allows creative human intervention from the moment of its conception through its realization. A case study of Incheon Bridge, a national project in Incheon, South Korea, will elucidate how the phenomenal understanding of project can help project management create a sustainable source of future profits. In the first half of the paper, I will articulate a philosophical interpretation of project as a phenomenon. First, project will be conceived and situated within the world of phenomena that originate from the human mind. Secondly, the benefits of interchange between philosophy and project management studies will be shown to extend our understanding of various realms of human life including politics, economics, society, culture, diplomacy, and education. Ultimately, recasting project as a phenomenon will help broaden the conceptual reach of project management as a general process of realizing human dreams. In the second half of the paper, I will substantiate my conceptual argument with a case study of Incheon Bridge, an internationally acclaimed PM case. The success of Incheon Bridge project owes to the mechanism of translating a philosophical understanding of project as a phenomenon into a concrete matrix of numeric, which helped transparently visualize the whole PM process and further transform Incheon Bridge as a sustainable source of future profits.

This paper presents some of the results of a broader research project on how formative assessment affects the development of specific and generic competences in teacher training subjects at higher education level. The paper describes and discusses the impact of participatory and non-participatory assessment techniques on the attainment of learning outcomes in four different subjects. The sample was comprised of students (n=118) on teacher training bachelor's degrees at the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia. Data were gathered on the lecturers’ activities in each subject and on the students’ final grades. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to assess the effect of formative assessment on students’ final grades for a subject. Statistical analysis shows that students who took subjects that were assessed by participatory techniques had a significantly (p

Historic cities of developing countries’, architectural heritage need conservation. Public participation (PP) of high school students’ can be an effective tool. Aim of this paper is to share an experience in a historical neighbourhood, Yeldegirmeni, Istanbul. Yeldegirmeni was examined by final year students in “Analysis of Historical Buildings” course in Yeditepe University, Architecture Department. Results of the course were shared with high school students/teachers. These works which try to document and safeguard local cultural heritage, will be investigated in this paper. The paper presents findings of the course's presentations, workshops, exhibitions; discusses future scenarios of PP for architectural heritage conservation.

Modern classrooms see many innovative practices in facilitation. Most facilitators prefer using presentations animated videos and multimedia to better explain their content. Campuses are Wi-Fi enabled and students use tablets, laptops and smartphones to capture the essence of a lecture. However the one area where technological innovation is still lagging behind, in an academic setup, is in assessment. This paper looks at the perception of students to the use of clicker technology as a form of paperless assessment. Clicker technology was introduced as a tool for conducting formative and summative assessments to a first year electrical engineering subject, Digital Systems 1. The paper first elaborates on the significance, types and the methods of academic assessments. It then discusses the pros and cons of assessments using clicker technology. Thirdly it sheds light on the research methodology used in acquiring data for this research. Finally the results are analyzed which among others show that that 71% students enjoyed using clickers in class for formative assessments while only 52% appreciated its use in summative assessments. One of the reasons touted for this decrease is student anxiety. The key recommendation from this research is to increase the use of these assessment techniques within a formative assessment environment so as to familiarize students to eventually use it with confidence in summative assessments.

Concurrent engineering and performance measurement are both manufacturing industry concepts that have coexisted and complemented each other for the manufacturing industry success. Construction industry has integrated manufacturing philosophies but still waits for the success manufacturing industry enjoyed. With the help from the literature, the paper looks into the status of performance measurements in construction. The literature review generated more questions than answers. It reflected that the existing construction industry structure needs overhauling. Finally, the paper presents six questions with the help of literature evaluation for future research to start a focused debate on measuring the success of concurrent construction.

This paper describes HyperMix, a computer tool that has been specifically designed for the education of computer and remote sensing engineers. The tool is available online ( http://hypercomphypermix.blogspot.com.es ). HyperMix is an open-source tool that integrates different algorithms for interpreting remotely sensed hyperspectral images collected by Earth-observation instruments. Due to the large size of these images, HyperMix automatically recognizes if the computer in which it is installed has a graphics processing unit (GPU) available, and optimizes the execution of these algorithms in the GPU. This allows for the execution of hyperspectral imaging algorithms in computationally efficient fashion. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey and analysis of the educational possibilities of the tool, which are based on an exploratory study conducted among users of the tool worldwide. We conclude that HyperMix provides a valuable tool for higher education of a new generation of remote sensing engineers.

This paper explores the need for global professional standards in the project cost management field. A range of global standards and guides have been developed for the project management profession as a whole but there have not been any developed specifically for project cost management (other than as a subset of project management standards). It will be argued that project cost management (be it Quantity Surveying, Cost Engineering, Project Controls or cost management carried out by Project Managers) is a specialist technical field that requires its own specific standards. The paper will examine the various national and regional professional standards that have been developed for the Quantity Surveying, Cost Engineering and Project Controls professions by various countries and professional associations around the world. It then examines the issues surrounding the lack of global standards for these professions and explores the benefits of developing over-arching strategies to produce global standards/programs. The paper then describes current initiatives to develop these specific global standards. This will include the International Construction Measurement Standard (ICMS) that is in the early stages of development. The research methodology underpinning this study comprises a review of professional standards around the world and interviews with practitioners and members of professional cost management associations within the International Cost Engineering Council (ICEC). The paper concludes with a range of recommendations and strategies to help address these issues.

The ever-changing business environment resulting from changing consumer behaviors, fierce competition and advances in technology affect the strategic positioning of a brand. Maintaining healthy brands or embarking on a rebranding or repositioning strategy calls for a more creative set of branding management competencies in order to respond to the marketing challenges of the 21st century. This research paper attempts to assess brand management competences, attitudes and knowledge important in current business environment, to further accurately design branding-related curricula that truly reflect needs in the contemporary business and professional environment. Using a qualitative research approach, the data was collected from focus group interviews and questionnaires with seventeen management people from the private sector. The results identify the top-rated knowledge and/or competencies needed in branding a business, which are competence in research development, knowledge of brand strategic planning, ability to communicate added value in a clear way, knowledge of brand identity development, and ability to manage and keep the brand management process ‘alive’, respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of the underlying key implications for both academia and business.

The purpose of this paper is to assess if and to what extent PPPs contribute to value creation for user and owner, by highlighting how PPP contribute to value creation in public schools in a Norwegian context. Little research has been found concerning PPPs contribution to value creation for user and owner. The analysis and document studies in this paper show that PPP compels to consideration of the life cycle, incentivises project owners to focus on output-based specifications and indicates commitment for the contractors to deliver. In sum, this indicates that PPP is suited for public schools in Norway.

This paper examines the handover process in Norwegian construction industry, focusing on commercial buildings. Improving handover processes reduces the number of conflicts, increases user value, improves indoor climate along with securing overall building performance, both in closing construction phases as well as throughout the building lifetime. As little research is found on the subject, a collective project was initiated by the municipality of Trondheim. This case study is limited to a single, environmentally certified, office building in Norway. The paper aims to determine main delay and defect causes. Finally, some countermeasures are identified. A literature review along with a document study was performed. Seven semi-structured, case specific interviews were conducted in addition to a pilot study consisting of three interviews on the same topic. The case respondents are project managers from contractor and client with extensive experience from the Norwegian construction industry. Several causes in contractor-client interfaces were identified. Among the most critical were late changes and decision-making, lacking understanding of limitations and potential in design-build contracts, conflicting interpretation of specification of work along with complex technical installations. Possible countermeasures are found to be strict decision planning, sufficient time buffers, early reconciliation of client expectations together with sufficiently detailed specification of work and significant specialist knowledge in complex technical coordination. This paper investigates a little scrutinized part of Norwegian construction projects in an effort to better commercial building performance and profitability. Future research on multiple construction projects would help confirm or disprove findings and the identified countermeasures.

The birth of current students coincides with the rise of the first social media websites, making young people the most competent and the most frequent consumers and creators of social media content. Their savoir-faire in new technologies is a great motivation to intensively use various e-learning 2.0 elements in the process of learning, teaching and knowledge acquisition. This paper presents the experience from a study that stimulates the social media elements existing in the learning environment, and reinforces the use of various techniques intended to enable focused online collaboration and knowledge acquisition. In order to support cutting edge learning, the approach stimulates a pervasive access to scholarly articles, breaking news existing online, and open educational resources. The study has been performed for almost a decade in computer ethics courses attended by senior undergraduates from the University of Skopje, Macedonia, and junior graduates from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The paper exhaustively overviews the simulation of the social media inclusion in the learning process, as well as the activities performed during its execution. The subjective student impression of all implemented techniques is contrasted with the teacher estimated amount of acquired knowledge. The paper also emphasizes the benefits of the implemented approach, suggestions to educationalists intending to employ it themselves, and finally the intentions of the further inclusion of social media in educational technologies.

Communicative city can be seen as interface to achieve urban development strategies. This paper focuses on the importance of increasing public awareness as agents of development through the development of communicative city elements where the community becomes more involved in city development process along with the increase and development of technological innovations, without forgetting the local cultural base. This paper focuses on the study of literature and related studies, and then analyze that before the agenda of the technopolis, or the development of cities based technology as the soul of development into growth centers that are innovative, it is necessary to create a conducive atmosphere in stakeholders interest at the municipal level, including the urban community itself to learn and innovate in a way to participate in urban development. Communication in the context of planning as the key to the creation of a coordination based on the development of science as a basis for competitiveness in sustainable city. Results of this paper show that the four keys of a communicative city have a big role to understand the concept of technopolis, and furthermore to make technopolis as the spirit of its development. The four keys of the comminicative city are; to develop condusive communication system between citizens, encouraging community participation, technology support (not limited to information and communication technology), and optimizing processes and procedures of city planning itself.

This research paper analyses three concepts that are correlated with the phenomenon of developing project management as a core competence of organizations. Project management competence is the individual's capability to support the organizational stability objective, aligning the mission and vision and optimizing the resource allocation to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. This study reviews three concepts in relation to their assumptions and possible outputs: project management, competence management and psychological contracts. This discussion paper presents the thesis that these three concepts converge in an approach in which project management is, indeed, a core competence of the organization. To project-management-oriented enterprises, this concept can provide a fundamental research theme for business studies’ evolution. As the results of this reflexive paper, a series of possible research objectives are indicated, such as how the enterprise must stablish a psychological contract with subcontracted parties and employees in general, short-term hired professionals. Another concept concerns how companies should design a project management competence governance structure or system, using a framework of the International Project Management Association (IPMA), and how they can apply the ICB normative guide to develop project management as a core competence of Brazilian organizations.

To develop and structure its areas, Indonesia under the national spatial plan has developed strategic areas. (National) strategic area is an area whose spatial arrangement is one of the priorities of the national interests. This paper is an exploration of the interactions and networks existing between two existing models of strategic areas in Sambas regency: Sambas district and Temajuk village. Besides, this paper also raises a concept “adaptive” which can developed from the existing networks’ characters. This study used network analysis approach and the exploration of “adaptive” concept. From both explorations, it is known that strategic areas tend to be oriented inside its own area and only spread to other near advanced areas/cities. This makes the relationship between the areas tend to be imbalanced. To develop a balanced/appropriate interaction, adaptive concept can be applied by strengthening the database, doing benefit-cost-risk analysis, identifying potential conflicts, making priorities, scenarios and corrective actions, as well as involving public.

This paper analyses the current situation of small businesses, their outlook and their problems in Europe and in Russia. The number of small businesses opened, legislative system, number of self-employed without employees, influence of bureaucratic system on small business's life, unemployment and corruption are considered in this study. The object of this paper is understanding what can modify the life of small companies. Thus the analysis of every factor is useful to understand how the economy could change, what is correct and what resolutions make the life of small businesses better. The analysis is made using data from Eurostat, Rosstat, and Fedstat (an OECD institutional website), studying how values of indicators have changed during recent years. The results clearly show that the development of small companies is correlated with the development of good institutions, a sane community and trust and optimism in economy and small business sector.

Malaysian Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is largest business establishment and vital component of the country's economic development. However, limited studies were examined on their development, challenges and future green prospects, especially in service sector. Therefore this article examines the development of SMEs in Malaysia, challenges and opportunities of green practices among SMEs which is play a vital role in the nation growth. The uniqueness of this paper focuses on green practices which is important for SMEs to progress and competitive in domestically and globally. The key messages from these studies examined in this paper are that Malaysian SMEs contribute to the largest business establishment in Malaysia especially service sector and majority of them are in micro size establishment. Nevertheless, there are wide recognition in the literature about the factors hinder SMEs from expanding, this is mainly because high cost of raw materials, high initial cost of investment and shortage of skilled labour. The concept of green environment is still at infancy stage in Malaysian SMEs. Environmental management literature mostly published in the developed countries has proven that ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) implementation has a positive and significant relationship with SMEs performance. This study is important indicator to encourage other SMEs which has no green practices in place to consider joining the green bandwagon, especially SMEs service sectors. The studies focused are conditioned by the search strategy used. In addition, other key words could be including in future studies such as performance, customer satisfaction, financial performance, environmental and green supply chain management in order to expand this search. The main contribution of this paper is to identify the development of SMEs in Malaysia and future research proposals with regards to the benefit of the green practices (ISO 14001 standards) in Malaysian SMEs service sector.

The aim of this paper is to provide a real example of a production factory transformation from a standard production best-cost country plant to a word class plant applying the lean principles, avoiding waste and optimizing plant organization structure for the new role. The case study of this paper is based on a Romanian Automotive Company and the main purpose is to provide an example of the optimization potential of the west automotive technology applied using local strengths and creative thinking.

The main aim of this paper is to assess and analyse how sustainable public transit (SPT) services contribute to building living cities in emerging economies through value network and resource integration/value co-creation, which is embedded on societal and environmental perspectives. The main theoretical and empirical challenges are how to understand public transport as dynamic and transformative values based service eco-system for living city regions to develop and implement a feasible and proactive tool for changing the mind-set, which is embedded on societal and environmental perspectives. The objective is to look deeper on how these emergent and fast growing cities are put together STP for building cities for people by focusing on societal and environmental issues, which value network of SPT are integrated and value is co-created within the service system. The paper has an explorative nature. It is built around three concepts - (i) SPT and value network (ii), resilient living cities in emerging economies and (iii) Societal and environmental perspectives. The paper illustrates these concepts with four different cases from Cape Town - South Africa, Buenos Aires – Argentina; Singapore - Singapore, and Jakarta - Indonesia. The study has identified the challenges of transforming emergent and fast urbanized cities, and understanding the role of public transport services from the cities perspective in an international context by embedding social and environmental perspectives. The challenges of transforming today's cities have created many new opportunities for prosperity through new ways of living and working in urban areas. The paper makes a contribution to the study of public transit services by explicitly linking the adoption of SPT value network in emerging economies based on sustainability, and resource integration/value co-creation for building resilient living cities.

The objective of this exploratory paper is to analyse the innovations introduced by a small travel agency and their impact on the firm's business model in the specific context of a salt mine in Romania. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the business model of the small firm that did not introduce a single innovation. A case study provides rich data on “unbundling” made by the entrepreneur and the trade-offs decisions that affect the business model. The paper highlights the implications of the entrepreneur's decision to implement in a short period of time a “package” of product, process, marketing and organizational innovations and their impact upon the business model, and describes the transformation of the company due to changes in the environment (content and relationships among the building blocks of the business model).

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the service quality transformation opportunities currently offered to rural areas of ASEAN through innovative approaches in training and through widespread use of internet support. More than half of the population of ASEAN lives in rural areas, which have long been marginalized and left at the periphery of the recent economic development of the region. Despite multiple programmes and policies aimed at fostering tourism development opportunities, the gap remains between the tourism potential of the rural areas and the lack of service management expertise. Capacity building is seen as a crucial step towards the development of a trained labour force. This study explores different tourism capacity building cases across the ASEAN region. It reviews how innovative approaches have managed to connect the local community needs with the global tourism expectations. It analyses secondary data from three cases in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, looking at the relationship between the community, the capacity building process and the impact on tourism in the local area. The findings show contrasted results that nevertheless share common patterns where innovation has enabled participation and positive service involvement towards tourism. The paper argues for an integration of tourism service management capacity within a wider set of competences which actually empower the community while paradoxically providing higher satisfaction. This study refers to innovative practices initiated by specific community training projects that enhance socio-economic development of the community and appropriate positively tourism and build entrepreneurs. The results of this reflection and comparison provide researchers and practitioners, a matrix of initiatives that could be extended to other rural areas of the ASEAN region.

Shared services are a type of intra-corporate activity for support functions such as information technology, finance, purchasing, marketing. Out of these functions, the finance shared services are singled out in this paper. The activities pertaining to the finance department are analyzed according to The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants ACCA professional standard. Some of these activities are highly suitable to be managed as iterative back-office processes, such as the receivables account and the payables account. We propose several finance shared services business models which we have found evidence of in Romania. Finance shared services may be managed as pools of diversified activities, as simple iterative processes (such as invoices), as end to end accounting processes, or as inclusive solutions which involve other functional areas such as credit management and purchasing. Evidence of Romanian companies providing such services has been collected using Internet resources such as job advertising sites, company web sites and the media. In Romania, there are a variety of shared service and business process outsourcing providers, such as Continental Automotive, Hella, Oracle, British American Shared Services, Hewlett Packard, Bosch, Accenture, Genpact. The purpose of this paper is to exemplify the benefits brought by one type of shared service and its value proposition potential. This article is part of a research on value based management, in which the particular case of intra-corporate business value pattern is analyzed for production, research and development, and overheads (shared services). Intra-corporate business is managed using the transfer price which is different from the market price, and this is one reason why we call this business model “specific”. The other reason is that Romania as a location offers the very advantages shared service providers seek.

There is an increasing growth of customers and regulators requesting enterprises to adopt the Environmental Management Practices (EMP) over the last 15 years and because of this, researchers and practitioners are becoming more interested in this area of study. This paper proposed an integrated model that combines the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology-Organization-Environment Model (TOE), two theories that are most often used in environment and innovation studies. In this paper, a model is created to show the relationship between TOE model, TPB theory and EMP implementation. With 205 valid questionnaires from the Federation of Malaysian Freight Forwarders (FMFF), the author tested the model on SPSS and AMOS. It was found that the environmental factor was the most influential factor affecting the adoption of EMP followed by organizational and technological factors. The entire TOE dimension and TPB theory greatly determines the company's adaptation of EMP. Finally, this study presents some suggestions to make EMP adaptation easier.

The objective of the paper is to look deeper on how these emergent and fast growing factors affect the relationship between ethical dilemma and governance in a newly industrialised country from the corruption and bribery aspect. The paper is explorative in nature. It identifies the need for new governance thinking, based on stakeholder and stewardship theories and transparency as well as its impacts in reducing corruption. The empirical study involves multiple qualitative case studies of multi-national corporations of transparency and governance in China (5 cases of multinational companies, and 1 corporate governance code). In this paper, we are not arguing on the role of governance as a control or reporting initiative for corruption, but its role to shun institutional weakness in reducing corruption and resource integration. The study will reveal the challenges of transforming the role of governance in fighting corruption. Strong governance system is a vital component of company efforts to reinforce the right incentives and practices and to address the corrupted practices that they confront and defy ethical dilemma. Governance takes account of all the interests that affect the viability, competence and moral character of an enterprise. Thus, the present results indicate, not only the positive relationship between governance and corruption, but also reveal the characteristics of dynamic governance thinking within a broader governance framework for developing values based service business. Future research in this area should focus on generalizing the present findings by studying the development and integration of governance and clearing the dilemma in other empirical settings and conceptualization, for instance developed economies.

In recent years, greater competition in banking industry has been driven by globalization. The growing diversity of customers’ demands and technology changes are expected to have a great impact on the management of the bank in order to retain and attract potential customer and investor into the banking industry. However, with the increase in income levels, status and number of bank branches, the bank management is driven to identify banking services to improve their bank performances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influencing factors towards performance of the bank. Specifically, the paper aims to examine to which extent the bank performance is influenced by service quality, innovation, technology and employee commitment.

The continuous increase in the level of education in the EU countries is one of the fundamental objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Taking into consideration the fact that the economical efficiency is significantly influenced by the quality of the human resource, the level of education of the active population is an important variable in the process of the economic growth. The current different politics applied in the EU28 countries 20 years ago had a big structural diversity as a direct consequence concerning the level of education of the active population. Based on these findings, the paper analyses the evolution of the characteristics of the active population in the EU28 countries on the level of education in the last 10 years, a period which includes the economical crisis. The analyses based on official databases show the tendency of increasing the share of the active population with tertiary education and the relative stability of those with upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education. At the same time the fact that the difference between the countries with high shares of the tertiary education attainment level and those with still low shares is continuously increasing is emphasized, the process still being divergent. The paper also investigates the convergence in terms of the structure of the active population in EU countries.

Creating quality and sustainable urban environments has always been a challenge for urban planners and designers. The modern perception of urban planning is directed towards promoting pedestrian movement and, at the same time, limiting the excessive use of automobiles. For understanding how pedestrian movement is generated in relation to the urban layouts and for predicting this movement in public spaces, GIS database, statistical methods as well as space syntax approaches are used and tested in the case of the Municipality of Athens. In particular, this paper attempts to: (a) interpret and predict densities of pedestrian movement though the effective study of configuration characteristics and syntactic properties of urban space; (b) identify inconsistencies and limitation in the prediction of pedestrian movement; (c) propose a methodological framework to overcome these limitations. Correlation analysis is also performed between the results of axial and segment analysis to establish the syntactic analysis that better simulates the pedestrian movement. This paper is part of a wider research that intents to interpret the characteristics of the public space in order to create, through more holistic approaches, a methodological framework for decision-making analysis towards sustainable urban planning.

In the context of Europe 2020 Strategy, where the cities’ role in the global competition brings along a scale shift in terms of networking system, the paper refers to a research project investigating the potential socio-economic impact of major advancing Euro-Mediterranean cohesion. Highlighting a holistic multidisciplinary approach the paper stresses the role of local cultural heritage towards a Mediterranean sustainable development process, especially in less-known destinations, where the cultural resources are the main strategic assets for development. In conclusion a research model is presented in order to design a systematic tool to combine the Mediterranean common roots, territorial development needs and Euro-Mediterranean policies aiming at contributing to the multicultural dialogue in this transnational panorama.