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The article aims to conduct an analysis regarding the professional training process of the public personnel from the Romanian public administration, in the 2020-2022 period. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of professional training has experienced a series of emerging changes, that had a major impact on the management of the professional training, in general, and training processes, in particular. The research method used consists of an opinion survey, conducted with the self-administered questionnaire, designed by the authors, based on the main studies and researches in the field. The questionnaire was sent to public institutions in the central public administration, under the subordination/ coordination of ministries. 239 respondents agreed to participate in the study. The research revealed that the public personnel from public administration prefers the professional training process to be conducted in the classical and mixed systems (blended learning). In addition, benefits of the training process in the online system which can be developed, in order to optimize this type of training, were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present research brings into focus the figure of the prefect and wojewód seen at the crossroads between career public servants representing the interests of the Government and political agents, appointed and dismissed at the whim of the Prime Minister. This paper approaches the issue of the holder of the prefect's office in Romania and Poland employing a prosopographic analysis and applies a Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) on select items in order to identify the general trend and particularities of their profiles. This institution was structured and articulated at the confluence of some administrative and political actions and integrated in the national institutional framework as a key actor, which continues to connect the institutional capacity of the state and the political capacity of the Government. Moving beyond the legal framework and institutional design of each country, we look at the profile - involving educational, professional and political affiliation - of the people actually appointed to this position in order to ascertain the weight of each of these factors when called to serve in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although agriculture has significantly evolved over the last decades, it is still adapting to the circular, innovative and digital economy; to the upsurge of modern agricultural technologies and to the imminence of environmental greening, especially in the European Union. The links involved in global agri-food value chain are transitioning from being economically competitive to being economically competitive and sustainable. The importance of greening the global agri-food chains along all of its links is instiled in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the European Green Deal, the 2030 Climate Target Plan. In this context, the objective of this research was to design a circular agricultural system in the urban environment, and, more specifically, a solution for managing multidimensional complex issues, right in the campus of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. A bibliometric analysis was elaborated with the purpose of identifying the favorable context and opportunity for implementing such a solution, grounded in the principles of urban agriculture. The result of this study consists of the authors' envisioned 'agro-urban' ecosystem; more specifically, an urban rooftop community garden that responds to challenges such as: limited resources (water, soil, labor force), unfavorable environmental conditions (specific to urbanization) and others. The proposed model is easily replicable and facilitates the transition to a cleaner, greener, circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides the sanitary crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused socio-economic downturn globally. Among the affected economic sectors, the agriculture and food sectors were no exception. In the context of on-going market transformations in Romania, the national demand of agri-food products rushed the links involved in the agri-food value chains to adapt to sudden consumption behavioral changes. The objective of this research was to explore food consumption and expenditure changes in Romania in relation with the pandemic and tap into the economic implications. Data used in this research were taken over from the Romanian National Institute of Statistics and were processed in a manner that allowed the average dynamics index to be in the spotlight of this research. Results show market pressure, especially at the beginning of the second quarter of 2020 and a peak of the food expenditure increase in the first quarter of 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian labor market shows the signs of many regional issues, especially those that involve economic factors. Disparities generate forms of interregional symmetry, approached through the lens of poor socio-economic performance. The Romanian economy has rapidly adapted to the open European labor market, which, on the one hand, has brought many benefits to the Romanian employees who migrated to other European countries, while, on the other hand, this process has caused serious deficits of the labor force in some Romanian economic sectors of activity. In this regard, this study brings its contribution to the literature with a statistical analysis conducted on the symmetry and inflections points in the case of three Romanian development regions: South-East region, South-West Oltenia and North-West region. Results show that these regions face similar labor market issues up to a certain degree -- the identified inflection point deals with two economic sectors that had to suffer the most: the public administration and the defense sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study aims to quantitatively assess some of the determinants of shadow banking dynamics in 11 European Union (E.U.) countries from Central and Eastern Europe (C.E.E.) over the period 2004–2017. Using panel data estimation techniques and a quarterly data set compiled from several publicly available data sources, we alternatively evaluate the impact of six macroeconomic and financial variables on two dependent variables corresponding to two different measures of the shadow banking sector, namely the broad one (including all non-monetary financial institutions, except insurance corporations and pension funds) and the narrow one (excluding from the above one the investment funds, other than money market funds [M.M.F.]). Our findings confirm that shadow banking is sensitive to overall macroeconomic conditions and that economic growth positively influences the expansion of this segment of the financial sector. In addition, a higher demand for funds from institutional investors, which also reveals a more developed financial system, supports the expansion of the shadow banking sector. Moreover, in a low interest rate environment, the search for yield makes investors turn to shadow banks, while the development of the shadow banking sector is also found to be complementary to the development of the rest of the financial system, in particular, traditional banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research is an exploratory study aiming at presenting the measures taken by the European Union to support the creation and development of clusters and to analyze Romania’s position in relation to other Member States in terms of key factors impacting cluster development. Impact factors on the development of clusters, such as digital skills among the active population, the degree of development of innovative companies, the number of applications for obtaining patents per one million inhabitants, the degree of development of clusters and the share of GDP in expenditures for research, development and innovation (%) were considered. The study highlights that Romania ranks last in the European ranking, due to the lack of incentives to promote the emergence of strong innovative clusters, underfunding of the innovation system and the absence of a legislative framework to support small and medium enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early 2000s brought over an intrinsic change in the way businesses operate. Many organizations experienced a fundamental transformation in the way people connect, work and co-create value for the business and the wider scope of stakeholders. This transformation was supported by the rapid development and implementation of collaborative technology, as well as by a major metamorphosis of working styles: remote work (tele-work), alternative employment, dual carriers (double employment) and many others. Corporate Japan has also experienced a major shift from the traditional physical office-based, life-time employment to a wide variety of working agreements and collaboration styles. This paper analyzes how digital technology has eased cross-divisional collaboration and value co-creation at NTT Communications, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation, the largest telecommunications company in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the leadership styles practiced in Romania's Prefectures Institutions and the impact of gender on it. The purpose is to analyze if the leadership practiced by civil servants from top management is the effective one as well as if female leaders are perceived as being better leaders than men are. The main objective of the study is to establish which are the leadership styles practiced predominantly and the differences between men and women when occupying leadership positions. The methodology of research consists of an opinion survey conducted in the 42 Prefectures (the institutions that represent the Government in each County) of Romania using a questionnaire. The questionnaire measured two types of effective leadership behaviors: transformational and transactional and one ineffective style, namely laissez-faire (Howell, Avolio, 1993). The research revealed that the leaders from the studied institutions are presenting mostly transformational and transactional characteristics and lower scores at the passive leadership behaviors, which makes them effective leaders. A direct relation between gender and the leadership styles practiced could not be established due to the fact that the civil servants considered that men and women behave almost the same when occupying the same leadership position. The study also revealed that the majority of the respondents (over 70%) did not have a preference regarding leaders' gender. Even if the research did not show that women are better leaders than men, the fact that they are perceived as being transformational leaders leads to the idea that female leaders are effective leaders capable of making public institutions more modern, resilient and performant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civil servants' training process plays a key role in developing the public employees' skills and broadening their vision. The present paper seeks to examine the perception of Employment Agencies' civil servants regarding the effectiveness of training programs, measured through their impact on the number of projects initiated and implemented under Sectorial Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013. The role of training programs in enhancing civil servants' innovation capacity is also investigated. The methodology consists in an analysis of 253 projects financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) during 2009-2015 and an empirical research using a representative sample of 337 civil servants who attended EU funded training courses in project management. The conclusions of this paper indicated a direct relation between the number of projects developing training courses in 'project management' and the number of projects initiated and implemented annually by the territorial Agencies for Employment. Moreover, a positive correlation between the training programs and the innovation capacity of civil servants from County Agencies for Employment was also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the impact of the global financial economic crisis of 2007/2008 diminished and the world economy began to recover, policymakers started to look towards new ways of attaining prosperity through sustainable, equitable and robust economic growth. To achieve this desiderate, the financial system (as the main provider of financial capital) had to fully embrace sustainability practices and integrate them in all its internal processes. Within the financial system, the banking sector is undoubtedly the main player. As such, banks also had to join the sustainable development wave. Hence, 'green banking' is becoming a central focus point for many researchers and practitioners as they provide various interpretations of the concept and highlight the best practices. The aim of this paper is twofold: to identify the role of financial regulation and regulators (mostly, Central Banks) in harnessing Green Banking and to determine the involvement of banking institutions in fostering Green Banking. It begins with unpacking the 'Green Banking' concept by revealing the most relevant (from a theoretical standpoint) and practical (considering its applicability in the real economy) approaches to date, in order to better grasp and fine-tune its meaning. After analysing qualitatively and critically the most important research papers and institutional reports to date, the paper provides the reader with the essential toolkit for moving forward with a more in-depth investigation on Green Banking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental protection is one of the core societal issues that the European Union has taken the global lead in tackling. In doing so, it relies not only on macro instruments (such as Environmental Action Plans or Multilateral Environmental Agreements), but also on national and micro-level partners (such as local administration, businesses, civil society and individual citizens). The current paper seeks to collect and disseminate ideas on solving ardent environmental issues, as they are expressed in a focus group involving students with diverse academic backgrounds (but specialized in the study of EU integration and environmental policies). The results suggest that pollution problems are significantly more present in urban areas of Romania and that the respondents were better acquainted of environmental problems that they face in their day-to-day lives. "Education" and "Public administration" proved to be the two central pillars on which innovative solutions for environmental problems could be designed and successfully implemented, in the views of the respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has always been at the forefront of tackling environmental issues. This paper responds to the EUs „call for action? towards addressing the issue of climate change - a key priority for the European Commission in the 2030 policy perspective. The topic is addressed through a focus group that seeks to identify and disseminate possible approaches through which the EU can leverage its international „actorness? in negotiating a straightforward and binding global agreement for action in climate change mitigation. The focus group involves a sample of students, beneficiaries of an environmentally focused Jean Monnet teaching module (TAG-EU). The diverse academic background of the students (coming from social, natural and exact sciences) provides a unique point of view in tackling this ardent issue and can bring valuable and interdisciplinary contributions to the discussion on climate change action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphological and hydrological phenomena that occurred in the Bala Branch - Old Danube bifurcation area led to the worsening of navigation conditions on Danube. Thus, it was necessary the execution of hydrotechnical structures allowing the navigation to be unfolded under optimum conditions on the Old Danube branch, throughout the year. In the present paper is analyzed the morphological dynamics of the Danube's minor riverbed in the mentioned area, taking into consideration the evolution of anthropogenic interventions. This analysis is based on the informational volume obtained after bathymetric, flow and velocity measurements, in the periods of preconstruction and construction of the hydrotechnical works. This study is of significant importance in achieving the correlation between the execution dynamics of hydrotechnical works and the optimization of navigation conditions as recommended by the Danube Commission, in accordance with environmental parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring a country’s welfare and subsequently ranking it with respect to other states is becoming increasingly popular and also useful. In spite of the diversified portfolio of indicators available to assess a country’s welfare, not all of them look towards the community, a sustainable future and the environment. An interesting question arises: to what extent do the most important welfare indicators account for the environmental component? This study aims to critically analyse the most important welfare indicators from an environmental perspective so as to identify appropriate tools for measuring the sustainable welfare of a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]