Contemporary Challenges for Human Resource Management (Lithuanian Case)

The article discusses peculiarities of human resource management in the context of contemporary challenges, investigates relations between the elements of the internal environment and challenges for human resource management. The author of the article believes that scientific publications on human resource management still do not pay enough attention to certain elements of management process, i.e. proper systematization of organizational goals, perception of organizational management structures in the new environment, etc. Management practice of staff selection is characterized by the tendency of the organization to dominate, meanwhile the expectations of the candidate are very often sacrificed, and little interest is shown in the development of the sense of loyalty in new employees. The author acknowledges that due to ever-increasing competition organizations cannot ignore the changes that are happening, and on the basis of his researches he identifies the obstacles which hinder many Lithuanian organizations from participating in the contemporary process of changes. The article provides the author’s suggestions for the improvement of human resources management in the environment of Lithuanian organizations

Issue of Teamwork in the Context of Theoretical Discourse

In recent decades teamwork has become not only a popular topic for public discussion, but also the focus of numerous scientific insights. The abundance of publications on this subject suggests that organizing teamwork has become one of the phenomena of organi‑ zational activity. On the other hand, based on his numerous research, the author of the paper raises the question of whether the concept of teamwork analysed in such publications is studied within the framework of scientific concepts. For instance, some authors believe that the only distinguishing feature of a team is an efficiently working group; the formation of the team is a long‑term process and to achieve this the group needs to undergo several stages of development (Hersey, Blanchard, Tuckman, Jensen, Katzenbach, Smith, Liker, Kasiulis, Barvydienė, Savanavičienė, Šilingienė, Gražulis); other authors use these concepts as synonyms (Boddy, Peiton) and analyse them in the context of formal and informal sta‑ tus. Thus, the concept of effective and ineffective teams has become the additional object of the research. Numerous researchers limit their research to the analysis of functional roles within well‑established teams (Benne, Sheats), at the same time neglecting the impact of personality traits on the activity of the work group. Specialists do not agree on the team size (Manz, Sims, Miller, Stoner et. al.), purpose (Meskon, Katzenbach, Smith, Sakalas et. al.), and periodically arising constraints on the team development and the like. As a result, scholars and practitioners perceive the issues of team work differently, thus they often talk at cross purposes. The author of the paper believes that it is expedient to consider the information collected up to now on the topic of teamwork within the overall context of the development of management science, which at the same time would provide for the development of conceptual theoretical proposals for scientific teamwork models (systems)

TOURISM DEVELOPMENT CONDITIONS IN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF LITHUANIA

The authors of the paper discuss the tourism development conditions in the municipalities of Lithuania. The scientific problem - tourism development trends have not been studied at the local, municipality level in Lithuania and tourism in districts developed without a clear and long-term development strategy and consistent implementation of the programme. The aim of the research is to explore tourism development conditions in the municipalities of Lithuania. Objectives of the research are to characterize the factors influencing the development of tourism; to perform an analysis of the main factors of tourism development in Lithuania; to define the major factors of tourism management in the municipalities of Lithuania. Tourism development issues were discussed; the results of the research (an analysis of scientific literature and questionnaire survey, an analysis of strategic documents) were performed. The factors, which influence tourism the most are the human and financial resources, tourism infrastructure, the variety of tourism services, the virtual environment, the image of a tourism destination/ awareness, management of the tourism destination, the quality of tourism services and events. Tourism development in the municipalities of Lithuania is influenced by such factors, as the development of the tourism planning and management system, an adequate competence of human resources, cooperation between the public and private sectors, planning and organization, the legal framework for tourism, tourism projects development and implementation, a tourism development strategy and research in the tourism development area

Current Issues of the Development of Employee Intercultural Competency in Work Environment (analysis of the experience of Lithuanian Organizations)

During the past decade the interest of scientists in multiculturalism has increased significantly, as the need for the development of intercultural competency has become more explicitly manifested in the work environment of organizations. In Lithuania the analysis of intercultural competency is still quite a new research area and is conducted intermittently, i.e. only certain aspects related to intercultural competency are analysed. This article analyses various scientific approaches to the phenomenon of interculturalism and tendencies of its manifestation in the organizational environment. The authors present an empirical research which involved nearly half a thousand respondents (N=464) from the capital public institutions and small municipalities of Lithuania employees who work primarily in the public sector. The survey questionnaire allows to assess skills of intercultural competency, the geography and frequency of intercultural communication, dimensions of competencies of employees in Lithuanian organizations, etc. and to establish the problems characteristic of the competency development. Based on the obtained data the authors of the article establish the problems characteristic of the development of intercultural competence in Lithuanian organizations and provide an overview of future perspectives

A posteriori metadata from automated provenance tracking: Integration of AiiDA and TCOD

In order to make results of computational scientific research findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable, it is necessary to decorate them with standardised metadata. However, there are a number of technical and practical challenges that make this process difficult to achieve in practice. Here the implementation of a protocol is presented to tag crystal structures with their computed properties, without the need of human intervention to curate the data. This protocol leverages the capabilities of AiiDA, an open-source platform to manage and automate scientific computational workflows, and TCOD, an open-access database storing computed materials properties using a well-defined and exhaustive ontology. Based on these, the complete procedure to deposit computed data in the TCOD database is automated. All relevant metadata are extracted from the full provenance information that AiiDA tracks and stores automatically while managing the calculations. Such a protocol also enables reproducibility of scientific data in the field of computational materials science. As a proof of concept, the AiiDA-TCOD interface is used to deposit 170 theoretical structures together with their computed properties and their full provenance graphs, consisting in over 4600 AiiDA nodes

From atoms to bonds, angles and torsions: molecular metrics from crystal space, and two Excel implementations

Values of molecular bond lengths, bond angles and (less frequently) bond torsion angles are readily available from databases, from crystallographic software, and/or from interactive molecular and crystal visualization programs such as Jmol. However, the methods used to calculate these values are less well known. In this paper, the computational methods are described in detail, and live Excel implementations, which permit readers to readily perform the calculations for their own molecular systems, are provided. The methods described apply to both fractional coordinates in crystal space and Cartesian coordinates in Euclidean space (space in which the geometric postulates of Euclid are valid) and are vector/matrix based. In their simplest computational form, they are applied as algebraic expansions which are summed. They are also available in matrix formulations, which are readily manipulated and calculated using the matrix functions of Excel. In particular, their general formulation as metric matrices is introduced. The methods in use are illustrated by a detailed example of the calculations. This contribution provides a significant practical application which can also act as motivation for the study of matrix mathematics with respect to its many uses in chemistry

Komandinis darbas organizacijose

Mokslo studijoje "Komandinis darbas organizacijose" skaitytojui pristatomas autoriaus požiūris į komandinio darbo probleminius klausimus ir galimybių perspektyvas, siekiant organizacijos sėkmingos konkurencijos dabarties iššūkių sąlygomis. Mokslo studijos tikslas – sudominti skaitytoją komandinio darbo teorinėmis nuostatomis ir pateikti jų nuolatinės kaitos procesą permainų kontekste. Knygoje "Komandinis darbas organizacijose" nagrinėjamas tyrimais paremtas daugelio aptariamų klausimų kritinis vertinimas, todėl organizacijų vadovams naudinga domėtis, kas skatina darbuotojus dirbti komandinio darbo aplinkoje ir siekti iškeltų tikslų

Using SMILES strings for the description of chemical connectivity in the Crystallography Open Database

Computer descriptions of chemical molecular connectivity are necessary for searching chemical databases and for predicting chemical properties from molecular structure. In this article, the ongoing work to describe the chemical connectivity of entries contained in the Crystallography Open Database (COD) in SMILES format is reported. This collection of SMILES is publicly available for chemical (substructure) search or for any other purpose on an open-access basis, as is the COD itself. The conventions that have been followed for the representation of compounds that do not fit into the valence bond theory are outlined for the most frequently found cases. The procedure for getting the SMILES out of the CIF files starts with checking whether the atoms in the asymmetric unit are a chemically acceptable image of the compound. When they are not (molecule in a symmetry element, disorder, polymeric species,etc.), the previously published cif_molecule program is used to get such image in many cases. The program package Open Babel is then applied to get SMILES strings from the CIF files (either those directly taken from the COD or those produced by cif_molecule when applicable). The results are then checked and/or fixed by a human editor, in a computer-aided task that at present still consumes a great deal of human time. Even if the procedure still needs to be improved to make it more automatic (and hence faster), it has already yielded more than 160,000 curated chemical structures and the purpose of this article is to announce the existence of this work to the chemical community as well as to spread the use of its results.The authors are grateful to the Junta de Andalucía (Research Group FQM-195) for financial support of the publication costs of this article

Using SMILES strings for the description of chemical connectivity in the Crystallography Open Database

Computer descriptions of chemical molecular connectivity are necessary for searching chemical databases and for predicting chemical properties from molecular structure. In this article, the ongoing work to describe the chemical connectivity of entries contained in the Crystallography Open Database (COD) in SMILES format is reported. This collection of SMILES is publicly available for chemical (substructure) search or for any other purpose on an open-access basis, as is the COD itself. The conventions that have been followed for the representation of compounds that do not fit into the valence bond theory are outlined for the most frequently found cases. The procedure for getting the SMILES out of the CIF files starts with checking whether the atoms in the asymmetric unit are a chemically acceptable image of the compound. When they are not (molecule in a symmetry element, disorder, polymeric species,etc.), the previously published cif_molecule program is used to get such image in many cases. The program package Open Babel is then applied to get SMILES strings from the CIF files (either those directly taken from the COD or those produced by cif_molecule when applicable). The results are then checked and/or fixed by a human editor, in a computer-aided task that at present still consumes a great deal of human time. Even if the procedure still needs to be improved to make it more automatic (and hence faster), it has already yielded more than 160,000 curated chemical structures and the purpose of this article is to announce the existence of this work to the chemical community as well as to spread the use of its results.The authors are grateful to the Junta de Andalucía (Research Group FQM-195) for financial support of the publication costs of this article