Evaluation of ICT Investments toward an Increased Competitiveness

This paper focus on the analysis of the impact of investments in IT industry in the general frame of globalization and the drafting of a model for evaluation so that to address the subject of the theoretization of possible measures and efforts in strategic resource consumption for growing of IT competitiveness. To reap the gains from globalization it is necessary to undergo a process of adjustment as factors of production – such as investment capital – towards the ITC applications. The extent by which e-Government will make a difference and add value is seen as dependent on three factors: strong leadership, management of the ‘digital divide’, and well managed innovation.ITC; e-government; investments; digital divide; Internet.

INTERNET ETHICS

In our age, Internet is the biggest information network in the world; it consists of a set of heterogeneous networks from over 100 countries displaying huge amounts of virtual resources; it provides facilities such as email, file transmission protocol (ftp), workgroups discussion or chat, information and dissemination of information (www – world wide web). Internet has a major impact over all activity fields: political, social, economic and private life of users, as well. Newly developed, models of on-line business are a basic element in economic growth of a company. Taking into account the specificity of access on the Internet, it is necessary to establish/create/set and respect clear principles and rules to access the virtual business environment. These are created by specialized organizations or even developed in internal frame of the companies. Using these rules, acceptable activities and unacceptable activities (for a potential user of Internet) are defined. In the time that ethics defines a concept related to the adequate conduct of a person in the social environment, we can speak about business ethics, especially business on-line ethics. Ethics appears in relation among persons or in relation between persons and computers. Ethics is in business environment, in this case, virtual environment, but to the workplace, too. Managers have major responsibility to set, implement and respect some ethical systems within the company and to be an example in this sense.Internet, Ethics, Internet Acceptable Use policies-IAU, acceptable activities, unacceptable activities, business on-line, guidelines for business on-line

The Business Intelligence and the Better Decisions in Management

The paper intends to present more reasons in the favour of promoting the business intelligence (BI) in the managerial practice. Business intelligence is an umbrella term that encompasses the processes, tools, and technologies required to turn data into information, and information into knowledge and plans that drive effective business activity. BI encompasses data warehousing technologies and processes on the back end, and query, reporting, analysis, and information delivery tools (that is, BI tools) and processes on the front end. Organizations need to increase their focus on decision-making. In particular, they need to think again about the relationship between information and decision-making. Business intelligence and its predecessor concepts decision support, executive information systems, have been circulating for several decades in business.business intelligence, decisions, management.

Benchmarking and Performance Management

The relevance of the chosen topic is explained by the meaning of the firm efficiency concept - the firm efficiency means the revealed performance (how well the firm performs in the actual market environment) given the basic characteristics of the firms and their markets that are expected to drive their profitability (firm size, market power etc.). This complex and relative performance could be due to such things as product innovation, management quality, work organization, some other factors can be a cause even if they are not directly observed by the researcher. The critical need for the management individuals/group to continuously improve their firm/company’s efficiency and effectiveness, the need for the managers to know which are the success factors and the competitiveness determinants determine consequently, what performance measures are most critical in determining their firm’s overall success. Benchmarking, when done properly, can accurately identify both successful companies and the underlying reasons for their success. Innovation and benchmarking firm level performance are critical interdependent activities. Firm level variables, used to infer performance, are often interdependent due to operational reasons. Hence, the managers need to take the dependencies among these variables into account when forecasting and benchmarking performance. This paper studies firm level performance using financial ratio and other type of profitability measures. It uses econometric models to describe and then propose a method to forecast and benchmark performance.benchmarking, competitiveness, innovation, indicators.

The composite indicators used in assessing innovation at national level

The purpose of present paper is to present some recent developments in constructing composite innovation (or even, science and technology S&T) indicators on a national level. Measuring innovation at the national level is crucial in developing appropriate long term strategies for economic growth, because it is widely believed technological innovation is one of the main drivers of sustained economic-social welfare, if not the single most important driver of economic growth. Our purpose is to present a mapping exercise of metrics – based on composite indicators - found in the STI literature, pointing out those used in practice, with a view to corresponding values in the case of Romania. It has become standard practice to combine several indicators for science, technology, and innovation to form composite numbers. Composite indicators are increasingly being used to make cross-national comparisons of country performance in specified areas such as competitiveness, globalisation, innovation, etc.Innovation, innovation metrics, Science and Technology indicators, composite indicators, National Innovation Systems, Scoreboards.

Corporate Social Responsibility and its Macroeconomic Implications

One of main concern of policy makers is pollution and hence the improvement of the environmental quality. The implementation of environment policies aims at improving life and product quality in order to replace those obtained by high polluting processes by less polluting ones. Countries having more strict environmental regulations are likely to suffer from a significant increase of their production costs. As a consequence these countries become less competitive on the international market and may lose their market share. In this context, an increasing attention was granted to the impact of environment policies on foreign trade. Our purpose in this paper is to investigate whether Corporate social responsibility introduced into Eastern European countries have led or not to a decline of exports towards the European Union (EU), and if so how much? This question is important since it is related to the preoccupation of EU new members to increase their exports and the quality of their products. Our econometric methodology based on recent developments of panel data techniques allow us to control for unobservable heterogeneity and hence to get robust empirical robust. Our results highlight a moderated impact of environmental regulations on foreign trade.environmental regulations; trade policy; gravity equation; competitiveness.

Particular Methods of Simultaneous Collection of Personal Mobility Research Data from Several Points

Until three or four decades ago, humanity was no longer constrained by the depletion of certain natural resources (especially energy) and the intensified degradation of the natural environment. The consequences of these major crises—such as the economic, financial, and social upheaval of the world, dramatic climate change, and the entry of politics into a Brownian sarabande—necessitate the transition of civilization to another viable formula. Adequate, timely, and sustainable solutions are being sought, from the subsistence ones to those of economic efficiency. Thus, the mobility revolution is credited as one of the most important levers of change. Starting from the reality that most cars in traffic are not occupied at their maximum capacity, some ideas have already been advanced and even put into practice—“inspired”—which would improve the efficiency in this regard. For example, the reduction in the number of seats in cars and, correspondingly, the considerable reduction in the dimensions of cars are already found in the design of mini-cars and the correlation of identical interests of the self-movement of several people and the integration of this coincidence in a single concurrent mobility formula is already functional through the ride sharing system. Along with intelligent mobility management and the transition to electric and autonomous mobility, streamlining the occupancy of moving cars is seen as a great potential of the mobility revolution. Within the limits of the methodology of data collection in economic statistics, this study proposes a complex technique associated with a convincing tactic of empirical measurement of specific indices of urban traffic issues. The special method is characterized by the simultaneity and plurality of observation points followed by the correlation of the values obtained from the measurement thus performed, with the results from the video recordings taken at the same time. This method will increase the methodological accuracy of data collection in economic statistics. By advancing this method, this study aims to capture the occupancy rates of people in urban vehicle traffic, in different cities, using a combined method

Acceptance of Demand Response and Aggregators as a Solution to Optimize the Relation between Energy Producers and Consumers in order to Increase the Amount of Renewable Energy in the Grid

Demand response plays a very important role in balancing the intermittent production of an increasing share of renewable energy sources on the energy market. This article analyses the importance of demand response and the role of aggregators for the new development of the electricity market, where the renewables will play a more important role. The main objective of this research is to determine the acceptance level of demand response and its implementation on the energy consumer side. This acceptance should include a professional actor, the aggregator which is assuming the role of optimizing the relation between energy producers and consumers, and to monitor the implementation and use of demand response. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with experts in energy from Hungary, Romania and Serbia, on workshops with experts and a wider online survey with end customers for electricity. The results indicate that there is a willingness potential to implement demand response programs with aggregators as intermediaries between energy providers and end consumers of electrical energy

Key Factors Which Contribute to the Participation of Consumers in Demand Response Programs and Enable the Proliferation of Renewable Energy Sources

Consumer behaviour in the energy field is playing a more important role in the new approach dominated by the proliferation of renewable energy sources. In this new context, the grid has to balance the intermittent and uncertain renewable energy generated, and find solutions, also, on the consumer side for increasing the stability and reliability of the energy system. The main de-mand response solutions are price and incentive based, but there is a need to identify the main factors which can influence their efficiency due to the fact that there is a lack of knowledge about the preferences of consumers. The main goal of this article is to identify the main demand response solutions and the related key factors which influence the participation of consumers in demand response programs and may contribute to the spread of renewable energy sources. For this research, semi-structured interviews were organised with experts in energy from Romania, Hungary and Serbia, as well as workshops with experts in energy, and an online survey with customers for electricity. This article reduces the gap between the results of technical studies, related in demand response programs, and their practical implementations, where the consumer behaviour and its social dimensions are neglected even though, in reality, they are playing the main role. The results suggest that the consumer’s participation in demand response programs is highly influenced by different aspects related to the promotion of the renewable energy and the reduction of CO2 emissions and the global warming impact