Better Performance through Enterprise Governance and Management Process Innovation

All the changes we are facing today take place within the global economic environment. These changes are caused by increasingly important inventions, suggestions, potential innovations, and innovations (and their diffusion to many users) resulting from crucially needed creativeness and innovativeness, new ideas, and constructive thinking; we are living in the era of different viewpoints and each of them originate from different knowledge, values, and experiences. This is why also the enterprise’s performance, and the ways of its achievement are continuously changing. One way of reaching enterprise competitiveness is provided by enterprise governance’s and management’s process innovation (GMPI) whose importance we will try to introduce here. We will discuss about enterprise policy, strategic management, innovativeness, competitiveness, and better performance of enterprises on the basis of GMPI.

Complexity Theory for a New Managerial Paradigm: A Research Framework

In this work, we supply a theoretical framework of how organizations can embed complexity management and sustainable development into their policies and actions. The proposed framework may lead to a new management paradigm, attempting to link the main concepts of complexity theory, change management, knowledge management, sustainable development, and cybernetics. We highlight how the processes of organizational change have occurred as a result of the move to adapt to the changes in the various global and international business environments and how this transformation has led to the shift toward the present innovation economy. We also point how organizational change needs to deal with sustainability, so that the change may be consistent with present needs, without compromising the future

Cognitive emotion regulation modulates the balance of competing influences on ventral striatal aversive prediction error signals

Cognitive emotion regulation (CER) is a critical human ability to face aversive emotional stimuli in a flexible way, via recruitment of specific prefrontal brain circuits. Animal research reveals a central role of ventral striatum in emotional behavior, for both aversive conditioning, with striatum signaling aversive prediction errors (aPE), and for integrating competing influences of distinct striatal inputs from regions such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), amygdala, hippocampus and ventral tegmental area (VTA). Translating these ventral striatal findings from animal research to human CER, we hypothesized that successful CER would affect the balance of competing influences of striatal afferents on striatal aPE signals, in a way favoring PFC as opposed to subcortical (i.e., non-isocortical) striatal inputs. Using aversive Pavlovian conditioning with and without CER during fMRI, we found that during CER, superior regulators indeed reduced the modulatory impact of subcortical striatal afferents (hippocampus, amygdala and VTA) on ventral striatal aPE signals, while keeping the PFC impact intact. In contrast, inferior regulators showed an opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that ventral striatal aPE signals and associated competing modulatory inputs are critical mechanisms underlying successful cognitive regulation of aversive emotions in humans

Criteria weighting by using the 5Ws & H technique

Background: This paper introduces the use of the 5Ws & H technique, which is the creative problem solving technique based on who, what, when, where, why and how questions, for the establishing of the criteria weights in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). Objectives: The main goal of this paper is to adapt and complete the steps of the 5Ws & H technique, usually used in the problem definition phase, to establish the importance of criteria by the methods based on an interval scale. It also aims to verify the applicability of the proposed approach in the selection of the most appropriate blade. Methods/Approach: In terms of prescriptive approach, the creative 5Ws & H technique was used in the weighting step of the frame procedure for MCDM. During synthesis, the additive model was used, whereas interactions among criteria were considered by using the discrete Choquet integral. Results: The first result is a theoretical statement of the weighting scheme for a new decision mechanism. The second result is the application of this scheme in a real-world case-study. Considering interactions among criteria strengthened the decision-making basis in the selection of the most appropriate blade. Conclusion: The creative 5Ws & H technique proved useful in criteria weighting

Concern for economic results and corporate social responsibility - a comparative study of Lithuania and Slovenia

The purpose of this draft paper is to empirically examine the role of concern for economic results for shaping corporate social responsibility in Lithuania and Slovenia. Results are based on 80 answers of students from Lithuania and 101 answers of students from Slovenia. Results reveal that Slovenian students on average show significantly higher concern for corporate social responsibility, as well as for economic results, than their Lithuanian counterparts. Similarly in both countries, students perceive organizations concern to pay the full financial cost of using energy and natural resources as most significant factor shaping corporate social responsibility. Findings are important for practitioners and for academia, which get insight into the perception of corporate social responsibility of their future employees