0000000001293742
AUTHOR
Erika Sumilo
Integrating business start-up indicators in the flexicurity concept to cover the alternative forms of employment
The flexicurity concept created in the Netherlands and Denmark in the early 1990s has become the main stepping-stone in improving the performance of labour markets across the European Union Member States. The European Commission has therefore taken a leading role on broader flexicurity concept development and creation of the data analysis methodology. However, the analysis proposed by the European Commission Joint Research Centre on flexicurity indicators in 2010 only partly includes business start-ups as a flexible form of employment. This research starts the discussion on whether additional indicators should be integrated in the flexicurity analysis, because of the rising need for employm…
Is Ethics Rational? Teleological, Deontological and Virtue Ethics Theories Reconciled in the Context of Traditional Economic Decision Making
Abstract This article examines the most prominent ethical theories from the view point of economic rationality. Authors argue that utilitarian perspective which used to be connected with classical concepts of rationality in economics is not the only approach to understand reasoning behind the human behaviour. Moreover, Virtue ethics developed by Aristotle more than 2000 years ago, gives modern perspective to the questions of morale and ethics, connecting individuals to broader communities and explaining their motivation and actions. Similarly, deontological theories that from the first sight might seem as contradicting to rational choice, explain human behaviour when examined at the macro l…
Virtue in small business in small places: Organisational factors associated with employee dishonest behaviour in the retail sector
Abstract The organisational factors associated with employee dishonest behaviour are understudied because dishonesty is sensitive topic and organisations are not willing to reveal misbehaviour to the wider public. This paper addresses this research gap by providing an empirical study on reporting of dishonest behaviour of retail employees in Estonia and Latvia. The aim of the paper is to find out how organisational factors affect the reporting of dishonest behaviour in retail sector. Local vs international retailers and rural vs capital city stores characterise organisational factors and these are analysed in different hypothetical scenarios: low wage, perceived injustice and boredom. The s…
Competence Utilization for Innovation Capabilities - A Question of Trust?
The purpose of this paper is to show how trust as an organizational value contributes to employee competence utilization in the case of innovation capability. Thus, it is the objective of this paper to analyze the positive impacts, but also potential limits of trust in business management. The research paper uses two different quantitative empirical studies drawn from German and Austrian mid-sized companies to empirically test this interrelation. As a result, the paper determines particular aspects of trust such as accountability, shared norms and the ability to take responsibility to be interrelated with the usage of employee competences and underlines a positive connection between product…
Organizational innovation for SME'S: a model for Latvia
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can be a significant source of innovation in small economies. SMEs face challenges of limited capacity, personnel and resources for long-term investments. Additionally, they might not see and understand the benefits of innovation. Implementation of organizational innovation (OI) could give such enterprises an opportunity to improve competitiveness and develop other types of innovation. The purpose of this study is to develop a model, explaining OI through such factors as organizational culture (OC) and knowledge management (KM) in SMEs via an empirical study across various industries. Surveying 600 SMEs in Latvia, the authors explore the contributio…
A firm’s organizational innovation and organizational learning abilities
Many recent studies are dedicated to the problem of innovation as a mean of improving a firm’s overall performance. Various kinds of innovation in a firm usually are closely interrelated with each other. While the majority of studies focus on technological - product and process - innovation, the investigation of non-technological - marketing and organizational - innovation (ORI), has increasingly attracted the interest of researchers during the last decade. Organizational culture and organizational learning are important drivers of such innovation. For instance, a collaborative culture, trust and open-mindedness encourage new initiatives and ideas, while learning helps not just to improve s…
Pharmaceutical enterprises’ market entry strategies
The pharmaceutical sector encompasses a wide range of business activities – research and product development, manufacturing, marketing, international business, wholesale, retail and services. Consequently, it is facing the contemporary challenges of globalisation, sustainable development, social, economic and political change. At the same time, pharmaceuticals have a significant impact on the provision of health care, which limits the freedom of business. In framework of this research the applicability of the International business theories to pharmaceutical sector, as well as the major factors influencing the enterprise’ choice of the market entry mode are explored. The organisation of hea…