Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The paper analyses the results of a research conducted with the aim to study topical questions on social innovation attempting to disclose its role expressed via its mission and impact on the Latvian society in the context of sustainable development. The authors present the methodology, conduct and results of the qualitative content analysis of the texts of a focus group discussion with participants from the fields of entrepreneurship, education, communication, sport and charity. The empirical data were analysed with open coding using AQUAD 6 software for the registration of conceptual codes, data processing and creation of frequency tables of categories developed. Having summarised the main findings, it was concluded that social innovation may promote the development of both individuals and the entire society improving the quality of people’s life. The research resulted in the revelation of five domains of social innovation impact including the development at the: intrapersonal, interpersonal interaction, societal growth, innovation, and work opportunity levels.

This paper aims to describe and analyse the innovations in the promotion of home-produced products in the market in Latvia. To do this, the authors have carried out a survey of 50 home producers that makes up a 4.5% of home producers and reviewed research studies about marketing strategies of small farmers and home producers. The obtained results reveal that the most important factor in the marketing of home-produced products is the quality and taste of the products. It can be noticed that the market requires not a combination of traditional and often cultural heritage technologies in the development of the product itself, but an open mind and innovative approaches in the marketing and promotion of products in the market. The authors also conclude mainly the products are sold directly to the end user and therefore the communication with the client and mutual cooperation are highly significant.

The paper studies the effective, strategic and sustainable interaction between start-ups, venture investors and corporations occurring within the course of innovation investments; it analyses some results of merger and acquisition processes. When modelling these interactions between the entities of innovation ecosystems the authors used agent-based method as the most applicable for decentralized system modelling which also includes the venture investment sector and the merger and acquisition market. Modelling various case scenarios for government regulator, the authors propose some cases and sustainable solutions which enable the overall growth of economy and lead to the optimization of inputs and outputs and to the systematization of the model.

Pension system efficiency is very sensitive topic to every citizen of the country. It is very common to criticize established pension systems in search for better solutions. The authors in the present research paper attempt to find out whether the criticism is deserved by evaluating the efficiency of Latvian pension system from the future pensioner’s point of view in the context of the state pension financed from two sources: state pension and state funded pension. Additionally, the authors highlight a number of aspects of pension system the sustainability in Latvia. Private pension is not considered.

Russian economic reforms of the 1990s triggered off the massive economic transformation that went hand in hand with worsening of the life prospects of the population, rising of unemployment, inflation, personal debts and creating social unrests among other security issues. The new economic perspectives offered by the free and open market created the previously unthinkable incentives for many people. Borrowing and lending became fully legal endeavors and the new economic order offered unprecedented opportunities and a variety of consumer goods and services that were previously unavailable. One of the outcomes of this process was the sharp increase in the number of debts and personal insolvency issues. It appears that many Russian citizens lacked the financial literacy and healthy judgement in their financial management that led to the problems of economic insolvency debt. This paper focuses on the issue of personal economic and financial security in Russian Federation. We analyze the available data before and after the economic crisis of the 2007-2009 and the recent sanctions to demonstrate the patterns of borrowing behavior of the Russians. Our results show that borrowing decreased in the recent months following the introduction of economic sanctions which can be explained by the overall feeling of uncertainty and the fear of economic collapse of various households. We argue that good financial literacy might increase the basic economic awareness and contribute to the better security in the everyday life in the Russian Federation.