Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

In foreign studies Latvia is positioned as a “depressive” region in the year 2030, which will have an insufficient population of young people. Thus, Latvia as a country with a business-friendly environment will not be able to be competitive in relation to other European countries and the flow of investment will be at risk, as well as passed on other, more competitive and better developed regions in demographic terms. Therefore, it is pertinent to analyse the trends in youth employment in Latvia and to work on Latvia’s economic development. There is necessity to promote human involvement in the labour market and to reduce their departure to foreign countries. It is important to draw attention to these challenges and to find answers to the questions: Which of the youth employment-promoting scenarios can be realised in Latvia’s regions in the near future? Which of the scenarios is the most appropriate for the development of Latvia’s regions? Which of the scenarios are more focused on the interests of all parties involved? Which scenario will ensure the country’s economic development? Four possible scenarios for promoting youth employment in Latvia were evaluated by experts. The experts were asked to assess the criteria for each scenario by hierarchy analysis. The most optimal scenario for promoting youth employment in Latvia in the experts’ opinion is the scenario with EU participation. The main idea of the scenario is the effective use of European Union (EU) funding for youth mobility in the labour market organised by the State Employment Agency.

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.

According to the EU Competition Policy Brief on the new state aid rules for a competitive aviation industry issued in February 2014, the regulation for the financial public subsidies of any art on the EU national or regional level for regional airports will be a considerably striker. The strategic aims of these new regulations, among other things, are to motivate and encourage the Member States (here: regional airports) to implement more efficient market stimulation measures, make airports work on cost efficient and profitable basis and establish transition periods for regional airports. In practice it means that public subsidies may be granted only to those regional airports that proved to have a sustainable and realistic business model that shall clearly demonstrate the durable financial stability. The authors took part in two air transportation initiatives in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) and were lead partner in the EU Project Baltic. AirCargo.Net, which deployed a number of empirical measures in selected regional airports in the BSR. This paper presents success factors of sustainable business development models for the regional airports in the BSR based on cases studied during the project lifetime

Issues of sustainable development and socially responsible business currently have been discussed a lot. Nevertheless there are no many evidences about causal relationships between social responsibility and profit. But it appears that companies begin to have strong stimuli to pursue social responsibility as a driver of value added in monetary terms. In this context, cause - related marketing obtains higher importance and can be employed for directing activities of profit seeking companies towards socially responsible activity. The presented paper is devoted to analyze Cause-Related Marketing (CRM). Numerous authors have tried to define Cause-Related Marketing concept to realize its field and to differentiate it from others terms. However, there is still no general agreement about the definition, content and scope of CRM, especially in countries such as Spain, where there is a higher conceptual confusion accentuated by translation errors. In this sense, the main objective of this paper is to review and complete the conceptual framework where the theoretical development of CRM is based.

The aim of the present article is to investigate the role of sustainable innovation strategies on competitive advantages of Lithuanian biotechnology companies. The entire Lithuanian biotechnology market is targeted via the conduction of semi-structured qualitative interviews, consecutively carried out in 2011 and 2012. The methodological solution to introduce the time perspective in the research elucidates the importance of the sustainability in innovation processes as there could be the progress and the continuity in the implementation of innovation strategies observed among sample companies. There is the increasing number of discussions about innovations and the performance of organizations. The success of an innovative activity depends on the complex of human and financial resources, organizational, managerial, technical and other factors. Though competitive advantages cover a vast spectrum of aspects, they all are inter-related and dependent on a great number of factors and measures. The innovation strategy could help to reach target results and to provide a synergy effect. Main reasons for the creation and deployment of innovations should also be the increasing competition, rapidly evolving technology and changing consumers’ expectations. Such factors as the human capital emerges as the key driver of high-tech industries because people involved in innovative activities are characterized by their competencies, motivation and willingness to act in different circumstances. It should not be forgotten the importance of the continuity of innovation processes and long-term strategic directions. The research question: are sustainable innovation strategies necessary for competitive advantages of Lithuanian biotechnology companies? Firstly, there is the concept and classification of innovations presented; it is continued by the revelation of main features of innovation management and success factors of the commercialization of innovations. These chapters are followed by the identification of companies’ competitive advantages and the analysis of sustainable strategic human resource management. Finally, there are main characteristics of the biotechnology sector underlined and the research (2011 and 2012) results on a sustainable development of competitive advantages via the innovation strategy presented.