Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

Increase of energy efficiency remains as one of the major strategic objectives in Lithuania. Effective use of existing energy saving potential increases energy security and reduces emissions of greenhouse gas and other pollutants. In order to meet the growing energy demand and to reduce the negative impact of the energy sector on environment, increase of the role of renewable energy sources in the country’s primary energy balance, as well as larger deployment of energy-efficient and smart technologies in all areas, including military structures, are required. When analysing energy security and energy efficiency, as the two interrelated aspects of the Lithuanian energy policy, assessment of the global energy trends in the world, the EU and neighbouring countries, expected developments in the modern technologies, as well as global aspirations to neutralize the threat of climate change was performed. The paper provides an overview of energy consumption trends in the European Union and Lithuania, energy policy in the NATO alliance, as well the current status of energy consumption in the Lithuanian National Defence System.

Considering the rapid change of work and life as well as the increasing requirements of professional competences for personnel, this article, based on scientific literature, examines the concept competence and its component parts. Through an integrated multi criteria approach, the authors of this work assessed competences and their deciding factors of the naval officers of the Lithuanian Navy and, respectively, developed a complex assessment model. On the basis of the model development principles, competences and their component parts of any other profession can also be assessed. According to the results, the authors proposed adapted competence building measures for a specific vessel that would develop missing skills and increase officers’ work optimization in the existing work environment.

Consequently, as a result of implemented criminal policy liberalization in the last few years the number of convicts in Latvia has fallen sharply. Despite the fact that the range of the criminal punishment applied for adults and minors does not have a significant difference, the sharp decline in proportion of imprisonment can be explained by compulsory education measures and by forced labor, which are broadly used as criminal punishment in legal procedure of convicted minors. After conducting the analysis of criminal offences committed by minors, it can be concluded that the large amount of these criminal offences are property-related criminal offences, i.e. theft and robbery. However, the amount of violent criminal offences committed by minors, which are directed against human life and health, i.e. infliction of great bodily injuries, smurders, etc., increases with every year. The analysis of the components of crime of the criminal offenses committed by minors shows that the criminal offenses committed by minors are becoming more aggressive, more brutal and better planed, which are often directly or indirectly related to alcohol, psychotropic or narcotic substance abuse or domestic violence. This article identifies and analyses the results of the conducted study on peculiarities of execution of the sentence of imprisonment in respect of convicted minors in Latvia. This study examines the peculiarities of execution of the sentence of imprisonment in respect of convicted minors, identifies specific issues and suggests possible solutions. International standards provide that minor prisoners while being in a closed prison environment are defenseless and are at particular risk; therefore, the study obtains the status of vitally important topicality. Based on the study there has been developed a series of recommendations for the staff (of places of confinement) working with minor prisoners, as well as pointed out the necessity to make amendments to the norms of The Sentence Execution Code of Latvia.

This article analyses the concept of tax system in terms of entrepreneurship promotion given the fact that more and more attention is recently paid to entrepreneurship and promotion of it precisely through the national tax system. This article seeks to prove that: tax system is one of the economic entities’ operating conditions enabling to promote or suppress entrepreneurship in the country; both self-employed persons and companies can be entrepreneurial entities; in any case, a state, in promoting or suppressing their entrepreneurship, thus, influences the national economy and its changes.

The ultimate goal of an enterprise is value creation (Rappaport, 1986; Mills and Weinstein, 2000; Jensen, 2001) and it has a great importance for its owners (i.e. shareholders). The concept that is currently coming to the forefront, however, is that of sustainable value. The present paper deals with the definition and evaluation of basic points of departure, approaches and selected tools that lead to measuring corporate sustainability. The last section presents a theoretical basis of measuring corporate sustainability based on sustainable value, which will be the basis and starting point for primary research in selected industries.

Considering lack of benchmarking and observation data, the article analyses issues of technology transfer in Lithuania. Comparison of Lithuanian innovation performance with EU country members is given as well as foreign direct investments in last period. While analysing main technology transfer networks, article explains what problems Lithuanian clusters meet in each model. The main conclusion is that Lithuanian clusters lack experience and investments, also Lithuanian enterprises are mainly small and may not be interested to invest in the development and adoption of technology.

This research article presents sustainable model system based framework derived from the scholarly investigation into the existent research literature on social entrepreneurship. The social entrepreneurship is emerging as a viable alternative to the traditional institutional setups for making a sustainable impact and reach towards the underserved needs of the low-income population living in the developing economies. The existing research on social entrepreneurship lacks focus on creating an integrated framework thereby posing a limitation to the entry, growth and penetration of the social entrepreneurship based market setup. The sustainable model system comprises a combination of the constraining conditions and key choices. The constraining conditions include the environmental and firm-specific constraints like need addressed, mission type and socio-economic objectives. The relative impact and significance of the key choices vary for different social enterprises depending upon the applicable constraining conditions.

There is neither one obvious power acting on the world, nor obvious balance of power and long-term peace and stability. The paradigm of complex dynamic systems would allow understanding more clearly the real order of the world that cannot explain the dominating old mechanical paradigm. Complex dynamic systems have characteristic features and act in many fields where leadership becomes inefficient when following mechanical paradigm.