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The 17th International Conference on Business Excellence
Business excellence is about achieving superior business results in relation to the competitors by means of developing and strengthening the management systems and processes of an organization; it is targeted at improving performance and delivering value for all the stakeholders, in a three-dimensional space characterized by uncertainty, complexity and dynamism.The first goal of this international conference is to reunite specialists from the triple-helix fields: university and research, consultancy and business, and policy making pursuant to optimizing the business added value by providing a stimulating environment for knowledge and knowhow business excellence transfers and alliance formation. More
International Business and Economics, in a Romanian Interpretation
Bookfest 2018. Thursday, May 31, the ASE Publishing House launched the treatise entitled Relații Economice Internaționale. Teorii, strategii. politici, instrumente și studii de caz [International economic relations. Theories, strategies, policies, instruments and case studies] – Gheorghe Hurduzeu, Luminiţa Nicolescu (eds.) – in the presence of a numerous audience. The book, the first compendium on the topic in the Romanian economic literature, is the joint effort of scholars from two departments of the Faculty of International Business and Economics, in the Bucharest University of Economic Studies – the Department of International Business and Economics and the Department of Modern Languages and Business Communication. The volume is dedicated equally to students and to specialists, to theorists and to practitioners, though it can be useful as well to any educated individual interested in international issues due to its careful balance between the rigour of the content and the accessibility of the style. The Romanian edition of the treaty is scheduled to be followed by an annotated English version. More
Placing the Central Asia Region in the Equation of Neo-Colonialism Promoted by Russia
The reconsideration of Russia’s foreign policy was made under the condition that, as a result of the steep increase in international prices for crude oil and natural gas, considerable financial resources flooded into the state treasury. With their help, the Russian authorities have slightly improved the standard of living of citizens and, on the assumption of the continuity of the windfall, it was considered appropriate to launch for public reflection the topic of the international role of the state entity inheriting the foreign policy issues of the former Soviet Union. At the centre of these efforts was an objective which was difficult to reject for the Russian citizens, to regain the historical honour and to preserve the integrity of the space in which Russia exerts its natural influence. At first, the international community did not attach much importance to these signals, taking some time to notice the pitfalls of these internal and foreign policy messages. There were also some concrete moves on the geopolitical arena. Russian troops were involved in a brief war in Georgia in 2008 over Georgia’s attempt to bring separatist regions back under Tbilisi’s authority, in 2010 the non-military pressure on Kyrgyzstan made itself felt, and in 2014 the first overt military actions in Ukraine started, after years of non-kinetic hybrid warfare and lawfare. More
My Brentry after Their Brexit
Could Britain be immutable as well as irreplaceable? This is a question worth pondering, given several of Britain’s attributes: its greatness as an island with tendrils reaching across the entire planet, even if it is limited today to a mere geo-cultural-symbolic rite as its geo-politico-economic clout has somewhat waned; its unity, if only among its own constituents, insofar as in Europe it hasn’t been particularly long-lived due to an overly Brussels-based rigid and (op)pressing bureaucracy; its kingship, even if henceforth God must Save the King after having watchfully protected Queen Elisabeth II throughout her 96 years of life, 70 of which spent as a reigning monarch. To a Euro-citizen recently returned to the United Kingdom after the Brexit, having to hand over the passport instead of the more familiar ID card at the border control represents the most immediately apparent change of tone. Looking strictly at the ambience, just as entering the (predecessor of the) European Union didn’t perturb the daily affairs of the Brits, neither did Britain’s divorce from the EU generate any depression. Yet, one cannot always perceive the subtleties beneath people’s (changes of) mind and (pre)judgments, even if these people are His Majesty’s subjects, yet also subject to error. More
Identity Building in Football
Winning at all costs has often been associated with football, but is success the only aspect that matters to fans? A wooden saying has it that victories will only bring other victories. If so, why do some winning teams attract far less spectators to their games than other teams that actually do not perform that well on the pitch? More
Rights, Constraints, and Offsets in Handling the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, among other things, that the development of human knowledge can entail a series of risks that can endanger both the existence of the individual and of the society in which we live. In this time of crisis, an important concern is to achieve an appropriate balance between freedom and safety both at the level of the individual and at the level of society. More
Italy’s New Populist Government, in Context
Contrary to many pundits, many of them hysterics with crypto-fascist hallucinations, I do not believe the victory of Giorgia Meloni has a meaningful significance at the European level. There were many voices anticipating an advance of populist political movements in the context of economic difficulties and the energy crisis. The same voices are certainly right in a way – voters tend to lean towards anti-system, radical or just populist parties when they are not satisfied with the existing situation and pessimistic about the future. However, the mania of the European mainstream for populist prediction is an artifact of the media cycle, since any event must be exploited to the maximum for sensationalism and to introduce an anxious sense of vertigo in the public, to maximize clicks and views. More
The Sustainable University: Concept and Conception
“Sustainable University” is a kind of phrase to emanate a semantic scent with connotations – traced back to an ages-old polarity, yet always at great fashion in social affairs – seemingly both conservative and progressive. Really? Can we so frivolously mix polarities, opposites, antinomies? Well, let’s see. We are talking about conservatism because university and sustainability are involved in activating if not an “instinct”, at least a “rationale” for preserving/perpetuating the knowledge within people and the resources needed to make it work. As we are also talking about progressivism because both try to do it not in ankylosis, but in advancing such knowledge (i.e., in economics, on the allocation of scarce resources) across generations, and the society learns to evolve through each and every member, who is educated to evaluate. Conservation and progress can work together. More
Cold War Ballet Battles
From 1959 through 1962, a series of ballet exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union led to mutual admiration for the arts as well as some miscommunication. Both the public and the dance critics from the US and USSR (both being highly distrustful of each other’s actions) were undecided if what they were seeing deserved a series of standing ovations and curtain calls, or maybe no reaction at all.The early years of the Cold War brought with them a new diplomatic tool that appeared to be harmless, simply a means of educating and introducing people on the subject of ballet – this theatrical, gentle and graceful art form. Little did the public know that the use of these cultural exchanges was to undermine the enemy and spread propaganda and ideas meant to influence their views and make them question what they believed: the Americans were supposed to switch from seeing Russians as uncultured, rigid and shut out from the world, while the Russians were supposed to gain further confirmation that their lifestyle was the norm and that the western world is not one they would like to live in. More
Three Paradoxes of the Territorial Distributions of Contaminations with COVID-19
A month ago, in the first episode regarding the pandemic, we identified the fact that the structural distribution of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus throughout the countries and autonomous territories of the world fulfils all the standards of the nodal analysis. The single difference from similar distributions in the case of world’s gross domestic product is the higher degree of concentration in the case of the pandemic. 13 countries, i.e., 6.19% of the number of countries and autonomous territories, cover 80% of the total number of infections. More
The Woodstock Days of Peace and Music
The 60s and 70s in the United States of America were eras whose counter-cultures were defined by war, racial tensions, and a population of youth defying their government. Held in Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969, The Woodstock Festival was a cultural playground of drugs and rock’n’roll that symbolized America’s political and social climate.Like many prestigious music events, Woodstock is a one-off. Yet the impact of the 1969 festival has been felt for decades, changing the live music industry and inspiring millions of people, many of whom weren’t even born then. Woodstock was preceded by the 1967 Summer of Love, the Monterey International Pop Festival and the Atlantic City Pop Festival. But it would overshadow them all. Why? Woodstock was the culmination of a decade of turmoil, marking the awakening of American youth. The 1960s were marked by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War controversy, riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and several high-profile assassination attempts. The second half of the decade in particular was marked by a value war and a surge of anti-establishment sentiment among the country’s young citizens. Woodstock showed that the counterculture was alive and thriving, and that its members were more conscious than ever. More
Twelve Countries Cumulate 80% of the Pandemic Deaths
The “parallel world” of the pandemic has two main coordinates: contagion cases and deaths, accompanied by the very important indicator of fatality rate relative to contagion cases (Rc/d).In our previous interventions – see here and here –, we demonstrated that the distribution of contagion cases has fully met the standards of nodal analysis. The comparative analysis by continents has identified three very important paradoxes: the United States, Asia and Africa. More
