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Increasing competition among companies, constantly growing product and service quality requirements, rapidly changing consumer behavior, technology advancements and changes enables customer to make decisions which product or service to buy. In this context, customer relationship management is becoming an important tool creating preconditions to maintain loyal customers and improve company's performance. The paper analyzes peculiarities of customer relationship management in Lithuanian companies. In order to reveal motives and problems of customer relationship management implementation the survey was carried out. 82 companies participated in the survey. At the end of the paper conclusions are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental changes and globalization of markets make an impact on intense competition in almost all business sectors. Evolutionary changes influence companies to leam, adequately react, adapt to environmental changes and to change themselves. Such a situation has revealed the problems of competitive advantage of industry companies. Therefore the focus to the factors impacting competitive advantage is seen as timely and relevant. The authors of the paper analyze approaches to competitive advantage and the factors impacting competitive advantage. The integrated model of competitive advantage is proposed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entrepreneurship policy to promote economic growth and competitiveness is heavily focused on the supply of entrepreneurs. However, as it was stressed by Baumol (1990), the neglected factor is allocation between productive and unproductive entrepreneurial activities. While some EU countries, such as Czech Republic, Poland, and Portugal demonstrate high rates of entrepreneurial activities, they rank low in terms of competitiveness. This paper argues that in order to explain such phenomenon, we have to rethink the existing approaches from the perspective of economic sociology. Coming back to Baumol (1990), we should acknowledge a rather trivial but often neglected fact that entrepreneurs are persons who primarily seek to enhance their own wealth. The case study of Land Use Administration in Lithuania shows how entrepreneurial activities are embedded in the informal network of public officers and land dealers. The paper also argues that "land use" entrepreneurship activities are path-dependent. It is implicitly assumed that entrepreneurship is an exogenous variable, that entrepreneurs should be "bred" at universities and business schools. However, entrepreneurial activities, such as blat and unofficial economy, also existed in planned economy. Moreover, the legacy of Soviet entrepreneurship affects the current situation in Lithuania. In the case of "land use business" the entrepreneur does not collaborate with public sector, but in contrary - they view the state as a hostile country, like it was in Soviet times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in technology, with the speed of the process of globalization of markets is particularly relevant issue, both from theoretical and practical point of view, also business development, competitiveness, innovation, applications for new and existing networking and support. Organizations are forced to respond and develop their capacity to manage changes -- it depends on the organization's competitive success, business development opportunities. In order to remain competitive in the network society it is necessary to improve the management of the organizations including the activities of social capital. This paper analyzes the social capital of the managerial point of view, critical of the latest problem solving techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee staffing and selection is one of the main elements of human resource management. The aim of this paper is to analyze most visible problems of the competitive selection for civil service in Lithuania and possible ways of their solution. Lithuanian civil servants' attitudes to the factors of increasing impartiality and efficiency of the selection process and its outcomes are presented and analyzed on the basis of Lithuanian civil servants' representative survey conducted in April -- May of 2011 and qualitative research (individual interviews). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research on increasing competitiveness based on the development of innovative activity in the medium-sized enterprises of orthopedic industry. The paper analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of improving competitiveness and innovation development on the basis of which a model for increasing competitiveness using innovative products in orthopedic industry has been formed and proposed. The article also describes the components of the proposed model and assesses the possibility of applying it in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competiveness of regions is one of the most important policies formulating regional policy. The new focus on the specific features of the region and its competiveness encourages using the regional policy measures reflective of broader conception of the rural countryside. The new rural policy targeting and monitoring needs for typologies taking into account the diversity of rural regions. While creating region typologies for policy goals, it was essential to find new criteria and indicators for the measurement of the rural region's economic potential. The economic dynamism becomes an important indicator of the region's economic potential proposed by OECD organisation. This paper examines methodology to build a typology of economic dynamism for rural regions of Lithuania relevant for rural policy purposes. The research results shows that suggested typology based on economic dynamism, which is measured by the number of employed in all population aged 15-64, at this period is not suitable methodological tool for classification of rural regions in Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important stages in the construction process is selecting the right contractor considering the smallest price that may raise many doubts. The cheapest option may be uneconomical in view of a failure of technical quality and assessment of building lifetime. The article reviews literature and worldwide used practice to establish the most important factors of contractor's competitiveness. The paper also determines the main factors of the competitiveness of roofing contractors and evaluates quality as a competitive advantage of the companies having influence on other factors of competitiveness. In conclusion, important proposals for assessing the competitiveness of the contractor and recommendations for future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reveals a conception of national competitiveness and identifies the impact of the World Economic Forum on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). The paper discusses theoretical points and identifies factors determing changes in labour productivity. Also, the analysis of changes in labour productivity in Lithuania (2000-2009) have been performed discovering the causes of a decline in labour productivity in 2009. The article studies the impact of research and technological development (R&D) expenses, wages, direct foreign investments, tangible and intangible capital on labour productivity. The conclusion draws that an increase in investments in the research and development of the business sector is one of the ways to increase labour productivity and competitiveness in Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]