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This Special Issue of Sustainability is dedicated to highlighting theoretical knowledge and recent empirical evidence on the arrangement and implementation of job design, while addressing the context of emerging technologies and striving to ensure human and organisational sustainability [...]

BACKGROUND: Recently, quite a number of employees have been asked to choose remote work or even have been forced into it as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the benefits suggested by remote working, e.g. saving on commuting time and expenses working from home generates numerous challenges for employees, including the blurred line between the roles of working and private life. While, previous studies have demonstrated that work-life balance, which refers to the ability of every individual to coordinate work and family obligations successfully, has a significant impact on employee well-being and organisational performance, ways for maintaining the balance under crisis remain underexplored. OBJECTIVE: Trying to narrow the gap, the paper aims at revealing the antecedents of work-life balance while working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A quantitative survey has been conducted in Lithuania (pilot study). The data have been collected from the employees working only remotely. RESULTS: The results provided evidence that employees struggled with work-home balance while working remotely. In line with the results, work and family demands served as detrimental factors for work-home balance, while manager support, co-workers support, job autonomy, and job control increased work-home balance. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, the research results expand the knowledge on the antecedents of work-life balance in a crisis situation. Moreover, the findings have significant implications for employers demonstrating that organisations need to carefully plan and implement new strategies and practices for work-home balance improvement for the employees who work from home.

Vis dažniau iškylantys ekologijos ir gamtos saugojimo iššūkiai skatina mąstyti apie darnų vystymąsi. Vadovėlį parengę mokslininkai teigia, kad pagrindinė darnaus vystymosi idėja – suvokti, kaip žmonija turi gyventi tenkindama savuosius poreikius ir turėdama itin ribotus išteklius. Leidinio autoriai – skirtingų mokslo krypčių atstovai, todėl darnaus vystymosi ir šiai sričiai artimų temų problematika apžvelgiama iš skirtingų socialinių, ekonominių, inžinerinių ir kitų mokslo sričių perspektyvų. Leidinyje plačiai aptariamas išteklių valdymas, jų analizė, keliamas svarbiausias klausimas – kaip žmonės turėtų prisitaikyti prie šios planetos išteklių ribotumo? Išsamioje teorinėje vadovėlio dalyje skaitytojas supažindinamas su darniu vystymusi, šios šakos raida ir svarbiausiais komponentais. Kituose skyriuose darnaus vystymosi komponentai nagrinėjami detaliau: aptariamas socialinės gerovės ir laimės suvokimas, žiedinės ekonomikos pavyzdžiai ir svarba, klimato kaita, skaitmeninės kultūros įtaka. Skyrių pabaigoje pateikti klausimai leis įtvirtinti sukauptas žinias ir ugdytis esmines darnaus vystymosi kompetencijas: sisteminį mąstymą, numatymą, normatyvinę kompetenciją, strateginę kompetenciją, bendradarbiavimą, kritinį mąstymą, savivoką ir integruotą problemų sprendimo kompetenciją. Vadovėlis skirtas plačiam skaitytojų ratui, siekiančiam įgyti globalų, kritišką ir refleksyvų sąmoningumą, socialinio, ekonominio, kultūrinio ir aplinkos konteksto suvokimą, etinę poziciją, paremtą darnaus vystymosi principais.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the teaching ways in universities, rapidly moving from face-to-face delivery models to online and distance learning. Consequently, the multimedia and digital competencies of the teaching staff were suddenly put onto the stage, resulting in the realisation that many of them were not sufficiently skilled to face this challenge due to a lack of prior training. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this explanatory research is to present and make a comparison of key training programs, deemed best practices, that address different ways to assist higher education teaching staff to acquire the multimedia competencies required to be technologically- proficient in their classes. METHODS: A desk research provides the data for a multiple case study of courses implemented in universities of five European countries, namely Spain, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania, and Slovenia. RESULTS: The results of the study show a total of 28 courses ranging from how to deliver online teaching to gamification, going through other topics such as photo and video editing, that enable higher education teachers to acquire digital skills. The main challenges detected for the success of these training programs are the teachers’ lack of time for training, non-positive attitudes towards technology, and lack of innovative capacity in their teaching processes. Among the positive outcomes, we can find that these universities opt for programs with courses varied in content, to cover a wider range of skills, as well as offering courses at several levels of development so that all staff may improve, from the very beginners to more advanced tools. CONCLUSION: By identifying the challenges and success factors behind the best practices hereby analysed, the lessons obtained from this research may serve as benchmarks for other universities to develop efficient multimedia training programs for university staff. This research has been funded by the European Commission within the project Multimedia Competencies for University Staff to Empower University –Community Collaborations (2020-1-Ro01-KA203-080399).

Recently, the challenges of managing different generations have been increasingly emphasised, arguing that different environmental factors are important for different generations, leading to the employee-organisation fit. Drawing upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, employee-organisation fit approach, and cohort perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the crucial work environment factors for different generations’ employee-organisation fit. While studying this issue, several presumptions were proposed and tested using a linear regression method. The quantitative data were collected from questionnaires distributed in Lithuania using simple random sampling (311 responses). The empirical research findings show that the factors of job resources (autonomy, feedback, trust, and leadership) affect the all different generations’ employee-organisation fit more substantially than job demands factors (workload, work pressure, and emotional demands). Moreover, results confirm that the employee-organisation fit for different generations is ultimately determined by different environmental factors.

The effect of human resource management (HRM) on organizations and human resources is mainly explained by the perspective of mutual gain or that of conflicting outcomes. Recently, sustainable HRM i...

Over the past decade, in the light of intensive robotisation, job insecurity referring to the employees&rsquo, overall concern about the continued availability of their jobs in the future has become a hot topic. A general assumption supported by the findings is that job insecurity causes far-reaching negative consequences for the employee well-being and health, attitudes towards the job and organisation, and behaviours at work. However, the focus on behavioural outcomes, especially on employee performance at work, is still scant. Trying to narrow the gap, the paper aims at revealing the linkage between job insecurity and two dimensions of performance, namely task performance and organisational citizenship behaviour. Building on the hindrance stressor dimension of the stress model, the paper claims that a negative relationship exists between the constructs. Quantitative data were collected in a survey of robotised production lines operators working in the furniture sector in Lithuania. As predicted, the results revealed that job insecurity had a negative impact on both the task performance and organisational citizenship behaviour. These findings affirmed that job insecurity was a hindrance stressor, which needed to be considered when managing human resources in a robotised production environment.

There is a widespread consensus in prior literature that innovative work behaviour is a crucial factor in enabling organisations to adapt to rapid changes, to gain a competitive advantage, and create a sustainable organisation. Despite its importance, knowledge about potential drivers of this behaviour is fragmented and inconsistent. As such, organisations may be restricted in their ability to innovate because they do not know how to induce the employees in a way that will encourage them to explore, generate, champion, and finally implement the ideas. Recently, human resource management (HRM) has been explored among potential drivers, considering it as primary means by which organisations can influence and shape the behaviours of employees. Despite the notion that HRM predicts innovative work behaviour, there is a lack in the literature of insights into the ways the organisations can stimulate behaviour by offering sustainability-focused HRM. Sustainable HRM refers to a new approach to people management with the focus on external business environment (openness), respect for the employee (respect), and balanced interests of employer and employee (continuity). Relying on the notion that organisations are gradually introducing sustainable HRM and trying to close the gap in the literature, the paper is designed to link a new approach to people management with innovative work behaviour. The aim of the paper is an initial assessment of whether sustainable HRM is a driver for innovative work behaviour. Disentangling four dimensions of innovative work behaviour makes it possible to determine whether sustainable HRM can stimulate different behaviour types linked to idea exploration, idea generation, idea championing, and idea implementation. The results of a preparatory survey of 306 employees working in Lithuanian companies showed that respect-oriented HRM and continuity-oriented HRM were positively related to innovative work behaviour and the appropriate dimensions (except for idea exploration in case of continuity-oriented HRM), meanwhile, there was no support for the relationship between openness-oriented HRM and innovative work behaviour. Overall, sustainable HRM was found to be a driver for enhancing innovative work behaviour and its dimensions.

Sustainability needs the socially responsible orientation of public institutions, but not only externally. How civil servants and municipal employees consider what local governments do in relation to their internal social responsibility is the main question of this study. Through structural equation modelling and a sample of 294 employees in local governments in a Spanish region (Extremadura), it is demonstrated that responsible job position design, as well as good communication and team building, both have positive and significant effects on the personal identification of employees with the city council. That has been interpreted as the essence of internal social responsibility and the first step for building external social responsibility at the municipal level. Practical implications and future directions are discussed.

Recently, an increasing number of universities have embraced the sustainable development and convey their commitment by signing dozens of declarations and incorporating sustainability to a varying extent into their research, education, management, and administration. There is a general agreement that integration of competencies for sustainable development in study programmes can be treated as a relevant step towards sustainability. However, the distinction between the intentions and actual behaviour of leaders of study programmes as regards the competency integration is obvious in the number of universities. Moreover, the wording and meaning of the proposed competencies may not coincide. Considering the mentioned assumptions, there is a lack of evidence on the way the competencies for sustainable development are introduced in different study programmes, particularly in non-elite universities. The paper aims at closing the gap by revealing the extent to which the competencies are already integrated in study programmes in a non-elite university. Interviews were conducted with 15 heads of study programmes. Human resource management, Accounting, Economics and other study programmes were chosen. The results revealed that the relevance of competencies for sustainable development is still underestimated in the majority of study programmes. The analysis indicated that competencies for sustainable development related to critical thinking and collaboration are widely integrated, while competencies related to self-awareness or anticipatory and normative aspects are mostly absent. The paper calls for deeper and explicit integration of competencies for sustainable development in study programmes in non-elite universities.

Purpose – During the last years, quality management system has been implemented to foster organizational, cultural and management changes. Moreover, based on the employee engagement processes and the results, an idea was developed to promote and encourage employees for proactive quality improvement decisions. However, the complicated nature of quality management system did not support expected results. Firstly, the employees do not relate their quality activities as a possibility to increase effectiveness of entire organization. Secondly, the introduction of quality management system for employees is associated with appearance of complementary control actions (Mickaitis et al., 2009). This paper aims at focusing on the employee engagement and its impact on the quality management system. Methodology/approach – This research meets the need to improve organization employee engagement into quality management system. The goal of the research is to create an employee engagement into quality management system model in order to determine the relationship between the employee behaviour and employee engagement in the quality management system, as well as to evaluate its applicability in the case of local government institutions. In order to test empirically constructed model a survey was conducted on a sample of 336 employees of a local government institution. The constructed model and the survey variables were based on the theory of planned behaviour. Findings – The result of the study is an employee engagement into quality management system model for the measurement an organization employee engagement impact on quality management system. From the planned behaviour theory point of view, research results show the strongest link between employee engagement and quality management system. The fact of the subjective wellbeing weakly affects employee behaviour and its impact on the quality management system. From a practical point of view, the model has been constructed from validated constructs and is valid for the measurement of employee engagement impact on quality management system. Research limitations/implications – The results of this study cannot be generalized, since the research data was collected from local government institutions perspective. The research can be interpreted as a pilot study. Originality/value – The model of employee engagement impact on quality management system contributes for the better understanding of planned behaviour theory impact on quality management. Keywords – Employee engagement, quality management system, planned behaviour theory. Paper type – Research paper DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.74.4.22119

The accelerated movement of people towards cities led to the fact that the world&rsquo, s urban population is now growing by 60-million persons per year. The increased number of cities&rsquo, population has a significant impact on the produced volume of household waste, which must be collected and recycled in time. The collection of household waste, especially in downtown areas, has a wide range of challenges, the collection system must be reliable, flexible, cost efficient, and green. Within the frame of this paper, the authors describe the application possibilities of Industry 4.0 technologies in waste collection solutions and the optimization potential in their processes. After a systematic literature review, this paper introduces the waste collection process of downtowns as a cyber-physical system. A mathematical model of this waste collection process is described, which incorporates routing, assignment, and scheduling problems. The objectives of the model are the followings: (1) optimal assignment of waste sources to garbage trucks, (2) scheduling of the waste collection through routing of each garbage truck to minimize the total operation cost, increase reliability while comprehensive environmental indicators that have great impact on public health are to be taken into consideration. Next, a binary bat algorithm is described, whose performance is validated with different benchmark functions. The scenario analysis validates the model and then evaluates its performance to increase the cost-efficiency and warrant environmental awareness of waste collection process.

The emerging business issues underscored by technological advancement, economic and political crises, the increasingly tangible effects of climate change, mass immigration, income inequality and resource depletion create new managerial and leadership challenges. In order to respond to these challenges with appropriate management and leadership development and relevant educational offerings, management education institutions in Lithuania have to comprehensively recognize specific business challenges and understand what the consequent management and leadership development needs are. With this in mind, the authors of this study followed a three-step approach for data collection. First, Lithuanian country data was collected through the World Bank database. Secondly, interviews with decision makers from businesses were conducted (34 in-depth interviews were performed in total). Finally, online questionnaires were filled out by 16 companies in Lithuania. The analysis of the interview data followed the grounded theory approach by Glaser. Research results revealed that there is a gap between Lithuanian management education and market needs. Since educational institutions and businesses have different business models, investments need to be made to converge the two positions before the mutual benefits can be reaped.

Pastaraisiais metais daugėja organizacijų, kurios kokybės vadybos praktikas laiko strateginiu prioritetu, tačiau jų įgyvendinimas nėra toks sėkmingas. Mokslinėje literatūroje analizuojamas organizacijos kultūros vaidmuo įgyvendinant kokybės vadybos praktikas. Tačiau dauguma atliktų tyrimų neanalizuoja, kaip darbuotojų ekologinės nuostatos veikia organizacijos kultūrą. Šio straipsnio tikslas – atskleisti organizacijos kultūrą, tinkamiausią kokybės vadybos praktikų taikymui ir diegimui atsižvelgiant į darbuotojų ekologines nuostatas. Darbuotojų ekologinės nuostatos yra laikomos vienu iš esminių faktorių, darančių įtaką organizacijos kultūrai. Kiekybinio tyrimo instrumentas sudarytas remiantis validuotomis organizacijos kultūros bei darbuotojų ekologinių nuostatų tyrimų skalėmis. Kiekybinis tyrimas atliktas Lietuvos žemės ūkio organizacijoje. Apklausos rezultatais įrodytas ryšys tarp vystymosi, komandinės bei racionalios kultūrų ir kokybės vadybos praktikų. Tirta organizacija pasižymi komandinės bei vystymosi kultūrų derme. Taip pat organizacijoje yra taikomos kokybės vadybos praktikos. Statistiškai reikšmingo ryšio tarp darbuotojų ekologinių nuostatų bei kokybės vadybos praktikų nenustatyta. Atliekant tyrimą su didesne imtimi, šis ryšys galėtų būti įrodytas, nes mokslinėje literatūroje akcentuojama darbuotojų ekologinių nuostatų įtaka organizacijos kultūrai. The number of organisations putting the issue of quality management practices (QMP) on strategic agenda has been growing in the past years, although the implementation of QMP is not always easy. The importance of organisational culture as a link in quality management is discussed. However, the majority of existing studies do not fully address the employees’ pro-ecological view. To bridge this gap, the present study aims at revealing the organisational culture best suited for implementation of quality management practices considering a pro-ecological view of employees. Quantitative research was carried out in a Lithuanian agricultural organisation. Validated instruments were used to design an instrument measuring organisational culture, quality management practices and a pro-ecological view of employees. The findings reveal a correlation between developmental, group, and rational cultures and QMP. The surveyed organisation has integrated culture of development and group cultures. The study shows that the organisation already applies some of the QMP, which makes it easier for further implementation of quality management practices and systems. Previous studies have revealed a relation between environmental awareness and organisational culture. The present study resulted in no significant correlation between a pro-ecological view and organisational culture or QMP. A broader research sample might exhibit different results.

The number of organisations putting the issue of sustainability on strategic agenda has been growing in the past few years. Although sustainable development gains more importance, discussion on measures of sustainability is continuing. Environmental and economic dimensions could be more easily evaluated by clearly expressed quantitative indicators. Social sustainability measurement requires a balance between quantitative and qualitative indicators. Furthermore, there is still some ambiguity around what social sustainability actually is. It seems that essentially the determinants of the “social” element depend on the underlying framework. However, the majority of the existing measurement frameworks do not fully address the employee perspective. To bridge this gap, the present study aims at substantiating the framework for measuring social sustainability from the employee perspective. The scientific value of the study is the contribution to social sustainability measurement literature by identifying the employee perspective. The proposed framework for social sustainability measurement incudes six dimensions: employee participation, employee cooperation, equal opportunities, employee development, health and safety, and external partnership. For reaching the aim of the paper, two methods are applied: interview of line managers and employee survey. The study is conducted in a CSR-committed organisation, which is a member of the Lithuanian Association of Responsible Business. The findings reveal some differences in the attitudes of employees concerning the social sustainability practices. Health and safety conditions were disclosed as the most important in terms of social sustainability. The findings also suggest incorporating the perspective of employees when measuring social sustainability. The study shows vital involvement of employees in social sustainability evaluation of an organisation.