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Despite the increasing interest in modern solutions for energy performance improvement in residential sector, a gap persists between literature development and current implementation practices on domestic heating and cooling through heat pumps technology. Homeowners are encouraged to manage their energy-related issues in a systematic manner to ensure continual improvement of energy efficiency. This paper attempts to explore the drivers and obstacles to the use of heat pumps system for domestic heating, cooling, and hot water production in the residential sector, in order to improve dwellings’ energy performance and reduce the carbon footprint. The study uses a regression model with a sample of 389 participants from Romania and shows that the availability of energy plans, voluntary association in an energy community, and mixed funding exert a positive influence, whereas bureaucracy, poor energy efficiency-related information, and fiscal incentives exert a negative influence on the intention of adopting heat pumps technology by homeowners.

As shifts occur on the global market and business models adapt to a dynamic environment, the process of business internationalization, as performed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), maintains its relevance for academics, professionals, international organizations, and authorities. Studies in the field have emphasized the strategic component of internationalization, linking it to cultivating (sustainable) competitive advantages, to stimulating strategic innovation, to the pursuit of profitability, and to an overall improved performance, taking into account the activities conducted on foreign markets. Based on a survey carried out with over 100 European SMEs in the steel field, this study examines the influences of strategic collaborators (from international business networks), intermediaries (as organizational links to the target stakeholders), and strategic innovation on SMEs’ profitability resulted from international operations, and on the level of business development on foreign markets. The results have shown positive influences among most of the considered factors (i.e., direct collaborators, strategic innovation, international profitability and development), whereas intermediaries have a significant influence only on international profitability and not on SMEs’ development on foreign markets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the entire working world and has proven that people can generally perform their tasks from anywhere while still managing to achieve their professional goals. The evolution of employment involves more and more of its dimensions and ramifications. Among these developments, work flexibility is a concept that is gaining more and more territory and is most often associated with a flexible and modern form of work. This article aims to analyze how integrating new ways of working which include flexible work can influence individual and organizational knowledge, as well as personal life. For employees, flexible work offers the advantage of incorporating personal commitments, but at the expense of shared work experiences. For employers, flexible work can engage a better reputation when competing, with a highly motivated and productive workforce because employees feel valued. The paper examined the impact that teleworking had on 190 employees within the Romanian branches of three American consultancy corporations in terms of knowledge acquired, performance, and perspectives of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By gliding sustainability into the mainstream areas of marketing strategy, the purpose of the current research is to analyze the influence of the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability on relational marketing practices—i.e., interaction versus network marketing. Placed within a comparative setup, the investigation included a sample of 104 business owners of Romanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the services sector, the selection of participants being subject to well-defined pre-established criteria. Acknowledging the research gap which addresses the type of business strategy fit for entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability, the conceptual model integrated a categorical moderator variable (Planned/Emergent Business Strategies) as indicative of the potential heterogeneity among the hypothesized relationships. Both measurement and structural models were appraised by means of a structural equation modeling technique, respectively, component-based partial least squares (PLS-SEM). As the findings concluded, the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability accounts for almost 35% of variance in interaction marketing practices and 16% of variance in network marketing practices, thus positing a higher influence on the former. Moreover, evidence was provided that the reification of the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability in relational marketing practices was not significantly dependent on the type of business strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the characteristics of the energy sector in China including coal, oil, hydropower, nuclear, renewable energy. Complementary to a general portray regarding the various sections of the Chinese energy sector, the paper also pursuits to analyze a part of the connections between energy, labor, land and the environment, as well as entities of authority, administration and decision-making. China became in the last twenty years the largest energy consumer in the world which combined with the economic progress of the country triggered not only challenges of how to ensure the supply-demand equilibrium but of what position China will have in the international landscape as it accustoms and complies to its on-going seat as an energy global force. The material wishes to show both the positive and negative consequences that energy expansion has on citizens' lives, and also conflicts of interests that in some cases are emerging from this development. It encloses a short overall presentation to topics of civil society and geopolitical concerns in China, with the scope to identify the social, political, economic and environmental context, in which China's energy emergence is taking shape, and its role in the word political and economic system. The article also takes into consideration the involvement of Chinese companies in the energy market from Romania, which is part of China's strategy to advance on the European energy market. It examines the evolution of the relationship between the China and Romania referring to energy issues and it reviews the prospects for future development of joint energetic projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haiku represents a special and short form of Japanese understood by specialists as the most efficient form of economic speech. The most important strength of haiku is that it expresses so much by so few words. A wide range of poets, from Japanese natives such as Matsuo Bashō to Romanian playwright Marin Sorescu, have practiced writing haiku simply to enhance their personal abilities of observation. Until now, the exploration of the link between haiku and economics has not been much studied. This article presents a relative new field of research, "haiku economics," and provides advice on how to improve teaching skills through using haiku poetry. The paper also makes references on unusual chances given to students majoring in economics and business administration to express themselves, by writing and reciting haiku poetry about economic theory, fact, and experience. The examples within the paper are describing the benefits of explaining economic concepts with the help of haiku, which transcend over the technical understanding of the notions but also give a special emotional state of optimism and harmony specific to the Japanese culture and poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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