National University of Political Studies and Public Administration

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.

Macroeconomic expectations play a major role in predicting individual choices and behavior. This paper examines the effects of public debt expectations and knowledge on demand for government spending measured by individual preferences. Using a unique survey dataset applied in Central and Eastern Europe, the results show that the most knowledgeable citizens tend to support the increase in public spending. Debt expectations also have a significant impact on public spending preferences: citizens who have negative debt expectations are less likely to support public spending increases. The results shed light on the importance of economic knowledge and information provision for shaping public attitudes about future taxation.

Digital technology (DT) has been broadly studied in industry and in scholarly research. This study aimed to examine the use of digital technology in the attainment of strategic performance and considered the mediating role of the accounting information systems (AISs) between them. Furthermore, this study explored the moderation of digital innovation in the linkage between DT and strategic performance. For data collection, 326 questionnaires were collected, and quantitative methods and random sampling techniques were used. The results showed that digital technology is directly associated with strategic performance. The findings also confirm that AISs play a mediating role, and digital innovation plays a moderating role in the association between digital technology and strategic performance. The results of this research encourage businesses to utilize opportunities for growing advanced technologies and developments in the industry to take up novel digital technologies, to advance their digital abilities to grow to be innovation leaders, and to boost the strategic performance of their firms. This study is one of the first pieces of research to provide information on how the latest technologies could have an influence in making innovative products/services and, afterward, boost firms’ strategic performance. This study also fills a gap in the literature regarding the driving factors of strategic performance by defining the mediating role of AISs and the moderating role of digital innovation in the association between dynamic factors and performance. The outcomes of this research demonstrate that AISs are extremely helpful and have an influence on the strategic performance of electronics firms.

This study aims to explore the impact of technology orientation on innovation performance in the electronic industry operating in the digital economy. This study also investigates the mediating role of digital innovation (a special type of innovation that is based on digital technologies) in the relationship between technology orientation and innovation performance. Primary data, based on perception, was collected from operational managers of electronic firms. Correlation and regression analyses were used to test the direct relationship among digital innovation, innovation performance, and technology orientation. The stepwise regression model was used to check the indirect relationship (mediation analysis). Findings revealed that technology orientation is a major predictor of innovation performance in the electronic industry. Results show that digital innovation acts as a bridge between technology orientation and innovation performance. This study investigates the nexus of technology orientation, digital innovation, and innovation performance in electronic firms. This study contextualizes electronic firms for the achievement of innovation performance through digitalization and technology orientation, which is a dire need of the current decade.

Over time, the concept of sustainable development may transform into a business practice that mandates organizations to contemplate the interconnectedness between economic, social, and environmental factors. For organizations to grow in a competitive market, they should adopt cohesive policies founded on reliable sustainability strategies and combine this with efficient knowledge sharing. This approach supports an organization’s growth and enhances its social reputation. That is, these elements may be considered important for an organization’s growth in a competitive market. Building upon this context, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the structural correlations between organizational sustainability policies, supplier sustainability, online knowledge sharing, and external factors that encourage sustainable practices. This study’s originality and novelty lie in its proposal of a conceptual model that connects all these factors within a coherent framework, thus extending the existing literature on this topic. Our results confirm that external factors have a positive relationship with sustainability policies and that sustainability policies positively impact supplier sustainability and online knowledge sharing. We emphasize the importance of considering internal and external factors when implementing sustainable procedures and the need for authentic communication with stakeholders to integrate sustainable practices successfully. The findings can assist managers in comprehending the factors that impact a company’s sustainability strategies and in adapting policies to address environmental and social concerns.

The degradation of terrestrial and aquatic environments has significant adverse effects on biodiversity and environmental sustainability. The ever-increasing population and constant economic growth strain various ecosystems’ resistance and resilience. An important factor that negatively influences terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems is the use of products used in crop management. In this article, we analyze the pesticide-related European Directives and the Nationals Action Plans (NAP) regarding the sustainable use of pesticides and other documents evaluating the NAPs implementation. We assess the first and second-generation NAPs of nine EU Member States (MS)’ to evaluate if we can identify a significant shift in managing the adverse effects of pesticide use on aquatic environments. Furthermore, we evaluate the degree to which these NAPs are synergic with the EU’s strategic approach to soil protection, aquatic environments, and biodiversity.

The post-communist privatization of Romanian football clubs saw their transfer into the hands of the nouveau riches who emerged after 1989. Gradually, the public image of the local championship rapidly worsened, because of corruption scandals or match-fixing incidents in which the new owners involved it. Thus, the Champions League participation of Dinamo, Rapid, and Steaua Bucharest proved desirable for more than its economic benefits. The competition also offered football bosses an important symbolic capital, meant to highlight an improved image of “real” capitalist entrepreneurs. Accordingly, qualifying in the Champions League groups also meant the “Europeanization” of the club owners’ social status, through their association with a competition strongly appreciated in Romania, due to its perceived quality and correctness. The research behind this article is based on the analysis of the public discourses related to local club owners seeking participation in the Champions League groups during the past 30 years.

The success of businesses is now mostly dependent on e-learning methods as these methods are a rapidly growing innovative technology. Blockchain technology has also been considered to have the ability to change businesses. Therefore, this research aims to explore the direct influence of e-learning on the effectiveness of privacy and security in electronics manufacturing. This study also examines the considerable mediating role of the adoption of blockchain technology between e-learning and privacy and security. Furthermore, the current research investigates how digital orientation moderates the association between e-learning and privacy and security. For the collection of data, the cross-sectional research design and random sampling technique were used, and data were gathered from employees of electronics manufacturing firms in Pakistan through questionnaires. The working response rate of the study was 70%. The findings proved that e-learning plays a considerable role in boosting the privacy and security of electronics manufacturers. The results also demonstrate that the adoption of blockchain technology mediates and digital orientation moderates the link between e-learning and privacy and security. This study adds to the better understanding of management by presenting the significant role of e-learning and blockchain technology in improving the efficiency of privacy and security for electronics manufacturing firms.

According to Harvard Business Review, companies with higher diversity experienced 19% higher revenues, but in the meantime, 57% of employees feel their businesses must assiduously concentrate on diversity and inclusion plans. This article aims to present a bibliometric study of diversity and inclusion (DI) in the COVID years 2019-2022. Our analysis was based on the Scopus database, while the bibliometric research was performed via VOSviewer: version 1.6.17, one of the most utilized academic software tools for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. In conclusion, our research questions are answered, underlining that, during the last 4 COVID years 2019-2022 the DI phenomenon was a main vector of multinational leadership (ML) and that physical/mental abilities, race and ethnicity, and educational background are the new main drivers of DI. The value of these findings resides in the agile repositioning of the DI role within multinational leadership and can serve as a reference and guidance both for business professionals and researchers.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought digital practices and engagement to the forefront of society, which were based on behavioral changes associated with adhering to different government mandates. Further behavioral changes included transitioning from working in the office to working from home, with the use of various social media and communication platforms to maintain a level of social connectedness, especially given that many people who were living in different types of communities, such as rural, urban, and city spaces, were socially isolated from friends, family members, and community groups. Although there is a growing body of research exploring how technology is being used by people, there is limited information and insight about the digital practices employed across different age cohorts living in different physical spaces and residing in different countries. Objective: This paper presents the findings from an international multisite study exploring the impact of social media and the internet on the health and well-being of individuals in different countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data were collected via a series of online surveys deployed between April 4, 2020, and September 30, 2021. The age of respondents varied from 18 years to over 60 years across the 3 regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. On exploring the associations of technology use, social connectedness, and sociodemographic factors with loneliness and well-being through bivariate and multivariate analyses, significant differences were observed. Results: The levels of loneliness were higher among respondents who used social media messengers or many social media apps than among those who did not use social media messengers or used ≤1 social media app. Additionally, the levels of loneliness were higher among respondents who were not members of an online community support group than among those who were members of an online community support group. Psychological well-being was significantly lower and loneliness was significantly higher among people living in small towns and rural areas than among those living in suburban and urban communities. Younger respondents (18-29 years old), single adults, unemployed individuals, and those with lower levels of education were more likely to experience loneliness. Conclusions: From an international and interdisciplinary perspective, policymakers and stakeholders should extend and explore interventions targeting loneliness experienced by single young adults and further examine how this may vary across geographies. The study findings have implications across the fields of gerontechnology, health sciences, social sciences, media communication, computers, and information technology. International registered report identifier (irrid): RR2-10.3389/fsoc.2020.574811.

The conservation of natural resources, reduction in waste, and minimization of energy consumption are now the primary focuses of zero waste management. Thus, this study examined the direct impact of green technology on zero waste management. We also explored the significant mediation role of the green supply chain (GSC) in links between green technology and zero waste management. Moreover, we investigated how corporate social responsibility (CSR) intentions moderate the relationship between green technology and zero waste management. For the data collection, a quantitative method and random sampling technique were used. The data were collected from 450 questionnaires conducted in the energy sector. The results demonstrate that green technology has a valuable role in the accomplishment of zero waste management in enterprises. Our findings also show that the green supply chain mediates, and the CSR intentions moderate, the links between green technology and zero waste management. The current research contributes to the development of a deeper understanding of management by demonstrating that green technology and the green supply chain play considerable roles in the achievement of zero waste management.

Based on two years of fieldwork in a Northeast Romanian village, this book offers an ethnographic, interdisciplinary interpretation of social interactions in a low-trust society. In Săteni, cooperation with unrelated or unfamiliar partners fails to take off while distrust permeates everyday life and cultural representations. This book argues that the costs of misplaced trust restricted Săteni moral expectations and cooperative practices to family, kinship, and friendship ties. Household autarky and personalized morality offered an optimal strategy against political, ecological, or social unpredictability. Trust appears by social agreement around cultural representations of moral behavior, persists by social interdependence, and collapses when interests misalign. Outside family-centric social relationships lies a struggle for scarce resources of land, money, or prestige, with deception or predation lurking around every corner. Kinship, economy, politics, and rituals are organized around the distinction between the mutualism of trusted partners and perennial competition against the rest of the world. This ethnography analyzes the intersection of ecology, history, traditions, social organization, technology, and evolved human dispositions for communication, cooperation, and conflict that generate a culture of distrust.

This study discusses the nexus between consumer credit (CC) and consumer confidence (CF) in the case of China with a bootstrap rolling-window causality test. The new empirical results demonstrate that CC improves CF in specific periods by loosening liquidity constraints and increasing consumer power temporarily. Meanwhile, a negative link is also found, which can be explained by policy adjustment and financial instabilities. On the contrary, CF negatively influences CC in some periods, reflecting consumers’ attitudes toward the future would change borrowing behaviors. But this relationship would be disrupted by government intervention and public events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The contribution is that time-varying, multiple-directional and dynamic causalities are captured, which enriches the theoretical framework between CC and CF. Therefore, the government must design and adjust loaning policies against specific circumstances and transmit positive signs to consumers. Future study needs to pay attention to different types of CC and try to reveal their heterogeneous influences on CF. In addition, the effect evaluation for CC policy is also another focus in the next research.

The topic investigated in this article is a comparison, contrast, and integration effort of European strategies for sustainable development with the evolving market initiatives that are beginning to fuel the fourth industrial revolution. Several regulatory initiatives from continental bodies come into effect to radically change access to finances for business development, based on sustainability goals, and an analysis of the legislation and trends becomes essential for an effective pivot tactic in the face of adversity, as well as change management policies to pre-emptively adapt and perform. The general research question is “what the strategic tools are best employed to overcome the hurdles laid forth by the drastic changes legally required for a sustainable future?” The research methods include a quantitative analysis of norms, regulations, and legislation, including strategic initiatives circulated in the European Union governmental bodies, integrated with qualitative research of the literature. The study finds and draws synergies between national strategies that have recently been drafted or are currently evolving with sustainability-centric initiatives such as the hydrogen initiative, the nuclear initiative, the natural gas initiative, the renewables initiative, the synthetics, and biomass initiative, the ESG initiative, the digital initiative. The findings are to contribute to the business administration field by providing an appropriate image of the organizational design model in the sustainability era, and a strategy framework to build the optimum long-term vision founded on continental regulatory initiatives that have come into effect.

Recent research explores the high proliferation of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccination, and their potential effects within digital media environments. By means of a 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 945) conducted in Romania, we explore whether exposure to media messages promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination versus media messages debunking such conspiracy narratives could influence people’s intention to either support or argue against vaccination in front of their friends and family (interpersonal influence). We also analyze the moderation effects of education and critical thinking. Main results show that both conspiracy and counter-conspiracy media content about vaccination negatively affect people’s willingness to discuss the topic with others, which offers support for a silencing effect. Education and critical thinking moderate the main effects, but only to some extent and in certain experimental conditions.

Human knowledge has undergone a constant process of information accumulation—first about nature, then about space, and finally about most of the social processes in which a human being is involved during life. Obviously, not all this knowledge is exhaustive, but libraries are impressive witnesses to the work of so many generations of researchers and teachers, and no doubt we can appreciate it objectively as positive results in many areas. The evolution of knowledge has made a huge leap since the invention of printing, and from that moment, a growing category of people have access to knowledge about contemporary realities, as well as cultural and artistic “products”. Knowledge has become increasingly “popular” in the background, meaning that the price of access to culture and information about every day realities has dropped to a level easily reached by more than half of each country's population. The second great transformation brought by the human mind appeared at the time of the Internet creation, which today has been extended to the dimension of new technology, called artificial intelligence. In this new paradigm, education is about creating new directions of action, and as a result, changing the entire human society. Within this great transformation, higher education—carried out in universities—will play a fundamental role, and the legal limits of the activities that these huge research centers are doing well in turn influence the next decades of all nations and countries, with no exception.

Society has built institutions to face various problems in each area of our lives. Yet, institutions face considerable problems in fulfilling their objectives in a continuously changing world. With this in mind, the present study starts from the institutional resistance to change and searches for ways to improve efficiency and increase the positive impact on social welfare. For this, we start by looking at the competition authorities as new institutions and we study how they work and the role of communication, learning, and transparency in increasing institutional efficiency and receiving social legitimacy. The paper begins with a mixed theoretical approach to institutional change and focuses on the role of legitimacy in stimulating institutional change, and the type of institutional change for increasing efficiency. The research ends with the Romanian case study which shows the necessary aspects for making the institutional change real.