Study on methods for evaluating employees performance in the context of digitization

This paper highlights the main elements of a doctoral research regarding the efficiency of workers evaluation process in the workplace. Based on the global competition, organizations are in continuous quality improvement of their processes to stay competitive. The focus is on motivating and constantly offering constructive feedback to the employees by evaluating them on the following criteria: job description requirements, operational objectives and behavioral objectives. The aim of this study is to confirm that in the context of digitization, both evaluation based on objectives and 360-degree evaluation have its advantages and disadvantages and to analyze the impact of it in organization’s performance. Since this process is divided in two parts (mid-year review and final review), an interesting research question would be how useful is to offer feedback to employees at the middle of the evaluation period and its impact on the final review. The first part of the paper will focus on defining the evaluation process and its scope, pursue by an analysis of 360-degree evaluation, evaluation based on objectives, and the evaluation process in the digital era. It would be a challenge to discover the inclination of organizations for different types of evaluations as well as perception differences between employees and employers. Many researches consider that one of the used methods implemented in companies is the evaluation based on objectives. A larger documentation on this subject would delimit the types of evaluations to help companies to easily choose the type that fits its culture. For this purpose, we will perform an outline on the existing literature by analyzing authors’ opinions on this subject and identifying advantages and disadvantages of the two types of evaluation specified above.

From Thermodynamic Entropy to Knowledge Entropy

The purpose of this paper is to present the evolution of the concept of entropy from engineering to knowledge management, going through information theory, linguistic entropy, and economic entropy. The concept of entropy was introduced by Rudolf Clausius in thermodynamics in 1865 as a measure of heat transfer between two solid bodies which have different temperatures. As a natural phenomenon, heat flows from the body with a higher temperature toward the body with a lower temperature. However, Rudolf Clausius defined only the change in entropy of the system and not its absolute entropy. Ludwig Boltzmann defined later the absolute entropy by studying the gas molecules behavior in a thermal field. The computational formula defined by Boltzmann relates the microstates of a thermal system with its macrostates. The more uniform the probability distribution of the microstates is the higher the entropy is. The second law of thermodynamics says that in open systems, when there is no intervention from outside, the entropy of the system increases continuously. The concept of entropy proved to be very powerful, fact for which many researchers tried to extend its semantic area and the application domain. In 1948, Claude E. Shannon introduced the concept of information entropy, having the same computational formula as that defined by Boltzmann, but with a different interpretation. This concept solved many engineering communications problems and is used extensively in information theory. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen used the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics in economics and business. Today, many researchers in economics use the concept of entropy for analyzing different phenomena. The present paper explores the possibility of using the concept of knowledge entropy in knowledge management.

The role of celebrities for the image of endorsed products

Celebrities are, in recent years, a popular way to draw the consumer’s attention to an advertisement. In an age with an abundance of details and advertising, the celebrities ‘ glamour has the power to increase the advertised product’s exposure and to attract the attention of the consumer. Several researches have focused on analyzing the impact of celebrity endorsement on the success of brands by pointing out the importance of the match between the celebrities’ personality and the image of the endorsed brand. Besides the positive aspects, there have been also pointed out the different disadvantages of using celebrities in advertising such as the overshadowing effect or the exaggerated costs involved. The results of our quantitative research have shown that, although there is not a high declared interest in celebrity endorsement, it has a role especially in shaping the social status of the consumer and that women are more attracted by celebrity endorsed product in comparison to men. :

Digital marketing on destination sustainability Study case: Romanian Ecotourism

Marketing and publicity have played a very significant role in promoting touristic destinations. Over the years, destinations promoted in papers, magazines and even movies, have become more and more crowded. This phenomenon even happened to the extent that it threatens the local environment and the wellbeing of locals. By studying recent news regarding popular tourist destinations, the article will observe the shift in the mindset of both tourists and policy makers. Therefore, should campaigns be held to raise awareness regarding different threats a destination faces, a shift of mindset will occur. This can be observed from the point of view of policy makers, locals and even tourists. The aim of this article is to study and compare both, publicity done for sustainability and publicity done for the sake of popularizing a touristic destination. Through this comparison the article wants to see if there are any changes in the behavior of tourists when reaching specifically advertised destinations but also if certain types of publicity have determined policy makers to take a stand for sustainability.

Identifying and capitalizing new sources of competitive advantages is a vital prerequisite for corporate sustainability

On both the research agendas of the specialists in the academic field and those of the decision makers in the field of public policies, there are a series of topics of reflection among the most provocative which calls on researchers to identify solutions to new challenges. These include the prevalence of topics such as: threats to climate balance, deepening inequalities in welfare and prosperity, paradigm shifts in management and leadership, the emergence of on demand economy, just transition or the new scale of competitive advantages. At the microeconomic level, one of the most complex issues is that of business sustainability, which, under the conditions of the new global economic picture, must be equally efficient, economically, sustainable, socially, and resilient from an ecological point of view. Despite the most renowned experts analyzing the concept of competitive advantage, having highlighted the epistemological and praxiological foundations and clarified the variables on which its scope depends, the regional and global economic picture in dynamic change makes the analytical space continue. for this thematic area. This paper starts from the methodological assumption that the decision makers at the level of the companies must ensure the possible but synergistic combination between: the objective of maximizing the profit and the one of taking into account the plenary of maximizing the sales or of extending the relational capital. The main purpose of this paper is to study the deepest changes at the microeconomic level of the competitive advantage scale, the factors that influence these changes and propose a series of ways by which the companies that operate in Romania can be repositioned sustainably at the level of the most powerful regional supply chains.

Energy Trading Perspectives in the Digital Era

The aim of the paper research is to identify and improve business models in energy trading by analyzing the current situation and developing scenarios for the evolution of business models in the Digital Era. It is very important to analyze, identify and track those directions that we believe will drive energy trading in order to be able to design and create new sustainable business models. We highlight the possibilities and ways of improving the energy trading, analyzing the rapid evolution of the field, generated by the emergence of several new factors that can influence this industry. Beside those directions at which electricity trading is heading in the Digital Era, the research also describes main innovations in the field such as Smart Grids, Blockchain Technology, Peer-to-peer trading platforms and Demand Response through which the purpose is to attract final consumers to the energy trading on web platforms or mobile applications with which they can properly control their electric appliances and self-generation units in their homes, all these supervised and guided by artificial intelligence. The type of research proposed to identify the current condition and to be able to develop new trading models is empirical research through qualitative analysis. Beyond incentives and monetary benefits, the focus is on final consumer education and increased awareness towards a more conscious, optimal and rational consumption of electricity that can lead to both a better use of the energy production from renewable sources and a reduction of pollutant fossil fuel electricity generation and carbon dioxide emissions without endangering the proper functioning of the electricity systems. Previous researches are based more on incentivizing or penalizing end consumers in present paper, more emphasis is placed on attracting the end consumer to his own electricity trading through mentioned innovation, but also supervised and guided by artificial intelligence.

Consumers’ perception on the advantages and disadvantages of cookies and browsing history

The new internet technologies have changed radically the communication between consumers and companies and they had an important role in changing the way consumer data is gathered. In comparison to the traditional way in which several surveys and experiments have been done, nowadays the consumer data is stored with the help of different technologies. Nowadays the consumer is online most of the time and his/her entire activity is monitored by the intelligent systems and applications installed on his mobile device. This storage of consumer data gives companies the possibility to personalize the interaction to the consumer, but in the same time it gives an insight in the private life of the consumer. In our research we investigate the attitude and awareness of consumers towards the advantages and disadvantages of the storage of cookies and browsing history. The results show that there is an average perception on the advantages and a higher awareness on the disadvantages.

Insights on the impact of telecommunication companies on the environment

To perform their business operations, telecommunication companies need to consume energy. This paper aims to analyze and compare the energy consumption and their greenhouse gas emissions for there of the biggest telecommunication companies: Vodafone, Orange and Telekom. Although the scientific literature proposed some analysis on the environmental measures that the telecommunication companies have to take, there is a shortage of researchers focused on GRI reporting data and the pairwise comparison method. The authors compared these telecommunication companies’ emissions under the following criteria: energy consumption (GRI 302-1), scope 1 (GRI 305-1), scope 2 (GRI 305-2) and scope 3 (GRI 305-3) greenhouse gas emissions, reduction of emissions (GRI 305-5), using the pairwise comparison method. To reduce their emissions, companies developed a sustainability strategy. This paper will further emphasize what are the plans to reduce emissions for the company which, following the analysis, pollutes the most. To provide an overview of the future of the company which, by the analysis, pollutes the most, the authors have identified and analyzed what are the main actions that the company should take to reduce their impact on the environment. To do so, the authors firstly analyze the causes of the pollution produced by the telecommunication company using Ishikawa diagram. Then, it identifies what are the main organizational processes that can be improved using APQC standardization, to show that the improvement can be made if the organization adjusts their organizational processes. This paper is an enhancement to the studies form the field because it provides a comparative analysis on three of the most competitive telecommunication companies in the world, uses GRI criteria and pairwise comparison method and gives an overview on the next steps for the telecommunication company to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Smart grids, prosumers and energy management within a smart city integrated system

Due to a significant increase in electricity consumption globally, governments have to look and to identify better, more efficient and effective alternatives and sustainable energy sources to meet this high demand. This becomes more and more important in the context of implementing modern approaches such as those that might be applied in cases of smart cities and cultural and creative communities. Electricity can be produced based on conventional sources, but also on an emergent use of renewable sources. The electricity grid is usually designed as unidirectional. We consider that in case of smart cities and creative-innovative communities there is a need to implement mostly new smart grids that are bidirectional. This may allow and support the emergency of a new type of electricity user, called “prosumers”, who produces electricity from renewable sources, next uses & shares them smartly within the smart grid and finally stores them. Globally, photovoltaic energy prosumers are considered one of the most important actors in the energy transition and seem to be ready to introduce significant amounts of electricity within the grid. We anticipate that people living in households in smart cities and communities among most regions of the world will tend in the future to improve their self-consumption from the production of smart energy. This paper supports the idea that using mostly electricity from renewable alternative sources, especially solar, can be also developed with the help of households acting within smart cities and communities. The paper will also present briefly an overview of the scientific literature dedicated to this topic. We will also provide further interesting insights through a number of case studies representing good practices regarding prosumers in Italy and Romania.

Indefinite vs. fixed-term work contracts: the impact over the teachers’ work-engagement

A teacher’s work during the school year should be seen as a marathon or as a sprint? This paper intends to contribute to the expanding body of literature on the work-engagement issues of education employees from a perspective of strategic human resources management. It investigates how the length of their working contracts influences the level of engagement shown for their work. It was assumed that the existence of an indefinite or a fixed-term work contract brings up aspects such as stability, predictability and coherence for a teacher’s work, all thought to be parts of a positive engagement state of mind. Nevertheless, the acknowledgement and the acceptance of a short time collaboration could bring just as good results if the focus remains on the present moment. In order to gain a better understanding it was performed a quantitative research materialized in a questionnaire, answered by school teachers employed under both forms of contracts. The findings of this study are of value for any of the educational field stakeholders as the system’s human resources are the most valuable asset for a qualitative result. In the end, implications of a predominant engaged or disengaged stuff will be discussed and human resources management suggestions will be made.