Sustainable development addresses humanity’s aspiration for a better life while observing the limitations imposed by nature. In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly approved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the aim to foster the organizational operationalization and integration of sustainability and, therefore, to address the current and forthcoming stakeholder needs and ensure a better and sustainable future for all, balancing the economic, social, and environmental development. However, it is not entirely clear which are the mutual relationships among the 17 SDGs and this study aims to tackle this research gap. The results of the correlation confirm that Poverty elimination (SDG1) and Good health and well-being (SDG3) have synergetic relationships with most of the other goals. SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy) has significant relationships with other SDGs (e.g., SDG1 (No poverty), SDG2 (Zero hunger), SDG3 (Good health and well-being), SDG8 (Decent work and economic growth), SDG13 (Climate action)). However, there is a moderate negative correlation with SDG12 (Responsible consumption and production), which emphasizes the need to improve energy efficiency, increase the share of clean and renewable energies and improve sustainable consumption patterns worldwide. There is also confirmation that SDG12 (Responsible consumption and production) is the goal strongly associated with trade-offs. To sum up, this research suggests that change towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals offers many opportunities for reinforcing rather than inhibiting itself. However, some SDGs show no significant correlation with other SDGs (e.g., SDG13 (Climate action) and SDG17 (Partnerships for the goals), which highlights the need for future research.

The main purpose of this paper is to study the influence of various indicators related to the knowledge economy on country competitiveness in the European Union (EU). Based on the Pearson coefficient and panel-data regression models, we analyzed the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) in relation to research and development (R&D) expenditure (as a % of gross domestic product (GDP)), percentage of population with tertiary education, lifelong learning, GDP per capita, and debt to equity. The findings highlighted the crucial role of both innovation and education as determinants of EU competitiveness and economic convergence. The development of EU policies regarding the lifelong learning possibilities of the European workforce and the focus on research and development activities can significantly contribute to the competiveness of EU member states.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of Cloud Computing adoption within Romanian Small and Medium sized Enterprises in the digital age. Most of the scientific papers related to this topic examine the general outlook of cloud computing implementation in Romania and focus on the use of the afore-mentioned technologies by large scale companies. In order to identify the factors that have an influence over the choice of Romanian SMEs to adopt cloud computing technology, a conceptual model has been set forth. The model's dependent variable is the choice of the company's management to implement cloud computing technologies. Five different independent types of variable structures which have an effect on the adoption of cloud computing within SMEs were identified. The five categories of variables are competition & government, ICT providers & firm departments, employee, manager and technological factors. Each of these categories of determinants encompasses at their turn two or more constructs. An online survey tested the model based on the responses of managers and directors from 198 Romanian SMEs from the cities of Bucharest and Cluj. The validity of the model was performed by completing factor analysis and reliability tests of the data; a logistic regression analysis was deployed to test the research hypotheses. The results emphasized that the managers' know-how on cloud computing and the perceived costs of implementing the technology represent the main components influencing the spreading of cloud computing among Romanian SMEs. This study makes a valuable contribution to the academic environment but to businesses as well. The model can be used to examine the implementation of different innovative applications. Companies which offer cloud computing services could take advantage of the outcomes of this study to expand the degree of cloud service introduction among SMEs.

The IT sector has been one of the most innovative fields, encountering tremendous development in the last three decades. As many other sectors of activity have been also digitalized, new software development models have been established due to changing customer needs, as well as due to the increased pressure of innovation necessity. This has influenced the traditional models of software development management in the direction of more complex organizations matrices and cooperation between several layers of management, employees and other departments. The objective of the present paper is to determine the main software development models used in the IT sector between 2006-2018, as well as their impact on companies' management. For this, Delphi method with interviews and questionnaires was applied. The results reveal the evident trend towards the Agile software development model, that implies rapid implementation of new software features in order to satisfy new market needs. The relevance of the present paper lies in the fact that as technology dynamics change, software development models evolve, this aspect being worthy of observation on the company level. Although such models have been widely described in scientific literature by now, few studies have provided insights on the company level regarding specific features and changes in software development models. LITERATURE REVIEWAs mentioned the main two models of software development in the IT sector are Waterfall and Agile, each of these providing different characteristics, advantages and disadvantages to both parties, company and customers, depending on the size of the project, product profile, competition field and other. The

The paper proposes several indicators for the degree of convergence in the internationalization of European higher education, based on previous research on the topic and on the availability of data in the large repositories, such as Eurostat. Starting from longitudinal data series built using the values of the selected indicators in 2015; we have grouped European higher education systems in clusters, based on their similarity, that is, potential for medium term convergence. These findings may serve as a guiding methodology for further, more detailed investigations on convergence and divergence of higher education systems in Europe. The main limitations arise from the availability of data, more specifically from the lack of in-depth data collection at the European level.

The present paper is concerned with identifying and synthesizing the directions of development of the partnerships between the academic environment and the business environment found in main research dedicated articles in the last five years in three relevant databases: Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, Science Direct and PROQUEST Central. The method we employed consists in tertiary data selection, processing and filtering by means of adequate software. The thorough literature review on partnerships between the academic and business environments revealed eight main directions of development: sponsoring activities, collaborative research (research partnerships and research services), curriculum development and delivery, academic entrepreneurship, human resource transfer (mobility of academics, mobility of students), informal interaction, commercialization of property right, and scientific publications. In order to qualify the directions of the partnerships we analysed their definitions, identified their goals and the economic and social impacts that they had.

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