This study contributes to a better understanding of performance induced by technological innovativeness by developing and testing a model. The model clarifies the nature of the influence of technological innovativeness and its organisational and inter-organisational antecedents (organisational support for innovativeness and technological alliances) on firm growth, profitability and wealth creation. Survey data were collected from firms in two countries: Slovenia and Romania; structural equation modelling was employed to test the model and the hypothesised relationships. Support for most of the model hypotheses was found. Among the control elements in the model, country, industry technological opportunities and firm age were found to be the most influential.

As other service industry, hoteliers are highly relying on their contact employees known as front liners to deliver services to customers. Therefore, the behaviors of front liners can influence customers' perceptions of a hotel service. Customer-orientation behavior of employees has become a prime variable of interest for organizations wishing to successfully market their products. However, previous researches on this area have stressed the need for a better understanding of the process relating to customer orientation behavior and its influencing factors. This paper investigates the influence of organizational commitment, self-efficacy and intrinsic job motivation of front liners on customer-orientation behavior.

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Space systems have become a key enabler for a wide variety of applications that are vital to the functioning of advanced societies. The trend is one of quantitative and qualitative increase of this dependence, so much so that space systems have been described as a new example of critical infrastructure. This article argues that the existence of critical space infrastructures implies the emergence of a new category of disasters related to disruption risks. We inventory those risks and make policy recommendations for what is, ultimately, a resilience governance issue.

The education is currently under the pressure of environmental forces that induce challenging and rapid changes; these changes are interlinked, and influence or are influenced by the education systems and processes -in all their dimensions: students, educators, teaching infrastructure and methods. The higher education has to answer to new challenges and most answers gravitate around getting the best compromise between traditional versus new education technologies. If the blended learning seems to be a common sense solution applicable in several instances, a question stands still: If the source of information/knowledge can be quasi-instantly accessed then how to deal with this tremendous amount of data which develops exponentially in time? What should be the educator's role in the next future? From the educator's standpoint, focused on the educator's role, observing the different progress rates of the available data, information and knowledge (on one side) and human capacity to process these available data, information and knowledge (on the other side), the author becomes aware of the higher pace of the first -in the midst of impetus of new communication and information technologies -and argues that, at this point in time, we are eye-witnessing a real education paradigm shift. The education system is at a critical point in time (call it critical point of education -CPE) when the educator's role must change from knowledge repository to skilled, expert knowledge explorer and identifier, switching from teaching the subject to teach students how to pick the right and relevant information related to the subject -from the ocean of available data. Besides all the above questions, this paper launches the thesis of the education paradigm shift -in that respect of the educator's role in the predictable future, to provoke a discussion, and to open a research path, for higher education strategists, policy makers, scholars and educators.

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The collapse of the centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe has triggered complex economic reforms in all former communist countries, on their ways towards freemarket economic systems. Their economies have become real, real-scale, and real-time research laboratories. The multifaceted and difficult processes of economic transition were scientifically examined as far as transition trail, duration, transition strategy. Based on the matrix model of economic systems and economic transition, the paper is valuing the authors' previous research work in the area. The main objective is to answer to the question: when the economic transition ends (when the economic reform is completed). The authors propose several ways to determine the moment when the economic transition ends, and the duration of the process respectively. Several standpoints (political, economical, managerial) are presented. The study was completed in Romania and Slovak Republic. The research results reveal similarities as well as differences; specific issues are discussed. Assessing the end of economic transition is of top importance in the circumstances of the current global crisis. When the economic recession and transition are overlapping, then the "pendulum effect" might appear and the economic reform ends before reaching its objectives. The models of analysis and research results are important for both academics and practitioners-strategists, policy makers, and managers-not only from Romania and Slovakia or other Eastern European countries but any transitional economy.