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Over the last decades, around the world, the concept of competitiveness was long debated by economists (and others), widely used and even sometimes overused. Although at the theoretical level, a number of determinant factors of health care organizations' competitiveness have been proposed, their diversity and the little empirical data available argues for the need to create and validate a model of competitiveness of health organizations. The purpose of this paper is (considering the theoretical approach) to shape a model of sustainable competitiveness of health organizations. In this respect, a 51 item questionnaire was designed and applied on a sample of 291 respondents from 12 Romanian health organizations. The exploratory factor analysis undertaken recovered more than 69% of the common variability of the initial 51 variables and revealed four factors/dimensions of sustainable competitiveness of health organizations (Economic Dimension, Quality Dimension, Social Dimension, and Strategic Dimension). Among the results of the exploratory factor analysis is also the empirical evidence on the contribution of leadership and managerial processes to enhance the influence of all other factors/dimensions in increasing the sustainable competitiveness of health organizations, thus bringing into focus the concept of sustainable management and leadership. Being just in the exploratory phase of our research, the proposed model can, and should, be improved, thus opening up further research directions.

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The South African government implemented different legislative mechanisms in an attempt to address gender equality in the workplace, discrimination, and empowering women. To review whether there has been any progress after implementing these legislative mechanisms, this paper empirically analyzes the advancement of gender equality in the South African workplace as of 2020. It also provides an overview of different legislative mechanisms implemented by the government of South Africa as an endeavor to achieve gender equality in the workplace and equal opportunities for all regardless of gender. The main objective of this paper is to review gender equality progress in the South African workplace and a qualitative research method has been used to analyze different gender inequalities. Lastly, the paper provides an overview of gender equality analysis in different occupational levels in the South African workplace. The research shows that regardless of the South African government’s different legislative mechanisms to address gender equality, progress is still gloomy as discrimination against women in the workplace continues and the men remain dominant. The data analyses conclude that progress in addressing gender equality has been inert, delaying equal opportunities for all South Africans.

The strong interdependency between economic growth and conventional energy consumption have led to significant environmental impact, especially with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. Conventional energy-intensive industries release increasing quantities every year, which has prompted global leaders to consider new approaches based on sustainable consumption. The main purpose of this research is to propose a new energy index that accounts for the complexity and interdependences between the research variables. The methodology is based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and combines the key components determined into a score that allows for both temporal and cross-country comparisons. All data analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25™. The main findings show that most countries improved their economic performance since 2014, but the speed of the improvement varies a lot from one country to another. The final score determined reflects the complex changes taking place in each country and the efficiency of the governmental measures for sustainable economic growth based on low energy consumption and low environmental pollution.

Today's society framework is linked to qualities that might impact corporate organizations, such as competitiveness, globalization, market economy, and even economic crises, on both national and international scale. In this environment, a private business must follow current trends by seeking continual quality improvement of its operations to prevent stagnation. The goal of this research is to examine the organizational culture of Romanian private-sector businesses, as this is a unique feature that, if not managed effectively, can have a detrimental impact on a company's quality and competitiveness. The tool used for this research to diagnose the dominant direction of Romania’s private companies was the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). Results indicated that employees would prefera clan culture, more specifically, a place where people share the same values, and loyalty and traditions are key fora friendly work environment.

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