In light of future work challenges, actual human resource management (HRM) needs to be redesigned, including long-term development, regeneration, and renewal of human resources, passing from consuming to developing human resources by incorporating the concept of sustainability. Thus, sustainable HRM is seen as an extension of strategic human resources, presenting a new approach to human resource management. The labor market is constantly changing, atypical work acquiring a significant relevance, especially in these current times of coronavirus crisis restrictions. In Romania, promoting the law of teleworking transformed labor flexibility into a topic of interest, and became an increasingly vital requirement for employment and a motivating factor for Romanian employees. In such a context, this paper aims to investigate the link between employee development and worktime and workspace flexibility as relevant characteristics of sustainable HRM, job satisfaction and job performance among Romanian employees in order to identify how to redesign HRM in the face of “future work” challenges. Additionally, the paper aims to examine the impact of different types of flexibility—contractual, functional, working time, and workspace flexibility—in order to highlight the relevance of employee development and employee flexibility as important aspects of sustainable HRM in increasing the overall level of employee job satisfaction. In order to make this possible, an “employee flexibility composite indicator,” which takes into account different types of flexibility, has been developed using feedback from Romanian employees, which was gathered by a national representative survey using multiple correspondence analysis. Furthermore, the impact of both individual and employee flexibility on overall level of job satisfaction has been quantified using binary logistic regression models. Within the research, there is a particular focus on the impact of new types of workspaces (flex office, co-working, total home office, partial home officeCW, HOT, HOP) on job performance, job satisfaction, organizational performance, professional growth and development, social and professional relationships, and personal professional performance as well as on the overall level of work motivation. The empirical results revealed that these new types of workspaces are highly appreciated by employees, generating a growing interest among them. Partial home working, the mix between working from home and working in a company’s office, has been considered an optimal solution in increasing organizational performance, social and professional relationships, learning and personal development, and the overall level of work motivation. The results of the multiple correspondence analysis highlighted a medium level of flexibility among those Romanian employees interviewed, with only one third of them exhibiting high levels of productivity. The empirical analysis of logistic regression analysis pointed out the role of functional flexibility, working time, and workspace flexibility along with the flexibility composite indicator in increasing the level of job satisfaction in employees. Therefore, if the challenge is to redesign the actual human resource management in order to include the concept of sustainability, attention needs to be on a combination of employee development-flexible and time-flexible places, leading to an increase in both employee job satisfaction and organizational performance as important outcomes of sustainable HRM.

The purpose of this study was to optimize the kefir grains biomass production, using milk as culture media. The kefir grains were cultured at different changed conditions (temperature, time, shaker rotating speed, culture media supplemented) to evaluate their effects. Results showed that optimal culture conditions were using the organic skim milk, incubated at 25°C for 24 hours with a rotation rate of 125 rpm. According to results, the growth rate was 38.9 g/L for 24 h, at 25°C using the organic milk -OSM, 36.87 g/L during 24 hours, optimal time for propagation process gave 37.93 g/L kefir grains biomass when the effect of temperature level was tested. The homogenization of medium with shaker rotating induced a greater growth rate, it was obtained 38.9 g/L for 24 h, at 25°C using rotation rate at 125 rpm. The growing medium (conventional milk) supplemented with different minerals and vitamins may lead to improve the growth conditions of kefir grains biomass. The optimization of the growth environment is very important for achieving the maximum production of kefir grains biomass, substrate necessary to obtain the polysaccharide kefiran.

Financial inclusion is strongly differentiated by age groups and countries and the pandemic has highlighted the increased gaps and inequalities but also the weaknesses of the system, in terms of flexibility, access and facilities of the customer-bank relationship and also from the perspective of the financial education of young generations and vulnerable people, active in the labor market. Based on the available data provided by the Global Findex database, and some findings after more than one year of COVID-19 crisis we outlined the main aspects of financial digitization, by categories of people and countries. At the same time, we identified the challenges and problems during the pandemic that significantly adjusted the consumption pattern of citizens and increased the need for on-line access for financial transactions. Starting from the analysis of the inequality of access to financial instruments in the last years, from the informational asymmetry in financial education and the challenges of the pandemic period, we underlined the main coordinates of changing the model of sustainable financial inclusion—based on five pillars—access, education, support tools, CSR and resilience. The research results highlight the need for convergence in providing opportunities to consider financial inclusion as a public good and an active tool to increase consumers’ satisfaction and the quality of life of individuals.

Currently, at the end of the programming period 2014–2020 and in the view of the new programming exercise, 2021–2027, knowing where South-Muntenia is positioned on the path to sustainable regional development and how the main determinants can be integrated in regional development policies in order to continuously support the development of the Romanian regions becomes even more important. In this context, the paper aims to evaluate the progress made by the South-Muntenia region towards sustainable regional development for the period 2010–2017 highlighting the main implications for regional development strategies and revealing local initiatives promoting broader sustainable regional development. Thus, more in depth, the paper aims to identify the main determinants of sustainable regional development at the level of South-Muntenia counties using multiple principal component analysis (MPCA), to build an advancement sustainable development index based on panel data for the period 2010–2017 and to reveal the main sustainable development poles at the county level for the year 2017 using hierarchical clustering technique. The empirical results revealed the importance of business environment, public services infrastructure, education, and social protection as main determinants of South-Muntenia sustainable regional development. The advancement composite index pointed out that South-Muntenia recorded a slow but continuous advancement in terms of sustainable regional development, almost doubling its performance in these seven years. At the county level, if Prahova, Argeș, and Dâmbovița exhibited a so-called stagnation, Ialomița and Teleorman were still behind, registering an advancement over the period but remained only halfway on the path to sustainable development, while Calarasi and Giurgiu tried to recover the huge gap, registering very low rates of sustainable development index. On the path to regional economic development, the relevance of two main sustainable regional development drivers can be highlighted—a better allocation for active measures with the reduction of unemployment as a target together with a better infrastructure of public services. National, regional, and local administrations play an important role in promoting sustainability in the economic, social, and environmental activities, in a coherent manner. Regardless of the level at which development policies are designed, local, county, or regional, they must take into account and monitor the sustainable development determinants if the ultimate goal is the overall regional development of South-Muntenia.

Urbanization and climate change are requiring cities to find novel pathways to a sustainable future, and therefore the urban context may accelerate the conversion to a circular economy. In this sense, climate change is a considerable threat to the environment, affecting both human and natural systems, and in this context individuals have a very important role. Therefore, the paper aims to investigate, on the one hand, what determines people to undertake specific actions in fighting climate change and, on the other hand, what determines some people to engage in adopting multiple actions exhibiting extra mitigation behaviour compared to others, paving the way to an urban circular economy. In order to do that, multilevel logistic regression analysis using hierarchical data (individuals grouped in counties), reflecting group variability and group-level characteristics effects on outcomes at individual level has been applied. Special attention was given to modernisation thesis validation, stipulating that citizens from more developed and modernized countries are expected to manifest a higher level of extra mitigation compared to inhabitants of less-modernized nations. The empirical results revealed the positive association of pro-environmental factors, socio-demographic and economic factors with both specific and extra mitigation behaviour in fighting climate change. An important finding of the empirical research highlighted the validation of the modernisation thesis, even if partially, and the reinforcement of the modernisation thesis impact on the extra mitigation behaviour determined by the urban area segmentation. The extra commitment behaviour reflected by citizens’ multiple actions in fighting climate change ensures progress to a circular economy through its contribution to waste reduction, eco-shopping increase, on eco-friendly transportation increase or domestic energy reduction. We believe that a shift in citizens’ attitude towards climate change is needed, taking into account that a lot must be done” to effectively respond to climate change, paving the way for the circular economy.

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The purpose of this paper is to draw the first lessons from the on-going coronavirus crisis and to identify viable solutions for what should become the goal of any country: transforming their own economies into sensitive and responsive economies regarding public health problems. The originality of our approach is given by its objective as well as the strategy employed for verifying research hypotheses. The objective is twofold: detecting the indicators that may constitute signals for the vulnerability of countries in times of health crisis and highlighting the underlying factors of the resilience capacity. Many indicators have been considered: six indicators concerning Covid-19 pandemic and 27 socio-economic indicators. Three main hypotheses have been formulated and tested using various statistical methods. Our findings provide deep insights for understanding how Covid-19 crisis is correlated to specific economic (urbanization, sectorial employment, health system) and demographic factors (aging, mortality). The study has succeeded in identifying the pattern of a country with greater resilience and better ability to cope with a health crisis. Our results could be useful when forecasting the spread of another pandemic wave, its impact on people’s health and estimating how some markets will be reshaped.

During the health crisis, it is vital to protect not only the critical sectors of the economy, the assets, technology, and infrastructure, but first and foremost, it is fundamental to protect jobs and workers. The current COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on the labor market from three main perspectives: number of jobs (through unemployment and underemployment), quality of work (through wages, or access to social protection), and through the effects on specific groups, with a higher degree of vulnerability to unfavorable labor market outcomes. The measures aiming to reduce economic activity and social contacts lead to a reduction of labor demand and implicitly to the increase of the unemployment rate. In this context, it becomes even more relevant to be able to monitor the unemployment rate, providing relevant forecasts that include the effects of market shocks. Thus, our paper aims to forecast the unemployment rate for the period 2020–2023 using the Box-Jenkins methodology based on ARIMA models, exploring also the uncertainty based on fan charts. Although the baseline forecast offers valuable information, a good understanding of risks and uncertainties related to this forecast is equally important. The empirical results highlighted an ascending trend for unemployment rate during 2020, followed by a slow and continuous decrease until the end of 2023 with a high probability for the forecast to be above the central projection.