Volume 28 (2018): Edition 1 (March 2018)

The pension system, together with the social assistance services form the social security system is recognized worldwide throughout the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the purpose of insured person compensation for damages regarding some inherent risks as: permanent or temporary inability of work, old age or unemployment. The main objectives of a pension system are decreasing poverty regarding the lower income persons throughout the conditions of limitation of the working capacity which are financially vulnerable. In this article we provide a qualitative and quantitative overview regarding the Romanian pension system structure and mechanism. The conclusions of this article highlight the need for a more comprehensive reform of this system in order to strengthen it for the new challenges still to come in the near future.

The analysis and determination of typologies of tourism consumers has been a major concern for scientists, specialists and companies as well. Knowing the demographic and motivational factors that determine consumers to buy tourism products can have a major impact on the marketing strategy by a more efficient targeting of customers. This article presents the results of a research that aims to determine the factors which influence the buying decision for tourism products and the clusters of consumers resulted from these factors. 90 persons have been surveyed pursuing the determination of the most important factors for buying a tourism product and the correlation between them. The factor analysis and the cluster analysis have been applied with the help of the SPSS program. The results of the factor analysis group the items into six factors. In a second phase, the consumers have been divided into three categories based on a hierarchical Ward cluster analysis. The three clusters have been defined and analyzed and recommendations for the future research have been given.

Intelligent innovation represents any autonomic change with positive impact to the customer. They increase the comfort of the customer and concurrently they represent more effective, more economical, healthier and safer solution. This term is not so usual in Slovakia, however intelligent innovation are present on the market. For that in the article intelligent innovation assessment, we focused on intelligent and active packaging, the occurrence of which we have mostly noticed on the Slovak market. The paper deals with the evaluation of the perception of packaging innovations by using the Kano model. According to research results, intelligent and active packaging influence customers and therefore constitutes a tool of competitiveness in Slovakia. However, considering the specification of their requirements, the degree of impact is very variable and specific to customers of different gender and age.

Considering the potential factors that might generate economic growth, a target for any economy, this paper identified some determinants of economic growth in the countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE countries) that are member states of the European Union. The foreign direct investment was the most important determinant of economic growth in most of the countries (Bulgaria, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania) in the period 2003-2016, according to Bayesian bridge regressions. The indicators related to the level and the quality of labour resources proved to be insignificant in explaining the economic growth in these countries. Moreover, in Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, the government expenditure on education had a negative effect on economic growth.

The economic crisis, demography, technology, globalization etc. are all factors which will influence the organizational structures and business strategies. A new business strategy will require, among others, that passive Human Resources Management (HRM) change into an active one with a decisive influence upon business. The vision of an active HRM requires that HR information (IT) dedicated systems assist human resources managers in their decision-making. The existing IT systems predominantly manage the salary calculations and, possibly, the employee's professional development, two of the tasks that a human resources manager has to pursue. However, tasks such as assisting, consulting and engaging the human resources in the organization are equally important. IT systems must also develop into these directions. The present paper proposes a solution to measure the performance of human resources by creating an employee performance indicator (EPI). The paper first describes the economic phenomenon involved in the HR performance process, then the mathematical model is formulated, the algorithm is implemented, the solution of the model is analysed from a technical and economic point of view, and finally the decision is made. We use the weighted arithmetic mean to compute the EPI indicator and the correlation formula to establish the degree of relevance between the EPI indicator and the variables involved in the model. An implementation in R is given.