Volume 43 (2021): Issue 3 (September 2021)

Financial inclusion is a means to make full use of financial services, which stimulates the introduction of innovation, mobilization of savings and investment support, and thus contributes to the economic development of territories. The purpose of the study is to substantiate scientific and practical approaches to determining the role and place of financial inclusion in sustainable development of rural areas. The state of financial inclusion in rural areas has been assessed having applied the statistical-economic and calculation-constructive methods. The abstract-logical method made it possible to prove the positive impact of financial inclusion on the sustainable development of rural areas and to offer proposals for its further advancement. It has been argued that the key tasks of financial inclusion in the context of sustainable development of rural areas are financial education, access to financial services, and protection of the rights of consumers of financial services.

Food security is a fundamental basis for social stability and development of all countries. The task of ensuring and maintaining food security is included into the list of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. At the same time, the formation of food security requires effective actions that must take into account the principles of sustainable development in order to preserve biological diversity, ecological stability and prevent negative impacts on the environment. The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of factors that shape food security on the environmental component of sustainable development. The study is based on data of the World Bank and regional statistical agencies, including selected factors that have a significant impact on the environmental component of sustainable development in the context of food security. The research methodology includes correlation analysis of the impact of a group of factors that ensure food security on the environment of the regions; assessment of the significance of factors and the reliability of the model. The key results of the study confirm the hypothesis of the impact of anthropogenic factors on the ecological balance of the environment, which allows focusing on approaches to the choice of agricultural production technology, based on the experience of both large agricultural holdings and family farms in Ukraine and Italy.

As nowadays we are experiencing the boom of Bioeconomy, this paper presents the evolving results of autoetnography study. Waste and by-product use are the key issues related to the bioeconomy, so this paper seeks to present the everyday experiences linked to bioeconomy challenges, choosing to debate daily experiences as the narratives in personal level. The presented personal experiences, as short stories, reveal the complexities of daily choices, doubts and daily reflections between fun and playfulness, between guilt and uncertainty. The discussed autoetnography experiences lead to deeper discussion about the dilemma of challenging daily life living in bioeconomy times, opening up the intertwined personal narratives. As well, this study shows the importance to discuss the various research paradigms that would help researchers discover new insights and develop new studies, explaining the challenges and daily intertwining individual experiences living in bioeconomy era.

The article reveals important territorial aspects of sustainable development of infrastructure enterprises from information and administrative component on the example of local territories (communities) of the Donetsk region in Ukraine. A point-rating evaluation of the territorial dimension for sustainable development of infrastructure enterprises in the Donetsk communities carry out on the parameters, which focus on a set of statistical data in the context of the economic, social and environmental components. The authors built a three-dimensional model of the evaluation results in a Cartesian coordinate system, which made it possible to identify a direct relationship between the sustainable development components of infrastructure enterprises as well as its information and administrative support. It concluded to strengthen the sustainable development components in the local measurement as well as it substantiated and noted to form a special roadmap for ensuring high-quality information and administrative support for the sustainable development planning of infrastructure enterprises.

The main purpose is to analyses the experience and the modelling of hierarchy of institutional factors that have their impact on the learning process and the formation of professional competence of business managers. The methodological basis is graph theory and hierarchical structuring methods. A graph is a set of points (vertices) and lines (edges), they are connected. We can also say that a graph is a set of points and lines at which the end of each belongs to a set of points. The data obtained make it possible to systematize the practical and theoretical achievements in the process of learning business managers and using the theory of graphs and the hierarchical ordering modelling, the priority of institutional factors influencing the learning process of business managers were established. The proposed modelling of the level of influence of institutional factors on the learning process of business managers is specific for the study area, since it used expert opinions of persons who are involved in the learning process of business managers. In the future, this simulation can be used for other sectors of higher education. This modelling of the impact of institutional factors can be used for higher education institutions that specialize in learning business managers.

Increasing significance of brand equity encourages to analyse brand equity concept, its dimensions, and their impact on purchase intentions. Understanding why customers are willing to purchase certain food brands can help both retailers, and food product’s manufacturers build brands and compete in the market. Thus, the aim of this research is to evaluate the impact of brand equity dimensions on purchase intentions buying food products in Lithuania. Research methods: literature analysis, comparative, systematic analysis, questionnaire survey as a quantitative method, data analysis, regression analysis was used to achieve the aim. Results indicate that brand awareness doesn’t have significant impact on purchase intentions buying food products in Lithuania. Brand image, perceived quality and brand trust are deeply associated with purchase intentions buying food products in Lithuania and influence purchase intentions in a given order by their impact.

Within the article, the economic model of the integration impact of modernization on the enterprise competitiveness and ensuring its economic security is described and substantiated. The authors formalize the factors and patterns of increasing a competitive advantage under the influence of the modernization potential implementation. It is determined that to ensure the competitiveness and economic security of the enterprise it is necessary to carry it out in compliance with the conditions of complexity of strategic reforms, clarity of modernization tasks, speed of adaptation of the modernization process to external environment, coherence of reform levels. Assessment and strategic analysis of competitiveness according to the “3S” model of Ukrainian infrastructure enterprises revealed the dependence of the effectiveness of modernization on the existing institutional and market environment, the level of staff competence, the dynamism of innovation and investment support.

This study considers the evolutionary trend of agricultural functionalities in rural areas of Markazi Province in central Iran over the last decade. The province is the most and heavily industrialized region across the country, accomplished with urbanized settling and life style and declination in rurality, both functionally and structurally. This study aims to evaluate the evolutions of agricultural functionalities in rural areas of the region. All of the villages more populated than 20 households in during 2003 and 2014 were studied. The similar agricultural variables in the two time periods were utilized as data set and 10 indicators for each section were defined, calculated, and considered. Followed by the statistical description and examining the distributions of the indicators, the evolution of agricultural activities in the region was separately modelled for each of time sections through Structural Equation Modeling. The path structure of the first model revealed that the agricultural functionality of the studied area has at the beginning time mainly been based on farming – rather than gardening – and based on land resources – rather than water resources. As well, the results of the ending model indicated that land has been replaced by water. Also, the declining trend of changes during the studied period was significantly influenced by water. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to establish an integrated organizational structure for policy regulation and decision-making for land and water resources, along with a provincial governance to implement the policies and decisions beyond the sectoral approach. This could possibly help to mitigate the problems encountered by the agricultural sector in rural communities of the study area.

In the context of globalization of the national economy, the agri-food sector as one of the leading business players faces a significant number of challenges, particularly the problem of ensuring the competitiveness of enterprises on both domestic and foreign markets. Implementation of management strategies aimed at the introduction of new technologies in business processes allows increasing the competitiveness of national agricultural enterprises based on digitalization. However, to succeed, it is necessary to provide an adequate personnel management strategy that meets the imperative of the integrated management strategy of the enterprise. Attention is drawn to personnel management strategies, which play an important role in the implementation of the motivational mechanism to achieve strategic goals through the effective realization of the labor potential of the agricultural enterprise. The key elements of any motivational mechanism are motivators, which are the factors of behavior and efficiency of personnel. Many theories describe the mechanisms of action of various motivators and their classifications, but the issues of using various motivators as key elements of the system of strategic personnel management at agri-food enterprises based on digitalization remain insufficiently studied. The purpose of the study is to conduct an analysis of the features of the application of personnel management strategies of agricultural enterprises focused on staff motivation, as well as to determine the level of influence of external and internal motivators on efficiency in agri-food enterprises based on digitalization. The research was conducted using a unique questionnaire to accumulate data. The methods of descriptive statistics were used to analyze the received data and to define the peculiarities of using the motivational mechanism in the agri-food industry. Regression analysis using an artificial neural network was performed to determine the impact of various motivators on productivity. The study has shown that national agricultural enterprises apply strategies based on motivational mechanisms that involve various motivators of both internal and external nature. However, the external motivators have been much better implemented, and above all salary as a key element of the motivational mechanism is used. At the same time, internal motivators are also important for the staff of agricultural enterprises. Therefore, the simultaneous use of external motivators and the development of internal motivators in competitive HR strategies are important.

The goal of the present article is to provide a comprehensive study of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions on the business development and socio-economic dynamics in Ukraine. The key hypotheses of the research: 1) the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions reduce the pace of macroeconomic development in Ukraine, this being manifested in the decrease in GDP, the scope of export-import operations as well as decline in industrial production; 2) reduced pace of macroeconomic development causes: 2.1) reduced economic mobility of economic entities; 2.2) negative social consequences manifested in reduced real income of residents, unemployment growth. The effect of specific factors of macroeconomic development and economic mobility of business entities on the unemployment rate increase in Ukraine has been shown through the correlation and regression analysis. Findings: Quarantine restrictions applied for the sake of slowing down the speed of the pandemic spread have acted as a factor causing decrease in GDP, scope of export-import operations as well as decline in the industrial production in Ukraine. It has been established that reduction of the pace of macroeconomic development in the background of unprecedented restrictive measures has caused economic imbalances in the country, manifested in inflation fluctuations and increase in the prices of foodstuffs and industrial goods, reduced business activity of business entities, decline in the commodity turnover volume, reduced business profitability. It is stressed that in the conditions of poor control over the processes of disease spread and uncertainty in the timeline of the pandemic the efficiency of the business activity stimulation in Ukraine can be ensured via consideration of the effects of behavioural economics as well as direction of the limited financial resources into the fields of the country’s economy that can ensure its smart specialization and/or are building their capacity even under pandemic conditions.

The article examines the problems of integration of natural resources into the zone of market influence. The analysis of researches on these questions is carried out, the problem moments are allocated. An algorithm for integrating natural resources into the market environment has been developed, which provides for the natural resource to go through stages with a change in their positions and the formation of market asset features. Possibilities of incorporation of land resources into the market, the potential of business development, and formation of the market of natural resource assets are investigated. The parameters of capitalization of natural resources and the concentration ratio of financial and economic regulation are calculated. Ways to strengthen the potential for integration of natural resources into the market area of influence have been developed. The study showed that to incorporate a natural resource into the area of market influence, it needs to go through several stages, and each of them is characterized by changes in the properties of resources, their gradual interaction with market participants. Even though there is a rather low level of capitalization of natural resources (in particular for land - 12.0%, water - 10.8%), the coefficient of concentration of activity can identify some regions with good opportunities for incorporation. The regions of Ukraine are grouped by the coefficient of concentration of land use activity and four groups of regions with coefficients are calculated: the highest priority by the activity of regulation, high level of concentration, medium and low.