Economics&Education

7

Authors: Rustam Aslanzade

The article is devoted to the substantiation of practical issues of implementing the principles of social responsibility in the company. An important part of any company’s business is supply chain management. In modern business, this is a comprehensive activity for managing all incoming and outgoing flows of company resources. Implementation of supply chain management on the principles of social responsibility is possible only on the basis of a consistent and integrated approach. The article substantiates the possibility of introducing the principles of social responsibility in the activities of the company based on a balanced scorecard. The balanced scorecard includes four blocks: finance, customers, personnel, and internal business processes. Each block includes a specific list of indicators, which assess the degree of implementation of the principles of social responsibility. A system of specific indicators for companies that manufacture, supply and install climate equipment is proposed: Finance (level of profitability; turnover growth; amount of Freon used (reuse); the amount of a modern group of environmentally sustainable fluorine-free refrigerants used; reuse of materials and assessment of their value; etc.); Customers (percentage of safe refrigerants used in products; percentage of customer refusals from cooperation; percentage of regular customers (more than 2 transactions; more than 1 year of cooperation; etc.); Personnel (the volume and share of expenses for employees’ certification; volumes and share of expenses for personnel development; volumes and share of expenses for stimulating employees); Internal business processes (accelerated service operations; reduction of time for placing orders; reduction of spoilage and waste; reduction of equipment maintenance and repair costs; reduction of time and costs of transportation operations; use of automated warehouse management systems; use of alternative energy sources; etc.). The proposed balanced scorecard allows the company to really build a green supply chain, which is an important competitive advantage.

8

Authors: Anna Verbytska, Nataliia Kholiavko

The globalization of the scientific-educational area determines the search for new competitive advantages of universities. One of the modern instruments of competition in the world educational services market is universities ranking. Nowadays the educational rankings are widespread; they are studied by researchers and experts of international organizations. In the same time the high dynamism of scientific educational area requires the permanent monitoring of the competitive positions of the national higher education systems. The purpose of the article is to analyze the competitive positions of higher education systems of selected countries in the world rankings, as well as to identify the directions of increasing their competitiveness in the context of globalization and digitization of the scientific-educational area. The authors studied the methodology of a range of popular rankings of educational systems, and analyzed the ranks of selected countries (United States of America, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Finland, Norway, Ukraine, Germany, France, Austria, Poland, China, and Spain). The selection is based on the differentiation of the countries according to the geographic position and ranking position. The source of data: bases of international organizations OECD, World Bank, UNESCO, ILO; and rankings ARWU, SCImago, Webometrics, and Leiden Ranking. Based on the comparative analysis, the article concludes that the increasing of competitiveness of the national higher education system needs the use of integrated approach combining the set of educational, research, financial, internationalization, and managerial components. The authors emphasized the urgency of developing and implementing institutional strategies for internationalization of universities, synchronized with national ones.

13

Authors: Oļegs Ņikadimovs, Tetiana Ivanchenko

The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of talent management strategies and practices in the hospitality industry context paying additional attention to soft skills gap. This study on talent management is limited and fragmented, that is why integrative literature review has been chosen as a method used to identify and analyse relevant studies, theoretical concepts in order to develop a deeper understanding and create a more comprehensive study of the strategies reviewed, and possibly to provide some solutions. Results from the literature review showed that talent management has a positive and strong association with competitive advantage, performance and talent positioning (Anwar & Nisar, 2014). New theoretical concepts and framework for talent management in the hospitality industry are beginning to develop, and it is a pathway for a hospitality company to reach its strategic goals and objectives. Competencies that have remained on the list of required skills include the soft skills of communication, customer focus, interpersonal skills and leadership (Johnson, Ghiselli, Shea, and Roberts, 2011). The performance of the company can be negatively impacted by skills gap due to unsatisfying levels of productivity and lacking quality (Bennett & McGuinness, 2009). The limitations of this study might be listed as having limited design due to a variety of constraints, that is why it can be viewed as fragmented, although this study adds to adds to the overall scope of literature on talent management, soft skills gap in the hospitality industry. Practical implications can generally help the practitioners to place emphasis on the development of soft skills and implement better talent management strategies to ensure that a positive image of the organization is consistently presented. Based on results, the future research should be conducted on the outputs and effects of these talent management concept and strategies, as well as how it can facilitate the soft skills gap closure on individual and organizational performance. Conducting an empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, which includes observation or implementation of these practices may be useful to further build on the literature.