Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– Supply chain (SC) is a homogeneous and interconnected network of firms which manages supplies, storages and handles material, information, personnel, equipment and final products throughout its length. The SC can be the means by which businesses add value to customers and therefore competitive advantage in the international market. Competitiveness no longer exists among individual members of a SC but between SCs. International literature pointed out, that strategy and competitiveness associated with specific strategic priorities. In this paper will be documented that the priorities as objectives of strategic importance comprise the key areas for the performance of the SC network. To support this, a systematic framework of strategic priorities, will be developed, which will visualize the major SC assessment areas that the SC network should turn its improvement efforts. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
– In total, 200 high level managers from 71 Greek manufacturing companies covering the whole country using their own SC networks took part in the study. Data analysis were conducted to create a model that describes the strategic priorities which are important, for the competitive advantage of their SC network.


Findings
– The results revealed seven critical strategic priorities: internal flexibility, production quality, waste reduction, customer focus, sustainability, reduction of production cost and efficiency. This paper analytically explores the strategic practices that seem to influence SC network performance and generates a systematic framework of the critical strategic priorities of the SC network performance.


Practical implications
– The proposed framework has six major advantages. First the research outcome enables managers to design their SC strategy. Second, proved the great importance of the strategic priorities institutionalization. Third, makes clear to stakeholders which are the SC network performance issues to consider. Fourth, the proposed framework could serve as a suitable formula for assessing the effectiveness and readiness of SC to face the competition. Fifth, it is an effective way of prioritizing the strategic practices as it provides the most important areas on which the firm can base tasks like evaluation, benchmarking and comparison of its SC both as a network and as individual firms. Finally, the proposed framework is an effective way to evaluate the consistency of strategic objectives and actions adopted for the SC.


Originality/value
– Literature review revealed a very important conclusion. It has been developed a broad discussion concerning issues on strategic practices which are responsible for the competitive advantage of the SC network. However, there has not been a significant effort on integrating all the practices under the spectrum of the SC in order to distinguish the most important of these practices that can lead to competitive advantages.

The paper highlights two complex issues: the fundamentation of the concept of national interest and the definition of the national interest of the Republic of Moldova. The national interest is an objective-subjective category due to the fact that it encompasses imperishable purposes as well as purposes that are designed by the ruling elite, in accordance with its strategic options. The elaboration of the national interest should be based on the interests of the society and individuals, because the state exists for individuals and not vice versa. The national interest of the Republic of Moldova includes several components, starting with securing and ensuring fundamental rights and freedoms and ending with the realization of the European vocation of the people of Moldova.

The article explores new policies related to security and economic development as represented by the cases of the Republic of Korea and Japan. It assesses combination of old and new internal and external challenges to security, economic development, and social stability, noting the increased interplay of factors affecting national security and innovative growth. The latter is increasingly viewed as an indispensable condition for military, political and social security of a nation, for effectively responding to external pressures as well as to ecological, epidemiological and technology-related risks. Rising technological capabilities in the two Northeast Asian nations contribute to their international ambitions. The authors analyze the tendency in the Republic of Korea to pursue a more independent foreign policy as a "middle power", and Japan's growing international and military profile in the Asia Pacific. The risks and possible future consequences of this trend are explored and assessed. The authors identify the priorities of the Republic of Korea's development strategy within the framework of the "Korean New Deal", and a new vision of the future of Japan as presented in the strategic documents of its government. They note greater aspirations of the two nations to increase their competitive edge in the regional and global race to reach and retain leading positions in the international hierarchy of economic and political power. New tools to ensure this edge are being tested by South Korean and Japanese governments, as old instruments of industrial policy seem to be losing strength and produce little effect. Acknowledgements. This paper was written as part of the research project "Post-Crisis World Order: Challenges and Technologies, Competition and Cooperation" under the grant of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for conducting major scientific projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development (Agreement No. 075-15-2020-783).

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which international faculty in a non-Western country align their research output to the research priorities determined by the government. To address the research purpose, we used content analysis method. The study relied on secondary publication data from abstracts of articles published by NU international faculty in peer-reviewed journals included in the Thompson Reuters' Web of Science. The results of the content analysis revealed that international faculty from NU largely produce research relevant to the country's needs. This is particularly typical of researchers in sciences whose research generally aligned to the country's research priorities; meanwhile, researchers in social sciences and humanities produce a greater number of irrelevant articles in their total number of publications. Several possible explanations for the revealed results were discussed. This study attempts to provide a comprehensive picture on the role of NU and its international faculty in pursuing the country's needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a multitude of vulnerabilities in Switzerland's decentralized healthcare system and highlighted the urgent need to strengthen Switzerland's capacity to respond to health crises and disease outbreaks. In this article, we draw on three distinct areas of analysis of the current functioning of the Swiss healthcare system to examine its strengths and weaknesses, which can serve as a basis for future considerations and strategic priorities. First, we analyze the different levels of nine non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), as defined by the ETH KOF Stringency Index and implemented in the Swiss cantons of Zurich, Vaud, and Ticino, compared with the rate of positive COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. We find that there was no strong correlation between the severity of the nine non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented and lower rates of positive COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Second, we examine the challenges of Switzerland's decentralized healthcare system through a literature review and with empirical data obtained from semi-structured interviews with health professionals in Switzerland. We conclude our analysis with the role of central authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate that during a national emergency in Switzerland, taking into account other factors that influence the success of a pandemic strategy, there is an opportunity for a more unified, centralized response to reduce the social and economic toll of the pandemic without necessarily risking greater health damage. We recommend that the Swiss federal government use a combination of decentralized and centralized public health and policy approaches and promote greater private–public collaboration with direct communication channels among policymakers, public health stakeholders, and the public to improve pandemic preparedness and response.

The study of internal and external consistency of manufacturing choices is a central theme in the literature of manufacturing strategy. However, most empirical studies lack dynamic perspective in facing this problem. This paper explores on an empirical, longitudinal basis the role of strategic priorities and past experience in driving the selection of manufacturing improvement programmes. A completely aligned selection is expected when the choice of the improvement programme is coherent with both the change in manufacturing priorities and the past experience of the programme implementation. Partially aligned and misaligned choices derive from the coherence with only one or none of the two driving factors. Different patterns of selection have been detected that depend both on the programme and on company‐specific factors. Starting from the level of strategic alignment of company's choices, guidelines are provided in order to manage effectively the process of manufacturing strategy formulation.

To enhance Dutch societal resilience, coordination across sectors, tailored approaches, and economic strategies are vital for stability and security.

Relevance of the research topic. In the context of globalization, one of the key priorities of financial policy in the world and in Ukraine is to reduce the negative impact of exogenous and endogenous factors on economic growth, creating conditions for the development of the financial system. Formulation of the problem. In the absence of strategic coordination of public administration bodies in the financial sphere, the risks of reducing its effectiveness may increase significantly. Analysis of recent research and publications. Problems of development of the financial system in the context of globalization are revealed in many scientific studies of foreign scholars: J. Keynes, R. Musgrave, P. Samuelson, J. Stiglitz. Among domestic scientists should be noted such as: A. Epifanov, Y. Pasichnyk, I. Salo, V. Fedosov and others. Selection of unexplored parts of the general problem. Significant levels of uncertainty and variability of socio-economic problems require the restoration of control and the establishment of strategic orientation of the financial system. Problem setting, research goals. The objectives of the study are: to determine the features of the financial system of Ukraine in modern conditions; to analyze and evaluate its indicators. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the priorities of Ukraine's financial system in the context of globalization. Method or methodology of the study. To achieve this goal, a set of general scientific and special methods was used: system-structural analysis; calculation and analytical method; formal-logical analysis; method of scientific abstraction. Presentation of the main material (results of work). The peculiarities of the functioning of the domestic financial system are determined, the indicators are assessed and the priorities of its development are substantiated. Field of application of results. The results of the study can be used in the process of reforming the financial system and its components. Conclusions according to the article. At this stage, an important task is to develop new scientifically sound approaches to the development of the financial system through the introduction of systematic monitoring of macroeconomic imbalances, which will improve the quality of macroeconomic and fiscal risks, create a single information base for sound management decisions in finance.

Industrial companies are the core of the national innovation system. However, large, medium and small enterprises differ significantly in their role in the innovation system, resource potential, strategic priorities and objectives. The paper focuses on a comparative analysis of the strategic priorities of innovative activities of Russian companies of different size. We have identified three types of companies: small innovative companies, large and medium-sized companies with a traditional business model, major innovation-driven companies with an integrated business model. Our analysis of the trajectories of small innovative firms located in Novosibirsk Scientific Center showed that the majority of the companies can be characterized either as spin-off firm or as specialized supplier. Spin-offs are newly established small firms, who have recently separated from the major research labs or parent companies. The typical behavior model for such companies is innovative entrepreneurship. Specialized suppliers are small companies that provide significant contributions to complex manufacturing systems in the form of equipment, parts, tools and software. Innovative objectives of such small companies deal with design and production of the specific elements required for large companies. Large and medium-sized companies with a traditional business model are characterized by the existing structure of commodity output and the supply chain. Characteristic type of innovative behavior for such companies includes incremental product and process innovations. Large innovation-oriented companies with an integrated business model have traditional production units and innovative units in their structure. Innovation priorities of major innovation-oriented companies with integrated business model are consistent with the hybrid model of behavior which combines the traditional model with an innovative entrepreneurship.