Economic growth is the mandate of the global economy and with our planet’s population poised to reach 10 billion people, economists are searching for sustainable economic growth approaches that do not increase raw materials consumption nor deplete and damage our environment. This mandate is the heart of the Circular Economy (CE), a challenge to theoreticians and practitioners alike to continue global economic growth, but with fewer resources and protective methods for our environment. The European Union (EU) economies were early adopters of CE and are now demanding similar adoptions from its recently integrated members from the East. Romania is one of the laggard states in this transition, given its heritage and lack of economic sophistication. Our paper identifies the practices and performance of Romanian producers regarding the implementation of the CE principles, so future recommendations can be formulated. In surveying the Romanian firms, we applied a cluster analysis based on their level of green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) practices. The respondents were grouped into two clusters: “low green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers” and “high green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers’. The results suggest that cluster membership partially influence CE practices and fully influence CE-targeted performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered consumer behavior, making social commerce a viable alternative throughout the world. Europe is trailing the US and China in adopting this technology, but the prognosis is encouraging. Our goal is to contribute to this process by offering a literature review on social commerce in Europe for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. We analyzed 4.764 articles published during the 2015–2023 period on the topic of social commerce in Europe utilizing the PRISMA flow diagram. After scrutinizing this large body of literature with various instruments including artificial intelligence (AI), we identified a final list of 45 articles that are most pertinent to our research questions. The emerging themes were that social media is shaping behavior and triggering buying intentions, that trust is paramount in buying impulses and behavior, and that success in social commerce is predicated upon relationships and engagement.

To build a better and more profitable corporate image, Western firms have been investing in social responsibility. The Romanian consumer has fairly recently been exposed to this holistic marketing concept since the Revolution of 1989, and in this regard, in this article, the authors verify conventional corporate social responsibility principles of building customer loyalty as well as goodwill from stakeholders. The paper explores the competitive advantage and its various components in which companies make use of marketing instruments that influence CSR activities of retailers.

The paper combines original concepts about eco-energetic systems, in a transdisciplinary sustainable context. Firstly, it introduces the concept of M.E.N. (Mega-Eco-Nega-Watt), the eco-energetic paradigm based on three different but complementary ecological economic spaces: the Megawatt as needed energy, the Ecowatt as ecological energy, and the Negawatt as preserved energy. The paper also deals with the renewable energies and technologies in the context of electrical energy production. Secondly, in the context of the M.E.N. eco-energetic paradigm, comprehensive definitions are given about eco-energetic systems and for pollution. Thirdly, the paper introduces a new formula for the eco-energetic efficiency which correlates the energetic efficiency of the system and the necessary newly defined ecological coefficient. The proposed formula for eco-energetic efficiency enables an interesting form of relating to different situations in which the input energy, output energy, lost energy, and externalities involved in an energetic process, interact to produce energy in a specific energetic system, in connection with the circular resilient economy model. Finally, the paper presents an original energetic diagram to explain different channels to produce electricity in a resilience regime, with high eco-energetic efficiency from primary external energetic sources (gravitation and solar sources), fuels (classical and radioactive), internal energetic sources (geothermal, volcanoes) and other kind of sources. Regardless the kind of energetic sources used to obtain electricity, the entire process should be sustainable in what concerns the transdisciplinary integration of the different representative spheres as energy, socio-economy, and ecology (environment).

We are living in a new, post-industrial age which is best described by all kinds of new information technologies. This new reality is leading all of us into the society of the future, a society of new knowledge. This statement also describes the present reality of Romania, and the upward trend of its information, technology and communication (IT&C) sector. Even with the negative impact of the recent global economic crisis on the overall Romanian economy, the IT&C sector not only found a way to weather the global crisis, but also propelled Romania into one of the top countries worldwide in this field. For the first time in Romania's economic history, the IT&C sector contribution to the economy (∼6%) surpassed all the other sectors, including those of agriculture and construction. The economic future of Romania looks bright; especially considering that globally, the technology sector is poised to grow faster than any other, and for this country the IT&C sector represents a very important competitive advantage. This article presents: (1) how the IT&C sector survived the economic crisis; (2) how it changed during the last couple of years, and (3) what the economy of this country will look like if Romania successfully doubles the growth of its IT&C sector, knowing that it already has become one of the most attractive nations for outsourcing because of its strong workforce talent