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 addition of Generation Z/Centennials to the workplace landscape will bring about new challenges for the management of any organization. To tackle the changing work environment and workforce, we conducted a survey-based empirical exploratory study among students in economics from two universities located in the western part of Romania. Our study proposes an alternative view of the motivational potential, including the feeling of belonging to an organization in work settings. The aim was to explore the potential for the feeling of belonging to play the role of mediator between four distinct career attitudes and the turnover intention in the specific case of Romanian Generation Z members. Additionally, we investigated which variables are significant predictors for the feeling of belonging to an organization. The results indicate that is efficient to invest in creating belongingness for those Generation Z members inclined towards making moves between jobs and organizations (OMPA), for those who present the mental capacity to be mobile (BMA) and for those who can be adaptive in terms of performance and learning demands (SDA). For those Romanian Generation Z members who use their internal values to provide guidance and measure for success, including the feeling of belonging to an organization in work settings seems to be inefficient.

This study aimed to validate the I-ADAPT scale to assess the individual adaptability to work within the Romanian population. Both a pilot study and a main study were conducted on a total sample of 966 Romanians. Following the application of standard scale validation procedures, the results of our study indicated that the I-ADAPT measure of work adaptability has good psychometric properties on the Romanian population. Our findings provide evidence that I-ADAPT continues to explain the unique variance in adaptability to work even if work patterns in the Covid-19 pandemic context moved more and more from a traditional to a virtual work environment. ROa I-ADAPT measure has excellent properties concerning convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. One main finding was that the “Physical” dimension of adaptability to work had no empirical support in the Romanian population. Moreover, our results indicate that the “interpersonal adaptability” and the “cultural adaptability” dimensions cannot be empirically separated in the Romanian population. To our knowledge, this is the first validated instrument that can be used to assess the individual adaptability of Romanians in the context of work. Our study is relevant for decision-makers in Romania and such actors in other EU-member countries where Romanians represent the largest group of working-age EU citizens.

The paper explores the relationship between family businesses (FB), communities of practice (CoP), and entrepreneurship education in the context of the knowledge production and sharing within and between these communities. The relationship between these three spheres of knowledge is presented from a transdisciplinary point of view. The contextual legitimacy identifies the communicational channels between the fields of family businesses and the communities of practice and entrepreneurial education in a transdisciplinary generative synergistic context. The notion of CoP suggests that organizational community boundaries do not correspond with typical functional boundaries, including practice - and person - based networks, while family businesses underlie the necessity of sustainable business education which can be achieved through collaborative interaction in a creative entrepreneurial framework. The paper proposes to find the common ground of the three fields of knowledge and the way these points develop new knowledge windows towards a new entrepreneurial understanding of life, and generating new alternatives.