This paper explores the relationship between defence expenditure and government debt in small European Union countries that are members of NATO, such as Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, DRenmark, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The investigation used Eurostat data in relation to gross government debt, as well as NATO information regarding defence expenditure as a share of GDP and its distribution by main category for the period between 2005 and 2019. The authors applied descriptive statistics and methods of multivariate statistics: Spearman’s correlation, the ANOVA test, and Life tables. Taking into consideration the tendencies of variables in all examined countries, the results show that the share of defence expenditure in GDP correlates statistically significantly and negatively with government gross debt. Latvia, Slovakia, and Slovenia revealed statistically significant relationships between variables, while Luxembourg, Denmark and Lithuania insignificant. In Estonia, the relationship between variables is strong and positive. Additionally, the investigation shows that, whether for increasing defence expenditure or for stable or decreasing defence expenditure, the trajectories of government debt have no clear interrelation in explored countries. Therefore, the cause of government debt by means of defence expenditure alone can only be partially explained. The insights that were drawn from this study could be applied to government finance management processes, as well as to ensure both national security and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030.

Resilience is a complex phenomenon that results from the natural human response to adapt to change through the ability to cope with or respond to threats. In today’s security challenges, military personnel are responsible for the defense of their country, and exposure to unfamiliar situations can harm the ability of military personnel to perform successfully. Therefore, this study aims to identify the challenges in resilience training for the Lithuanian Armed Forces military personnel. The study uses a qualitative research method and an in-depth interview. Eight military psychologists participated in the study. The selection criteria for the informants were currently employed/serving in the military with at least five years of experience and participating in resilience training. The results revealed that there has been significant recent attention to and need for resilience training in the Lithuanian Armed Forces, but that resilience development is fragmented. The findings show that the lack of a unified concept of resilience in the Lithuanian Armed Forces complicates the development of a unified resilience training system. Summarizing the organizational aspects of resilience training for military personnel in the Lithuanian Armed Forces, the following key challenges were identified. There is a lack of leadership support for resilience education; the need for the development of trainers or responsible persons involved in resilience education; the lack of a clear perception of the value of resilience education among trainers; the need for unification and systematization of the education system through the updating/creation of the use of a system for feedback and evaluation. AcknowledgmentWe acknowledge General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania for financial support in publishing this article.

One element of any organization’s success is its organizational culture that manifests itself through the creation of a value system and emphasis on the well-being of employees. In this context, mobbing is a phenomenon understood as psychological stress experienced by individuals at work as a result of certain actions by another person leading to negative consequences for the individual, the organization and society. Given the fact that mobbing in statutory organizations or in organisations involved in their activities has hardly been studied, this article aims to reveal the peculiarities of mobbing in the Ministry of National Defence of Lithuania and its institutions through the organizational environment and employees’ relationships. Two hundred and one participants responded to the questionnaire. It was found that mobbing exists in the Ministry of National Defence and its institutions, but the number of employees experiencing workplace bullying corresponds to the general trend established by scientific research. The results also revealed that mobbing does not depend on the employee’s length of service, it is most commonly expressed through verbal communication and women experience it more often than men. It can be stated that the prevention of mobbing in the institutions under analysis is very weak and conflicts are solved in a time-consuming manner, concentrating only on local measures.

The main idea of this paper originated from the analysis of the fundamental research of the French economist Th. Piketty «Capital in the Twenty-First Century» (2013). Based on the study of historical data he argued that in the long-term global production growth has always been relatively slow and it will slow down even more in the future, at least with regard to its demographic component. The purpose of the presented research is to investigate empirically to what extent the dynamics of world production at the beginning of the 21st century corresponds to a slow growth regime (both in its demographic and economic component) and to find out whether there is production growth inequality between the regions of the world. The theoretical part of the research methodology is based on a unified growth theory. It explains why production growth has led to a significant increase in inequality between regions of the world over the past two centuries and contributed to further division of the global economic space into «worlds-economies» with different patterns of production growth. In the empirical part of the study, the authors use the methods of panel data analysis. During the period from 1992 to 2019, there was a slowdown of global production growth only in its demographic component, while the world average increase in the economic component of production growth (and, consequently, the total production growth) is constantly accelerating. However, its structure and pace vary significantly between regions of the world. The modern world can be conditionally divided into «worlds-economies» which have different, sometimes diametrically opposite, patterns of production growth.At the beginning of the 21st century, most regions of the modern world are still far from a slow growth regime in terms of production, especially with regard to its economic component, which cannot last long without a substantial dematerialization of the produced GDP.

Ensuring the quality of the various processes is essential to the effective functioning of an organisation. One way to achieve this is to assess the quality of the organisation’s performance. This process involves both self-assessment and external evaluation, which are carried out using different methodological approaches to evaluation. It should be stressed that the outcome of the quality assessment also depends on the choice of a methodological approach and its correct use from a methodological perspective. The aim of this paper is to present methodological approaches to assessing the quality of organisational performance. The paper focuses on action research as a methodological approach to evaluation and case studies as a methodological approach to external evaluation, showing how the two are closely interrelated and how they can be used more frequently and successfully in quality management research.