Žitkienė, Rima

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many areas of business to make changes, including: rethinking business strategies; using new ways of orga-nising activities; optimising processes; and using outsourcing. These changes have in turn led to changes in organisational structure and modes of operation in corporate networks. Based on process models and the drivers that give rise to outsourcing, a theoretical model of the impact of drivers of outsourcing on the formation of networks of service organisations was developed. The interfaces between outsourcing and the networking of service organisations were then revealed in order to highlight the components and results of this interaction. The case study method was used to test the theoretical assumptions and the practical application of this model, which revealed the peculiarities of service organisations operating in international and local markets. Along with an analysis of the scientific literature, these case studies justified organisational changes in the delivery of services through differences in the implementation of outsourcing, and highlighted direct links with the drivers of outsourcing. The impact of technological and strategic drivers on the implementation of outsourcing has been identified, where a merger or the creation of a legally-linked entity leads to both verti-cal and horizontal networking.

The global pandemic has affected all sectors and disrupted not only supply chains but also had a particular impact on the range of services provided and the whole service sector. Outsourcing is used to adapt to business environment changes. However, in the scholarly literature, outsourcing of services is analysed as a complementary part of the manufacturing process - there is a lack of research on outsourcing in service companies. This article analyses the enablers of outsourcing in all service groups. The aim of the semi-structured interview was to determine not only the enablers, their significance in each WTO (World Trade Organisation) group of services but also the use of outsourcing in the provision of core and non-core services. The results of the empirical study revealed that outsourcing is increasingly used in the service sector; however, enablers vary depending on the provision of services, the nature of the service company’s activities, and the needs they meet, public or for-profit

Research background. The electronic environment has become an integral part of today’s marketing environment. The transformation of information technology makes it possible to reach the desired customer through various business instruments, regardless of his location. The number of consumers using the Internet to search for goods and services is increasing. As a result, social networks are gaining in importance from both businesses and consumers. There are currently over 800 social networks in the world. Corporate social networking accounts where a variety of news can be posted: from company start-up history to the latest company prototype news, and often for small businesses, and represents the cost of the website. Most authors point out that the scope of e-marketing is wider than online marketing because online marketing refers only to the Internet. Businesses seek to disseminate information about goods through social networks, given their popularity and impact on consumers. Purpose of the article is to construct the theoretical model that would help to determine how the impact of social networks on online marketing of companies can be assessed. Methods: analysis of scientific literature, systematization, generalization. Findings and Value added. Based on the model, proposed by the authors, the elements of Internet marketing are analyzed, as well as research on the importance of social networks in information transfer and communication with the consumer is emphasized and the most commonly used indicators of social networks are singled out.

The article aims to propose a different approach to assessing smart cities which combines some commonly used indicators with several new ones in line with the concept of sustainability. The aspect of sustainable development as an essential driver for the smart city and the combination of indicators for sustainable and smart city concepts have been analysed fragmentarily so far. There are many different approaches to evaluate the indicators of city smartness; however, very little attention is paid to the analysis of the reciprocal importance of the indicators. Ten indicators representing a smart city were selected that would be keep in line all the three pillars of sustainability—environmental, social, and economic. An expert survey was conducted to assign the weights of indicators using the pairwise comparison approach. The results were processed by utilising the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which reduces the subjectivity in the experts’ answers. The presented approach differs from the ones commonly used and while it does not cover a wide range of usual indicators, it proposes some new ideas for further research. Some represent cities to attract young and intelligent citizens, others relate to comfortable and safe living conditions and the environmental situation. The results revealed that the most vital smartness indicators are foreign direct investments, pollutant emission, and the share of people registered as unemployed among the working-age population. These indicators cannot be easily identified as ones representing a smart city, but rather as indicators representing investment and environmental, sustainable aspects. Hence, finding a balance between the indicators related to sustainable and smart city is what highlights the need for further research.

Abstract Despite the fact that neuromarketing used to respond to all the marketers’ questions, most of the neurologists came to the answer that the maximum of decisions humans had made was not intentional. This idea gives open space for the renaissance of semiotics in advertising consumer behaviour, which is based on the hypothesis that consumption of products (or brands) has essential meaning this can be used as symbols for the culture spread or personal spirituality as also as for consumer behaviour decision-making process. Nevertheless, in order to understand the meaning of an exact brand can be confusing since the information about symbolic consumption can be spread by the customers themselves. According to our idea, the symbolic meaning of a brand could be seen in the framework of specific brand communities reached by social network. The purpose of this paper is to discuss, conceptualize and evaluate a semiotic meaning to consumer consumption habits and the necessity to belong to a certain brand’s community. We propose that research with theoretical model which separates the diverse types of brand communities based on their essential reliable strength. In the model, we have found that the image-based (symbolic) brand communities who belonged to the brand-subcultures the members are more committed to each member then to the symbol.

This paper analyzes the peculiarities of providing remote gambling services. The objective of the paper is to evaluate the peculiarities of remote gambling services provision and to assess changes in remote gambling in Lithuania. The following methods are used: comparative analysis and synthesis of scientific literature and legal acts, analysis of graphical and statistical data. First of all, the conception and classification of entertainment services are analyzed. Then the specifics of the legal regulation of remote gambling are discussed and recent changes in remote gambling in Lithuania are evaluated. The analysis revealed that the conception of entertainment services is heterogeneous and depending on the nature of the entertainment industry, the list and provision location of entertainment services are changing. The analysis demonstrated how rapidly popularity of remote gambling services in Lithuania is growing: in 2019 remote gambling gross revenue increased by 44,5 percent compared to 2018 and in 2019 remote gambling gross revenue was 35,95 percent of total (remote and land-based) gambling gross revenue in Lithuania.

The article object is to is a relatively new research direction in economic theory - economic security at the macro-level. One of the aims of this article is to reveal the country’s economic security idea and to choose methods for this economic phenomenon evaluation as well as to suggest the method to evaluate the energy sector's impact on this economic phenomenon. Firstly, the authors review different approaches to economic security principles and do some assumptions related to the country's economic security concept. There is shortly described the energy sector. Since the scientific problem is how to evaluate the energy sector and the country's security and what impact the energy sector has on the country's economic security, the authors have selected methods to analyze the links between energy sector activities and economic security. Furthermore, there were presented the results of regression analyzes and concluded what energy sector indicators influence countries' economic security.

The country’s systemic risk has become a fairly widely discussed topic since the global financial crisis of 2008. There is a growing interest among researchers in the development of an Early warning system that helps to assess the relationship between an independent variable for the current period and a dependent variable for a future period. Such models can be used to as early warning of the level of the country's systemic risk, and may help to take early actions to prevent or decrease the impact of systemic crisis. Evaluation of systemic risk is very complicated, as it is difficult to accurately predict the extent of the links between various institutions, and the possible spread and scale of the country's systemic risk. In addition, the country's systemic crisis is affected by many factors, many elements of the financial system. Financial derivatives are one of many elements of financial system, and the market of financial derivatives is huge compared to other financial instruments. The impact of financial derivatives to economies of various countries has been widely studied, however, the research on their impact to countries‘ early systemic risk remains under-researched. For this reason, assessment of the impact of derivative financial instruments on the early systemic risk is very relevant. Aim and tasks. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact of financial derivatives on the country's early systemic risk in the Euro area region. Results. It is shown that correlation fluctuates between weak-strong level, when analyzing relationship between various factors of financial derivatives and early systemic risk in the Euro area. Results of linear regression analysis prove that the group of financial derivatives independent variables (interconnection, size, liquidity, complexity, stability, leverage) can be used to reliably estimate the dependent variable (early systemic risk). Logistic regression analysis also provides similar results to the linear regression analysis. Additionally, it is shown, that logistic regression is more suitable to analyze impact on early systemic risk. Analysis of impact of individual financial derivatives factors to early systemic risk demonstrate, that three financial derivatives factors – size, complexity, and leverage – may be the best predictors of an impending systemic crisis. Among these factors, the size factor has the largest impact on early systemic risk of the Euro area, and complexity factor shows improved statistical parameters, which indicates, that this parameter is more suitable to be used in early warning system models.