Mihai Dinu

Employee motivation represents a critical factor in ensuring organizational performance, innovation, and long-term competitiveness. This study explores the current practices and challenges related to motivating employees at Michelin Romania SA, one of the leading companies in the tire manufacturing sector. The research investigates both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors, with an emphasis on working conditions, career development opportunities, leadership styles, and reward systems. Through a combination of literature review, internal data analysis, and employee surveys, the paper identifies key drivers of motivation within the company and highlights areas requiring improvement. Findings suggest that while financial incentives remain important, non-financial elements such as recognition, professional training, and participatory management have a significant impact on employee engagement. Based on these insights, a set of recommendations is proposed to strengthen motivational strategies at Michelin Romania SA, aiming to foster higher job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and enhance overall organizational performance.

Intensive agricultural production contributes significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for between 10 and 12% of global anthropogenic emissions, at a time when the agricultural sector is facing increasing pressure to adapt to ever-stricter environmental regulations. This study develops and applies a multi-objective Goal Programming model to identify the optimal mix of crops and management practices that simultaneously minimize the carbon footprint and maximize productivity, at the level of a 300-hectare (ha) model agricultural system in Romania. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, in accordance with ISO 14040/14044 standards and Ecoinvent 3.8 emission factors, was applied to nine crops distributed across three soil types, within four management scenarios, over an annual planning horizon. The unit of measurement used is a ton of CO₂ equivalent per agricultural system. The results show that the optimized configuration achieves near-zero total carbon emissions (0.33 t CO₂eq for the entire farm), reduces synthetic nitrogen inputs to 35.7% of the limit set by the EU Nitrates Directive, and generates water savings of 48%. However, these environmental gains entail a 52.9% production trade-off relative to the maximum target of 3000 tons, highlighting a Pareto-optimal structural conflict between climate and food security objectives. The sensitivity analysis identifies the nitrogen emission factor and crop yield as the most influential parameters. The results confirm the technical feasibility of the European Green Deal targets through systematic mathematical optimization, while also demonstrating that achieving economic parity requires policy support of 110–165 EUR/ha/year.

This study examines the associations of land temperature anomalies and energy-related CO₂ emissions per hectare with wheat and maize yields in Romania and Serbia during 1992–2023. Energy-related CO₂ emissions per hectare are used as a scale-adjusted proxy for energy-use intensity and emissions associated with agricultural energy consumption, rather than as an indicator of climate intensity. The study contributes to the literature by applying a comparative ARDL framework to Romania and Serbia, two Central and Southeast European agricultural systems with different institutional contexts, integrating climate variability, nitrogen fertilizer use and energy-use-related emissions into a unified crop-specific analysis. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework, we estimate long-run equilibrium relationships and short-run dynamics between cereal yields and the selected explanatory variables. The results partially support the proposed hypotheses by indicating heterogeneous country- and crop-specific relationships. In Romania, nitrogen fertilizer use is positively associated with wheat and maize yields, while rising land temperature anomalies are negatively associated with maize productivity. In Serbia, energy-related CO₂ emissions per hectare show a statistically significant negative long-run relationship with maize yields, whereas no statistically robust long-run relationships are identified for wheat. The findings highlight the importance of energy efficiency, input optimization and country-specific decarbonization strategies for sustainable cereal production.

The digital transformation of agriculture represents a key catalyst for enhancing competitiveness, productivity, and sustainability within the rural economy. In recent years, the integration of digital technologies- such as precision farming, smart sensors, data analytics, drones, and artificial intelligence- has reshaped traditional agricultural practices, contributing to more eficient resource management, reduced environmental impact, and improved decision-making processes. This paper explores the role of digitalization as a strategic driver of rural development, emphasizing its potential to increase value creation, foster innovation, and strengthen the resilience of rural communities. The analysis highlights both the opportunities and challenges associated with digital adoption, including issues related to digital infrastructure, technological literacy, financial accessibility, and policy support. The findings underline that digitalization, when supported by coherent policies and inclusive strategies, can significantly boost the competitiveness of the agricultural sector and promote long-term sustainability of rural economies within the broader context of the European Green Deal and global sustainable development goals.

The competitiveness of the agri-food sector is a key factor for food security, economic growth, and sustainable development, especially in emerging European economies. This paper compares the agri-food competitiveness of Romania and Serbia, two neighboring countries with similar historical, geographical, and cultural characteristics, but different institutional frameworks, i.e. Romania as an EU member stateandSerbiaasacandidatecountry.Thestudyaimstoidentifystrengths,weaknesses, and opportunities in their agri-food trade performance. Using international trade indicators, with emphasis on the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index, the analysis covers the main agri-food product categories during 2019-2023, based on the data from the Intracen platform. Results reveal sectors where Romania and Serbia hold competitive advantages, as well as areas of complementarity or direct competition. The paper provides insights into regional dynamics and highlights innovation, digitalization, and cooperation as strategic levers for strengthening long-term competitiveness and sustainability of the agri-food sector in both countries.

In this study, we investigated the spatial and temporal dynamics of pork carcass prices across European Union Member States, focusing on the influence of wheat prices and population income levels between 2014 and 2023. Our analysis revealed that both input costs (reflected by wheat price fluctuations) and income-driven demand factors exert significant and spatially correlated effects on pork carcass prices. The results demonstrate the existence of spatial interdependencies among neighboring countries, indicating that price changes in one region may propagate through the broader European market. By integrating spatial econometric techniques within a panel data framework, this research provides empirical evidence of the interconnected nature of EU agricultural markets, advancing the existing literature by demonstrating how input markets and consumer income dynamics jointly shape price behavior within an integrated regional economy. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of price transmission mechanisms in the livestock sector and offer valuable insights for policymakers seeking to enhance market efficiency and resilience within the Common Agricultural Policy context.

The starting point of the research was the approach of a series of theoretical aspects related to the concept of food security, as developed over the last decades by specialized international bodies, especially FAO. Currently, food security has become a complex concept, the assessment of which takes into account both the availability of food, including the stability of the agricultural supply, and the (economic) access to food, which is conditioned by the purchasing power of different categories of the population. The concept of food security has gradually developed over the last decades, including more and more aspects that address the problems of human nutrition from a complex, quantitative and qualitative perspective, with references including to health security, environmental quality, the general socio-economic framework, the risk of armed conflicts. The numerous challenges present in most countries of the world transform the problem from a theoretical one into a practical one, with scientists, governments and other stakeholders seeking to discover the most useful measures to remove risks and provide food security to as many of the Earth’s inhabitants as possible. The article below is very useful, because it defines the term food security, presenting the objectives and priorities of the phenomenon, as well as the factors that positively and negatively influence this area.

The objective of this study is to assess the competitiveness of Romanian agri-food products on the world market, taking into account the use of land related to those products, using specific indicators. The central research question is whether the land is cultivated with crops that are globally competitive, what happens to the value of exports. To calculate the competitiveness of agri-food products the Balassa index is calculated. A detailed analysis of this index showed that there is a high performance for tobacco, barley, maize and wheat. However, for other agri-food products that are not export competitive, the size of arable land is quite large. The paper also proposes some structural changes in agricultural land use to encourage the cultivation of export-competitive products. However, these changes may affect food security and diet diversification, and it is therefore recommended that greater attention be paid to the use of such arable land.

This article starts from the empirical study of economic and social policies at the European level and has as its main purpose the determination of some solutions to simplify and implement them in favor of the data analysis was essential to see the progress in accessing these measures during the pandemic period to provide conclusions regarding the level of contribution of these aids and how they were or were not distributed depending on the situation in the territory. The present research did not discuss overall evaluation/impact, as the period of implementation and reporting of these types of aid was concurrent. We can consider that the measures for granting financial support from non-reimbursable external funds, related to the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014–2020, in the context of the crisis caused by COVID-19, although effective from the perspective of the expenses incurred, were not effective in covering the demand, especially in the regions considered more developed. Our findings are useful for policymakers such as managers and investors and can help them make the best decision for their managing or investing activities. Moreover, governments need to know how companies respond to the pandemic to identify the sectors of activity that are more vulnerable to the crisis’ effects and the main financial management decisions that must be adopted by companies during times of crises.