Angela Albu

Starting from ’90, when the concept of circular economy (CE) was launched and defined for the first time, humanity made only a few steps to accept, understand, and implement it in business, strategic and operational management, and daily activities. We still face a big resistance against the adoption of this concept because it dramatically changes the economic paradigm and impels us to rethink and act differently, compared with the past. It is not a question if we want to adopt and implement the principles of the circular economy; the question is how quickly and how efficiently we are able to do this, in the context of continuous environmental degradation, and intensification of the pressure on the non-renewable resources. The paper is included in complex research to identify the actual situation and problems associated with the implementation of the circular economy in the Northern part of Romania and to propose solutions for enhancing the adoption of the concept in daily business ...

Culinary tourism suggests the idea of experiencing other cultures through food. Food and drinks are an equally - if not more - powerful tourism attraction, like museums, historical sites, sports and others. According to the specialists, the cuisine of the destination is an aspect of utmost importance in the quality of the holiday experience. The development of gastronomic tourism contributes to the improvement of the general perception of the destination. Gastronomic tourism applies to tourists and visitors who plan their trips partially or totally in order to taste the cuisine of the place or to carry out activities related to gastronomy. Furthermore, Food Tourism includes in its concept ethical and sustainable values based on the territory, the landscape, the sea, local culture, local products, authenticity, which are the values promoted by the tourism nowadays. Our paper briefly presents the basic concept of gastronomic tourism and develop a study regarding the opinion of tourism...

Consumer protection is an activity rather new in Romania where from political reasons there were no preoccupations in this area before 1990. After the transition at the market economy it was very clear that Romania needed to create a law system for the protection of the consumers, coherent, adapted at our realities but in the same time based on the international regulations in order to assure a real protection for the Romanian consumer. In the field of services activities there are some specific aspects, different from the goods production. Adequately, the protection of the consumer as beneficiary of service has some particular features. Because during the carrying out of the service the provider and the consumer are in direct contact, most of the consumers' complaints are related to the activity of the providing the service itself. In this paper we present some general aspects of the consumer protection in Romania and a study of the consumers complaints in the area of services activities developed in Suceava County during the period 2004 - 2005.

Abstract: A competitive economy needs energy for all its activities, but the depletion of the raw materials and fossil fuels push the scientist to find appropriate alternatives. During a very short period clean technologies turned from an ecological dream to real way to produce goods, energy, to renew the face of our planet and to protect the environment. The development of the clean technologies confirmed that they are good opportunities to do business, to make good investments, to create a dynamic industry and new jobs, but adopting clean technologies is, first of all, an economic decision taken in risk circumstances. The paper is studying the main factors which are influencing this decision, what are the possible risks and benefits and give some successful examples of the efficient using of clean technologies.

Abstract For a long period of time our technological society functioned in an unsustainable way, consuming the non-renewable resources with very high rates, polluting the environment and considering the nature a thing without any value. In these conditions were developed businesses in all fields with impressive economic results. Now it came the time to take into account the environment with all its problems caused by the human activities, to develop new businesses or to innovate the existing ones starting from a new base – the sustainability. The well known economic criteria for the assessment of an activity have to be applied because the sustainability doesn’t exclude the profit. This paper aims to present the concept of industrial ecology and give some examples of new business ideas built and developed on it. Key words: sustainable development, industrial ecology, industrial metabolism, business innovation

Food packaging is not considered any more just a necessary accessory to protect and transport the goods, it currently plays a complex role – technological, for protection, and for marketing. Because the packaging comes into direct contact with the product, it requires a number of restrictions and safeguards on the material used to make packaging, in order not affect the quality and safety of packaged food. However, migration of packaging constituents into food could not be stopped entirely. Developments in food packaging materials have significantly improved their stability, but nevertheless, we can affirm that it doesn’t exist an ideal material for packaging, which shows only benefits. In this paper we studied the influence of the cardboard box on a very popular product - pizza which is very often delivered in this type of packaging. The results show that there is the phenomenon of migration from the cardboard to the product and package significantly affect the quality characterist...

To succeed in this new era, companies must take a more nuanced approach to identifying and creating growth opportunities. Globalization involves economic and industry integration with the rest of the world, removing restrictions on imports and foreign investment. Many firms go global and orient themselves more and more internationally, making firms’ search for foreign market opportunities necessary in order to survive in this era of globalization. And more important to these firms it has need to adopt strategic decisions to try to succeed in international markets. For the company we are studying the questions are: What factors determine entrepreneurial decision-making in the process of internationalization? What kind of strategies the firms need to formulate while going international? Did the strategies implemented make the company more profitable one?

To write a book about the Management of innovative projects is a challenge, because inno‐ vation goes beyond the usual, normal things, is not a standard behaviour and is difficult to propose techniques and methods to manage the creativity, but, in the same time, represents a very good initiative – to provide a specific guide for a project manager. At the moment, innovation is part of our everyday life and all the projects have innovative elements; these are the “details that make the difference” between a common, mediocre project and a good and efficient one. The management of the innovative projects needs a basic theoretical frame in which to find explanations of all fundamentals concepts. The chapter will present the main fundamentals concepts and prepare the reader for more complex approaches in the field of project management. The chapter will be structured as follows: definitions of innovation; explanation of the differences between innovation and invention; the typology of inn...

We are currently witnessing major changes in production systems, diversification and service delivery as well as business models. A new concept was introduced approx. 6 years ago - Industry 4.0. or The Fourth Industrial Revolution. This new concept refers not only to industrial branches, but encompasses the whole business environment, meaning the digitization of all physical assets in an economic entity and integration into digital eco-systems with partners in the value chain, partners that can be individuals or other economic entities. This paper aims to study the implications that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have on production systems, services and human resources, to see how prepared we are to cope with the changes that will come in a very short horizon of time. For this purpose, the case study analyzes a number of relevant indicators at the level of the European Union and other developed countries that provide information on adapting economies to the requirements of th...

Consumer protection is an activity rather new in Romania where from political reasons there were no preoccupations in this area before 1990. After the transition at the market economy it was very clear that Romania needed to create a law system for the protection of the consumers, coherent, adapted at our realities but in the same time based on the international regulations in order to assure a real protection for the Romanian consumer. In the field of services activities there are some specific aspects, different from the goods production. Adequately, the protection of the consumer as beneficiary of service has some particular features. Because during the carrying out of the service the provider and the consumer are in direct contact, most of the consumers’ complaints are related to the activity of the providing the service itself. In this paper we present some general aspects of the consumer protection in Romania and a study of the consumers complaints in the area of services acti...

The whole development process along the history of the society was based on the innovation and the applications of the innovation in different areas. Especially during the last century, innovation was considered the engine of the development due to its huge importance in reaching and maintaining a high rate of growth for the world’s economies. The innovation process has now a specific feature, namely the orientation to the environmental problems which affect the whole planet; according to this orientation, a new type of innovation is recognized – the eco-innovation. Our paper aims to introduce and characterize the eco-innovation, to present the importance of this process in the context of sustainable development, to highlight the EU environmental policies which include the concept of eco-innovation and to exemplify some positive achievements in the field.

A part of the cultural heritage of a nation is the variety of traditional food, kept unchanged for generation to generation. Romania has some traditional ways to prepare food, characteristic for each region of the country and the tourists who tried once a traditional dish will come again to taste it. The Romanian trade and tourism used only a little part of the promotional value of its traditional food products to attract customers and tourists. The European certification scheme for traditional food gives the possibility to obtain three types of certifications for traditional food products. This paper made a critical analysis of the situation of Romanian food products certificated by EU and proposed some actions to increase the number of certificated products and to improve the international image of the country. Key-Words: traditional food products, country brand, protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI), traditional speciality guaranteed (TSG)