Guest editorial

Citation

Petter Amdam, R., Baršauskas, P. and Chmieliauskas, A. (2010), "Guest editorial", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bjm.2010.29505caa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Baltic Journal of Management, Volume 5, Issue 3

The international financial crisis has illustrated the need for research on how to stimulate sustainable growth of business. The warnings about global warming also call for a stronger focus on sustainability. Based on reflections like these, ISM University of Management and Economics in cooperation with Baltic Management Development Association and BI Norwegian School of Management organized an international conference on “Insight into the sustainable growth of business” in Vilnius in November 2009. The conference was inter-disciplinary and the aim was to discuss both external factors and internal organizational factors that might influence the sustainable growth of business.

In this issue of Baltic Journal of Management, we have collected some of the best papers from the conference in addition to two others. The papers are all relevant for the discussion on how to stimulate sustainable growth. The first three papers address the issue of leadership performance in making and implementing economic decisions, which is a core item concerning future predictability. The paper by Jekaterina Kuzmina questions the basic assumption in economics that economic agents apply rational calculation to economic and financial decisions. The author does this by showing how emotional components of expectations influence strategic financial decisions. Further, reflecting the massive move towards project-oriented implementation of strategies, Ralf Müller and J. Rodney Turner examine the relative importance of project managers’ attitudes and their leadership competences for achieving project success. In their paper, Tomas Palaima and Aelita Skarzauskiene argue that effective decision making and learning requires leaders to become systems thinkers. According to the paper, system thinking is associated with higher leadership performance.

The following three papers are concerned with entrepreneurial activities. Nir Kshetri’s paper compares the perception of regulative institutions’ role in promoting entrepreneurship in some Central and Eastern European countries. The paper shows that the state’s regulatory, participatory and supportive roles are more favorable to businesses in the Latin countries than in the orthodox, countries, and that informal institutions influence the degree of generalizeability and replicability of Western political and economic institutions’ success in driving firms’ entrepreneurial behavior in emerging economies. Also Shawn M. Carraher, Jason K. Buchanan and George Puia assume that a healthy economy depend on entrepreneurial activities, and address the question of what stimulates entrepreneurial activities. By comparing data from Latvia, China, and the USA, they examine the extent to which conscientiousness, goal-orientation, cognitive complexity, gender, and age are related to need for achievement levels. In his paper, Thomas Gstraunthaler, combines an institutional and organizational approach, by examining one of the institutions, the business incubator, that are set up to stimulate entrepreneurial activities in modern economies.

The development of software is one of the modern industries that is expected to contribute to future economic growth and sustainability. In their paper, Uuno Puus and Tõnis Mets examine process-management practice in six Estonian SMEs. Their data show how poorly managed processes become obstacles for increasing development efforts.

We hope you enjoy the papers.

Rolv Petter Amdam, Petras Baršauskas, Alfredas ChmieliauskasGuest Editors