The hypercompetitive global economy of the 21st century is a hub of innovation, technology, talent, skills, speed, efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction. Within this context, the organizations are looking intensely for people with skills and talents that can differentiate themselves in all that noise. The human capital became slowly but surely a mean of efficiency and growth, especially through the premises of digitization, and a key issue of sustainability. The current research is meant to identify and highlight any correlations that might appear between the population’s welfare of 11 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) which are members of the European Union (EU), and the components of the digitization trend, including the new human cloud industry, ICT, and the connectivity to the Internet of Things. In order to achieve the needed insights, the multiple regression analysis was employed, and the latter tested the panel models with fixed effects, both from a temporal and country perspective. The results showcased a positive connection between the dependent and independent variables, confirming that the digitization of the economy and the developed human capital will ultimately lead to the increase of population’s welfare. Moreover, the findings are consistent with specific insights for each of the 11 CEECs, showing that digitization and the influence of human capital is differentiated across the latter in terms of their overall effect and amplitude. The research is limited by the timeframe and countries included in the study, and it can be furthered by determining the impact of digitization on the economies of the EU28 countries grouped by level of development, and by using other significant indicators for analysis.

The target for 2030 of reaching a 32% share of renewable energy in the gross final energy consumption can be achieved by speeding up the transformation pending the implementation of knowledge transfer (KT) policies that foster regional cooperation for the cost-effective development of renewables. The research purpose is the analysis of important factors in the development of the renewable energy sector through knowledge sharing and collaboration across the Member States in a comparable manner. The hypotheses are as follows: Hypothesis 1 (H1) there are synergies between knowledge transfer and economic impact through income and jobs for the renewable energy sector and Hypothesis 2 (H2) the EU countries have different profiles of synergy. The research proposition was established through the employment of a quantitative synergy and trade-offs analysis based on the knowledge transfer indicators and the sustainable development framework. The research method, namely the advanced sustainability analysis (ASA), uses the quantitative assessment tool for the understanding of synergies between two or three dimensions of sustainable development, presuming that the combined effect of the factors is greater than the sum of their individual effects. The current research comprises an evaluation of the renewable energy sector knowledge transfer policy models at the national level for 24 EU countries and four other European states, focusing on the capabilities to create synergies. The results of the study represent a valuable input for the policy makers, allowing for a coherent and sustainable planning and programming of the new electricity market, adopted through the Clean Energy Package, and following a highly dynamic and radically disruptive background, exploiting the ‘successful’ profiles.

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In an age of important scientific and technological breakthroughs, among people that constantly search further, it is quite a challenge to stop in place and assess the situation from a sustainable dimension; more so, even harder to perceive at organizational and functional level a company and its actions based on ethical principles. The origins of ethics are still unclear, and sustainability is a globally promoted concept, mostly for its rhetorical value. Within the global economy, the ethical and sustainable decision-making process of businesses is not often linear, but it presents more or less the same manageable pattern, especially when the unit of analysis is represented by multinational companies. There is, though, a different guiding path for the small and mediumsized companies, and it all starts with the SME public policy. By making an analysis of SME public policy of the ASEAN countries, and by introducing the elements of business ethics and corporate social responsibility at the level of small economic entities, the research managed to create a backbone of a narrative of frameworks and approaches within the South-East AsianSME public policy. The research question of the paper simply manages to direct towards finding different perspectives on SME public policy and cases of ethical and sustainable decisions, based on secondary data, using a qualitative approach. The study resumes the knowledge on ethical and sustainable practices and guidance in the Asian SME sector, and adds to the current database a straightforward answer to the question: Are ASEAN SMEs ethical and socially responsible?

The present research was constructed with the idea of offering a detailed view on one of the most important legislative papers of the United States of America (USA), namely, the Small Business Act of 1953. The public policy sector in the USA is a rather complex area of research, and the qualitative study performed through the content analysis has been based on external factors within the Small Business Administration (SBA) for the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector in the USA, in terms of financial assistance, regulations and directives, as well as access to information, knowledge and know-how regarding the national and international markets. As a result, the article underlines important elements for both theory and practice. The content analysis performed on the SBA has suggested that, given the administration’s organisational chart and programmes of the American SBA, the latter pushes towards an impersonal connection between the administration and the SME sector through the existence of the business development centres created with the main purpose of assisting the SMEs in their activity.