Economic growth is the mandate of the global economy and with our planet’s population poised to reach 10 billion people, economists are searching for sustainable economic growth approaches that do not increase raw materials consumption nor deplete and damage our environment. This mandate is the heart of the Circular Economy (CE), a challenge to theoreticians and practitioners alike to continue global economic growth, but with fewer resources and protective methods for our environment. The European Union (EU) economies were early adopters of CE and are now demanding similar adoptions from its recently integrated members from the East. Romania is one of the laggard states in this transition, given its heritage and lack of economic sophistication. Our paper identifies the practices and performance of Romanian producers regarding the implementation of the CE principles, so future recommendations can be formulated. In surveying the Romanian firms, we applied a cluster analysis based on their level of green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) practices. The respondents were grouped into two clusters: “low green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers” and “high green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers’. The results suggest that cluster membership partially influence CE practices and fully influence CE-targeted performance.

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The purposed longitudinal study analyzes the evolution of students’ Entrepreneurial Intentions (EI) and its antecedents over the COVID-19 pandemic period and explores the inter-individual differences and the intra-individual changes. Our main contribution consists of proposing two-panel estimations techniques: first, a Latent Change Score model (LCS) approach to analyze the stability of our constructs, and second, a Generalized Least Squares (GLS) Random-Effect estimation of a complex network of relationships that we have identified within the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. Our empirical results show that students’ EI enrolled in an entrepreneurship education (EE) program increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals with initial higher scores for EI have changed less than those with lower initial scores, and a gender difference exists in the initial level of EI and its antecedents. Our results also document the moderation effects of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the importance of inspiration and resources in building students’ EI and provide valuable policy recommendations for universities regarding the design of EE programs to contribute to the economic recovery in the post-pandemic era

The Importance-Performance Analysis is a widely used diagnostic tool in many fields of economic activity, such as: transport, health, construction, public food industry, finance, banking, sustainable activities, etc. Despite its use for over 40 years in many economic and social fields, this tool has some important drawbacks that affect the accuracy of managerial decisions. Over time, many variants for improving the standard Importance-performance matrix have been proposed. The aim of our research is to propose a method to solve one of the biggest problems of the standard Importance-Performance Analysis, respectively a method of boosting confidence in the positioning of attributes in the matrix. We use a mathematical method, inspired by classification theory tools, to apply the nine categories division of attributes in the importance-performance plane. Moreover, we introduce a level of confidence in a nine categories Importance-performance matrix, which helps the practitioners to prioritize a decision on attributes, according to the resources, managerial plan, competition, etc. We test and discuss the effectiveness of the new method on two studies: on the green practices in educational restaurant operations and on the financial performance evaluation.

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