Our world is evolving at an incredibly enormous speed and what was impossible three years ago is now a reality. The concept of leadership and leaders has also undergone profound transformations. Moreover, the recent COVID-19 pandemic caused a digital surge in the ways economic life, business, or education are perceived or conducted. The pandemic proved that small and large businesses, industries, and the whole economies can be suddenly upended by massive technological shifts. Hence, there is a need for a theoretical research update in leadership in business and economics that would bring new insights into this topic and define its place within the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our paper presents the novel insights for the leaders and the leadership concept in business and economics from various approaches and angles of view in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on sustainable leadership and organizational resilience. It aims at outlying the theoretical background of leadership in business and economics after the pandemic and bringing up interesting and recent leadership case studies from all around of the world. Moreover, this paper aims as sharing the valuable insights into what it means to be a sustainable leader in business and economics, why leaders are needed, and how to become one. The main criteria of this research and its instrumentation include both the theoretical discussion based on the literature review and analysis and the empirical analysis that supports these theoretical provisions. The paper features an empirical model that assesses how business and economic leaders are searching for new ways of work and personal development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic using the own data from the 400 respondents collected in the Czech Republic and Russia. We found that the pandemic enhanced the emotional creativity of business and economic leaders and made them to invest and engage more into using new digital technologies and fundamentally altering the old ways of managing and governing their respective companies and institutions. Our results might provide valuable food for thought both for academics working on various angles of leadership, as well as for entrepreneurs and businesspeople who want to receive recent updates on the topic of leadership to use them in their daily work.

The article presents the indicators of managing modern business sustainability, based on the relevant innovative factor of its conduct at the current stage of management evolution. The choice of indicators is based on the postulates of the school of management science, which are most significantly manifested in the system of economic relations, including the commercial sector of the economy, and, accordingly, such resulting and factor indicators as changes in income and expenses, direct (direct) and indirect - a given (indirect) ratio of income and profit to process costs for the development, implementation, and application of innovations by entrepreneurs for the implementation of commercial projects. These relationships between changes in income and expenses were plotted through a combination of their various types (additive, multiplicative, multiple), which help to identify the degree of influence of each factor indicator (element of process costs) on the resulting indicators and take measures to maximize the result and minimize such costs using the computational-constructive method in its interaction with individual elements of mathematical analysis. The material is useful for entrepreneurs regardless of their commercial interests and organizational mechanism of economic management, for educational and scientific institutions and their students in economic and management programs, specialties, and profiles.

The article is devoted to the methods of assessing higher education organizations' involvement in the process of scientific and technological development of Russia. These methods are based on a comparison of educational programs implemented by higher education institutions with priority areas of the Russian economy modernization and technological development. The article contains several conclusions made after testing the proposed methods.

Competitive advantages are an important economic category that is receiving close attention from researchers. Any organization needs to have distinctive characteristics in order to distinguish it from other market participants. This rule is also relevant for educational organizations that operate in the educational services market, which is characterized by a stable increase in the level of competition. Thus, the relevance of this study is due to the necessity to find optimal methods for solving the problem of competition between educational organizations in the higher education system. The purpose of the study is to reveal the essence of the competitive advantages of an educational organization, as well as to study the factors contributing to their formation and development. In accordance with the goal, the following tasks are set: to reveal the content of the competitive advantages of an educational organization; to formulate the factors characterizing the competitiveness of an educational organization; put forward recommendations related to the formation and development of competitive advantages of an educational organization. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the scientific achievements of domestic and foreign scientists on the issues of managing the competitiveness of an economic entity, including an educational organization. The author’s scientific conclusions are based on the theory of strategy and the methodology of strategizing by the outstanding scientist V. L. Kvint. To substantiate the achieved results, a set of scientific methods and approaches were used: analysis and synthesis, generalization, analogy, scientific theory. As a result of the research, based on the theory of strategy and the methodology of strategizing by V. L. Kvint, the essence of the competitive advantages of an educational organization as an element of its strategy is revealed. It is concluded that competitive advantages are an essential element of the strategic architecture, which, firstly, ensures the effectiveness of the strategy, and secondly, is a kind of filter in the goal-setting system of an educational organization. A number of recommendations related to the management of the competitive advantages of an educational organization are put forward.

Nowadays, digitalization is affecting all sectors of global economy, including higher education. This process should be conscious and well-structured. This study featured the digitalization phenomenon in higher education, namely its impact on human resources and the strategizing of digital transformation.The author used the theory of strategy and strategizing methodology developed by Professor V.L. Kvint to design the strategy of the digital transformation in the sphere of higher education in Russia. Other methods and approaches included analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, and scientific abstraction. The study resulted in a conceptual framework for strategizing the digital transformation of higher education in Russia. The OTSW analysis proved that the digital transformation of higher education is currently experiencing various difficulties. Most of them are associated with the penetration of digital technologies into academic environment, the socio-psychological risks, and the personality digitalization. The Russian system of higher education needs effective digital strategizing and a clear methodology to overcome all these difficulties.