Ensuring economic sustainable development in difficult political and economic conditions is one of the priority tasks for Ukraine. It is forced to reorient the vector of foreign economic cooperation, in particular, the integration formations of the European Union. The aim of the article is to study the development of the processes of regional integration of Ukraine to ensure sustainable economic development, as well as determine the priority direction of its regional integration. The role of Ukraine in the processes of economic integration at the present stage of development is analyzed. Based on the analysis of the current state and development features of the EU and Ukraine, the prospects for the activation of its participation in integration processes, namely entry into the EU, are substantiated. By analysis, the domestic market of Ukraine, the general state of development and its place in the world market are investigated. As a result, the features and barriers of Ukraine's European integration and ways to address them were identified, as well as an attempt was made to identify the main areas of cooperation and ways to improve economic relations between Ukraine and the EU.

Since modernization challenges of microeconomic systems are implemented through strategic management of the modernization potential development of enterprises, the rationale for choosing an exclusive innovation and investment strategy is proposed. An algorithm for making managerial decisions based on the model of "preferences in the implementation of investment and innovation strategies" ("PIIIS") is built. The model is based on the concept of strategic management, economic and mathematical hierarchy of potential levels of cognitive judgment, optimization of resources on demand and the structure of innovation and investment strategies. This allows to ensure the efficiency and resource conservation of individual innovation and investment strategies in modernization potential of the enterprise. The sequence of establishing preferences of innovation and investment strategies for activating modernization potential of microeconomic systems is proposed. To model the process of granting preferences to innovation and investment strategies, a system of coefficients based on the potential profile level using cognitive judgments is substantiated. Resource-providing, accumulating, implementation and resulting levels of the modernization potential development are singled out. According to the profile levers, target tasks and alternatives of preferences of innovation and investment strategies for the modernization potential development are identified. Decomposition of tasks of granting preferences to innovation and investment strategies to intensify modernization potential of microeconomic systems is substantiated. It is proposed to use mathematical tools for the analysis of hierarchies, based on mathematical and cognitive judgments based on the T. Saaty model. Application of the Pareto model for the distribution of the coefficients influence in the effectiveness of the components analysis of the potential profile is presented. The choice of innovation and investment strategies for the modernization potential development for enterprises in the infrastructure sector of Ukraine is analyzed and determined.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative analysis of knowledge management (KM) initiatives in small, medium, and large enterprises operating in Ukraine, and to highlight the specific characteristics of KM policies, as well as the scope and intensity of KM tools application in these categories. In particular, the study focused on the consistency between the awareness of knowledge/KM importance and KM policies, and the scope and intensity of the application of both human-centered tools and information communication technology (ICT) tools. METHODOLOGY: The concept of the study was developed on the basis of an integrative socio-technical perspective. The empirical data were obtained through a questionnaire survey among 90 managers of small, medium, and large Ukrainian enterprises and were analyzed statistically. FINDINGS: Both common and distinctive characteristics of these categories in terms of KM were highlighted. Although all enterprises, regardless of their size, showed a high awareness of knowledge/KM importance for their business, significant distinctions between small and large enterprises were found with regard to their KM policies, the scope of advanced KM tools application, and the intensity of some traditional and advanced KM tools application. In all cases, large enterprises showed higher levels of these characteristics compared to small enterprises, whereas medium enterprises were more similar to large enterprises. In contrast to the common view on SMEs as a homogeneous sector in terms of KM, the study shows its heterogeneity in terms of KM initiatives. According to a number of indicators studied, significant differences were observed between small and large enterprises, whereas the distinctions between medium and large enterprises were much less obvious. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE: The theoretical contribution of this study was the provision of SMEs sector heterogeneity evidence based on a number of KМ characteristics. This finding allows us to deepen our knowledge of conceptual differences in KM approaches, applied by different enterprise categories. From a practical perspective, an enterprise size should be taken into account while designing specific KM policies, programs and tools to meet enterprises’ needs to a greater extent. The larger the enterprise is, the more structured, deliberate, and conscious the KM approach that should be applied is. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: No empirical research that addresses the comparative analysis of KM initiatives in small, medium, and large enterprises operating in Ukraine, as well as in other transition economies of post-Soviet states, has been previously performed, and this study fills the gap.

The article is devoted to the development of a conceptually new systemic structural approach to the study of sustainability of economic systems. The problem of ensuring sustainability of economic entities remains unsolved, largely due to the lack of the necessary methodology. In the article, the approach is shaped by new economic systems theory, which implies the division of all economic systems into types depending on their spatiotemporal localization. Applied research of socio-economic system of Ukraine in its context is implemented by econometric modeling using data mining techniques and by calculating the economic sustainability index using the author’s techniques. The indicators, announced by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, as well as the ranking and indexing results, presented by leading international organizations, are used as the parameters. Alternative hypothesis about preconditioning of economic sustainability of the macro-level system by the structural balance of its four subsystems with different spatial and temporal localization is confirmed. The results of modeling have shown a number of interesting, previously not formalized, patterns of the country’s development and have allowed to better understand the forming mechanism of its sustainability in different periods during 2000–2015. Both the methodology itself and the empirical results obtained on its basis open up a wide variety of perspectives of micro and macroeconomic analysis.

Studying any system requires development of ways to describe the variety of its conditions. Such development includes three steps. The first one is to identify groups of similar systems (associative typology). The second one is to identify groups of objects which are similar in characteristics important for their description (analytic typology). The third one is to arrange systems into groups based on their predicted common future (dynamic typology).We propose a method to build such a dynamic topology for a system. The first step is to build a simulation model of studied systems. The model must be undetermined and simulate stochastic processes. The model generates distribution of the studied systems output parameters with the same initial parameters. We prove the correctness of the model by aligning the parameters sets generated by the model with the set of the original systems conditions evaluated empirically. In case of a close match between the two, we can presume that the model is adequately describing the dynamics of the studied systems. On the next stage, we should determine the probability distribution of the systems transformation outcome. Such outcomes should be defined based on the simulation of the transformation of the systems during the time sufficient to determine its fate. If the systems demonstrate asymptotic behavior, its phase space can be divided into pools corresponding to its different future state prediction. A dynamic typology is determined by which of these pools each system falls into.We implemented the pipeline described above to study water frog hemiclonal population systems. Water frogs (Pelophylax esculentus complex) is an animal group displaying interspecific hybridization and non-mendelian inheritance.