Abstract:The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of workplace context on competencies and performance in work (project) teams. This study was conducted at seven technology-based companies in Hong Kong and China. The results of the study provide companies with important knowledge on how to encourage the right competencies to achieve high performance in a workplace. This paper attempts to propose a holistic approach on improving individual and team performance in companies. The empirical evidence obtained confirms the importance of the contextual factors as predictors of individual competencies and performance level of team members. Specifically, the study conducted for industry integrated the concepts of organisational culture, team climate and managing skills into one model that allowed the prediction of the level of competencies and the performance of team members in work teams. Keywords

The following article provides the description of implementing ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses in both foreign and Russian higher educational institutions and deals with the experience of ESP teaching at Ogarev Mordovia State University (Saransk, Russia). The purpose of the study is to consider some practical challenges and tasks of teaching ESP on both international and Russian level and provide the possible solutions for them. Due to high relevance of the stated problem, the authors pay much attention to the review of literature, pointing out some of the most prominent scholars, who have studied theoretical and practical aspects of ESP teaching process and greatly contributed to the increase of scientific awareness in the field. The authors analyze the typical issues arising in the University teaching practice and point out such aspects as: the importance of proper selection of educational materials for the ESP training courses, the issue of homogeneous or so-called 'multilevel' academic groups, the necessity for thorough and due ESP course design and development etc. Several important conclusions are made: the authors point out the importance of thorough students' needs analysis prior to starting a course; the possible scenarios for significant adaptation of course contents due to constant changes in national educational standards and curricula hours; the highly responsible role of an ESP teacher, a professional, performing multiple assignments.

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The aim of the research is to assess development of entrepreneurship infrastructure of various countries according to opinions of experts from these countries. The elements were: knowledge and technology transfer infrastructure; commercial and professional infrastructure; production and information infrastructure; market infrastructure; institutions providing easy access to existing markets; social and cultural infrastructure. The research is based on methods of economic analysis, analogies, generalizations, classification, system, and structural approaches. Information from the Global entrepreneurship monitoring project report for 54 countries was used as input data. The estimation of the distribution of indicator values on the effectiveness of the six main infrastructure elements of business development reflecting the opinions of experts from these countries with the use of mathematic models of normal distribution. During the study we determined the average indicator values characterizing experts ' opinions on the effectiveness of each of the six key infrastructure elements of business development on a scale of ten; the intervals of their changes characteristic for the majority of countries were also considered. New knowledge about the effectiveness of infrastructure elements of business development in various countries has been obtained.

This paper presents a study that attempts to answer practical questions about work team performance issues. It considers organizational culture, team climate and manager behavior as the major factors affecting competencies and performance of team members. Theoretical background and practical implications are discussed here.