Fighting corruption and enhancing tax compliance through digital public services represent key factors for increasing sustainable development in Romania. We argue that fighting corruption may increase the level of sustainable development, through digital pubic services. Using digital public services leads to the increase of the level of tax compliance, because entrepreneurs will feel more confident and responsible and they will decide to better comply. Tax regulations can affect the level of tax compliance through the additional costs they generate. The discussion is based on the consideration of the costs generated by compliant behavior and we explain how such costs influence the entrepreneurs’ decision in the fiscal environment. If the costs are higher, entrepreneurs will take evasive initiatives and will refuse to comply. Among the numerous tools developed to fight corruption, the use of communication technologies has recently been researched and there is still need for further research in the Romanian economic environment. The use of digital public services reduces costs for entrepreneurs and increases their confidence in state institutions due to higher levels of transparency. We argue for increasing sustainable development in Romania through digital public services, thus fighting corruption and enhancing tax compliance.

This paper explores the impact of economic sanctions on national economies, with specific focus on Iran. It starts by conceptualizing sanctions in the set of economic policies and include them in the framework of economic statecraft, according to literature available. Several hypotheses that attempt to anticipate the form of sanctions are advanced, according to the intensity of geopolitical competition among the states. The analysis uses the case study of the regime of United States’ sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran and P5+1 powers (the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany) agreed on a deal regulating the nuclear program of Iran - Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, meaning that Iran would reduce its nuclear activities drastically in exchange of lifting economic sanctions. In spite of the initial enthusiasm, United States announced in May 2018 the unilateral withdrawal from the deal and reinstating the sanctions regime, spiking new tensions in the relation with Iran. As a result, the paper discusses the context in which Iran tries to pursue economic goals in order to ensure resilience, while the US imposes more pressure. In addition, the study also approaches the dilemma whether sanctions can ultimately generate political answers and at what costs. In this context, it is identifying several alternatives in the Iranian case, together with noting the limits of conceptual refinements in terms of sanctions’ theory.

After an initial period of ignorance of the phenomenon of crises that are experienced by businesses, a fast expanding literature is approaching this issue. However, the present authors perceive a lack of commonly agreed conceptualization and taxonomy in debating the situations when companies are facing difficulties. We explore in this paper how economic theory and management knowledge could assist escaping such challenging contexts. We argue that a narrow focus on financial indicators of the company is critical for any business decision targeting the restructuring and reorganization but the deep causes of the challenging context should be identified. We argue that crisis management has in common principles and approaches with risk management but the delimitation should be made clear. There may be organizational crisis when risk management approaches could be employed in order to deal with them but there are many instances when the approach of risk management is insufficient or even not operational. Such circumstances require a real entrepreneurial approach. We advance a coherent system of conceptualizing the crisis and differentiating crisis management from risk management.