This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the healthcare systems’ transformations towards sustainability, considering COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to forecast changes in the healthcare sector’s greenhouse gas emissions of the EU countries. For gaining that purpose, the authors carried out the study in the following logical sequence. Firstly, the bibliometric analysis was conducted based on 2313 publications indexed by Scopus database. The study sample consists of 1995 publications indexed by the keywords such as healthcare, green, carbon and sustainable; and 318 publications – green, carbon-free, covid, pandemic, coronavirus and health. The fields for search are titles, keywords and abstracts. The search was limited to the subject areas such as Social science; Environmental sciences; Business, Management and Accounting; Economics, Econometrics and Finance. The time framework is 2000-2020. The scientific background analysis stated the strong relationship between implementing green innovation in the healthcare system towards gaining sustainable development goals. The obtained results indicated that the COVID-19 requires the decisive green transformation in the economy. Thus, the forecast of greenhouse gas volume from the healthcare activity (human health and social work activities; human health activities; manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations) until 2030 was conducted. The methodological tool of this research based on the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model. The software EViews 11 was used to provide empirical calculation. This study involved data of the EU countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Malta, Denmark and Portugal from 1995 to 2019. The base of data is the EU statistical service Eurostat. Based on the obtained results, the authors concluded that there are still disparities in the healthcare sectors of the EU-countries towards sustainability. Therefore, the authors highlighted the necessity to improve the EU countries’ cohesion policy, which would allow decisively and quickly cooperate to find effective solutions towards developing resilience in the healthcare sector due to implementing green strategies. The authors emphasized that this study’s obtained results could be the base for future investigations devoted to effective green solutions to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from the healthcare activity.

In the past three decades, the concept of sustainable development became the focus of attention in practically all developed and developing countries. This concept aims to balance various economic, ecological, and social aspects that form the key pillars of sustainability. Notwithstanding the growing literature on sustainability, it is still unclear what components impact it. This paper summarizes and systematizes contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches to sustainable development and reviews urban sustainability factors mentioned in the literature to identify which ones are the most common and considered to be the most important. The authors analyzed the theoretical and practical foundations of the circular economy as a relatively new trend in sustainable urban development. Through the literature analysis, this paper concluded that the factors mentioned the most are related to the traditional three pillars of the sustainability model. Overall, 14 factors have been identified and packed into 4 groups: social factors, environmental factors, economic factors, and awareness factors. The research made it clear that the circular economy concept keeps evolving. It could be useful for achieving higher levels of urban sustainability through impact on some of the key urban sustainability factors. The achievement of sustainable development goals is reached within the general modernization processes observed in the economy and society. The technological and managerial innovations currently being implemented take into account the social, economic, and ecological needs of different subjects to the economy. This research paper is limited by its reliance on other scholars' self-reporting results of their studies. The results of this study could be used for further research in this field and perform as a foundation of achieving sustainable development on different levels of management through circular business models, recycled raw materials market, and management of circular production and consumption.

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This article provides a practical example of the development of cross-border tourism and its link to achieving sustainable development goals. Greenways (GWs) are successful and recognized initiatives in Western Europe, but have recently also shown development trends in Eastern Europe, notably, in the Baltic Sea Region and Russia. These initiatives improve the quality of life and provide opportunities for sustainable economic activities for the local communities, especially in rural areas, adding value to their natural, cultural, historical and human heritage. The authors studied examples of best practice in scientific literature and practice, encouraging the development of cross-border tourism and GWs in Europe and Russia, in order to further adapt it to other continents. Analyzing the environmental, economic, social and institutional factors in the region and their role in sustainable development, the need for institutional regulation that would allow the development of a wider development of GWs is identified. Research results reveal sustainable development dilemmas of positive socioeconomic effects of GWs and negative environmental effects of increased flows of tourists. Focus groups and expert interviews allowed us to assess the level of various factors contributing to sustainable development and clarify the directions of the future research.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the employees’ attitudes to CSR practices and reveal the differences in staff perceptions within different groups of responadents. The tasks to be accomplished are: (1) to investigate the differences of CSR perception between males and females; (2) to investigate the differences of CSR perception among representatives of different generations; (3) to investigate the differences of CSR perception among representatives of different sectors of the economy. The online survey was conducted using the authors’ developed research instrument (questionnaire). In total, 129 respondents—employed Latvian citizens—participated in the survey. To assess the influence of age, gender, and other control characteristics in the sample, the authors implemented regression-based moderation analysis in the SPSS environment. The analysis indicated the moderating role of gender in the perception of corporate social responsibility, which appeared to be strong, especially in terms of leveraging business honesty, as a predictor. The sector, too, appeared to be a moderator, though it was much less statistically significant than gender. On the other hand, generation appeared to be an independent and significant predictor of corporate social responsibility perception itself, while its moderating effect was insignificant. The findings in the paper support existing literature in terms of moderating the role of gender, as outlined previously; yet, this research estimated that males value corporate social responsibility higher than females, while our results estimate the opposite. Our research revealed that age (generation) is a significant factor, which defines a personal attitude towards corporate social responsibility, i.e., the older generation values CSR higher than the youngsters. We have not found any correlation between the economic sector and corporate social responsibility perception.