EMPAS 9 (3) 2017

Keywords:
 

The oil and gas industry nowadays is challenged by dealing with nonconventional reserves and offshore environments. Decision-making associated with projects in the petroleum sector has to handle various technological issues, risks, and uncertainty. The Smart Fields approach was introduced to cope with complicated production conditions and make the production of hydrocarbons economically efficient. A significant part of this approach is proactive planning which implies taking into account the uncertainty, or lack of knowledge of the recoverable reserves, future hydrocarbon prices and various operational issues inherent in the projects. In this study, a multi-stage stochastic programming approach is employed to cover the relevant engineering issues of oilfield development and petroleum production while addressing the geophysical uncertainty related to the developed deposit. The proposed model covers such aspects as well drilling, gathering pipeline infrastructure planning, capacity selection for the infrastructure and the processing units, as well as planning the production operations with consideration of artificial lift efficiency. The model aims to optimise the entire field lifecycle, given the chosen planning criterion, that is an economic criterion of the project’s net present value. The contribution of the developed model to the area of planning in the petroleum industry is the detailed consideration of the technology: the flows and pressures in the planned infrastructure, reservoir behaviour, and the artificial lift performance. The goal of including these technological details is to apprehend the economic tradeoff between investments, operating costs and the prospective revenues, given the lack of knowledge of the geophysical properties of the developed deposit. The stochastic modelling implemented in this study is relevant to the development projects in nonconventional environments, where several deposits of various sizes are present; however, not each deposit's properties get to be studied in detail.

Keywords:
development and production planning  electrical submersible pump  multi-stage stochastic programming  oilfield infrastructure design  oilfield operations optimisation  strategic planning 

Containerisation of freight transport significantly facilitates the flow of traded goods between remote destinations. The most important container transport routes link Asia with North America and Europe. The seasonality and imbalance of trade are the main factors giving rise to problems related to empty container repositioning. The aim of this paper is to develop a concept of empty container supply chains and formulate prerequisites for its modelling in the search for the optimal solution with the help of linear programming and mixed integer programming methods. This paper indicates causes of the empty container relocation problem based on the literature analysis with a special focus on the Eurasian transportation route. Also, it provides a concept of empty container supply chain, prerequisites for its modelling and examples of container supply chains modelling presented in the literature. The main results of the paper include conceptualisation of an empty container supply chain and suggested modelling prerequisites. The paper contributes to research in the field of supply chain management and optimisation of transportation.

Keywords:
container transportation  supply chains  modelling  optimisation methods 

The article discusses the issues of employee financial participation in Baltic states which differs and depends on political, legal and economic preconditions. The aim of the research is to analyse employee financial participation as an instrument for collaboration in companies and a new social cooperation model in the Baltic states. The qualitative research was conducted by telephone and e-mail in 2016. The interviews were carried out with the experts (academics, civil servants, lawyers and human resource consultants working in a relevant field) as well some trade union and company representatives. In general, the new policy for supporting employee financial participation has been renewed in Latvia and Lithuania. It started recently with the revision of the legislative framework that was initially established during the privatisation period. The revision of the Law of Companies was driven by the business interest (to have a new effective human resource management tool or to transfer employee share plans from parent companies in Western countries to subsidiaries in the Baltic states) to introduce (or revise, in the case of Lithuania) new employee share ownership (ESO) plans. The research has also proven that there are common similarities in the use of employee financial participation plans despite the existing differences which are based on national features, such as tax and legal regimes, historical development patterns, or economic and structural factors.

Keywords:
Baltic states  company management  employee financial participation  employee ownership  profit sharing 

As a major challenge of a social, economic, and institutional nature, the phenomenon of population ageing is the basis for concern in terms of the direction of further socioeconomic development. By the year 2050, the number of older people around the world will amount to more than 2 billion, constituting 22% of the total population. Over 75, people are faced with increased risk of disability (physical and mental), which can deprive of independent existence. The welfare system will not only have to meet the growing demand for nursing homes, but also the increasing requirements for the safety and quality of services. The innovation of nursing homes will be conditional on the learning of the units of this sector. The scientific goal of the pursued study was to evaluate the influence of learning orientation on the innovation of nursing homes in Poland. Learning orientation has been the subject of the Author’s interest in the context of four constructs: (i) commitment to learning, (ii) shared vision, (iii) open-mindedness, and (iv) intra-organisational knowledge sharing. The article presents the results of a quantitative research conducted on a sample of 169 nursing homes in Poland. The study aimed to examine relationships between the four constructs of learning orientation and organisational innovativeness of nursing homes in Poland. The regression model confirmed the existing statistically significant positive relationship between open-mindedness and organisational innovativeness.

Keywords:
nursing homes  learning orientation  innovativeness 

In this article, a higher education institution (HEI) is analysed as an organisation performing under change conditions. In this context, needs and expectations of a wide range of university stakeholders are analysed. The aim of this article is to indicate the roles of stakeholders leading to the development of an HEI. Although Ishikawa’s cause-and-effect diagram is used when identifying possible causes of a problem, it can also be seen as a method that allows splitting the subject into separate parts, which are causally interrelated. During the research of the activity fields of the HEI and the boundaries related to its surrounding groups, the connections between different groups, their interests and expectations towards the activities of the HEI were determined. The article is prepared using the theoretical-analytical approach. It contains the analysis of the literature on HEI stakeholders, quality management systems and issues concerning the organisational development. The conclusions include insights and suggestions for further research on the ways an HEI can correspond to the needs of stakeholders.

Keywords:
higher education institution (HEI)  stakeholders  cause and effect  organisational development