Keywords: IT Strategies in Increasing Business Competitiveness
Within the framework of the present information & knowledge-based society, business competitiveness necessarily requires adequate IT strategies. The paper focuses on proficient principles of designing IT strategies and implementing adequate software systems. The implementation of dedicated software systems - the top level of any IT strategy - has to comply modern management and business requirements; therefore business software should model & integrate activities from all business compartments, distributely access the company’s integrated database and offer relevant synthesis for management levels. The paper underlines the most important principles in implementing such dedicated software systems and discusses their advantages in increasing business competitiveness
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Within the framework of the present information & knowledge-based society, business competitiveness necessarily requires adequate IT strategies. The paper focuses on proficient principles of designing IT strategies and implementing adequate software systems. The implementation of dedicated software systems - the top level of any IT strategy - has to comply modern management and business requirements; therefore business software should model & integrate activities from all business compartments, distributely access the company’s integrated database and offer relevant synthesis for management levels. The paper underlines the most important principles in implementing such dedicated software systems and discusses their advantages in increasing business competitiveness.
More...Keywords: student; Turda; Universitate; Cracovia; Wittenberg
The content of this article falls in with cultural history and contains a presentation of students from Turda. Turda was a center of some importance in Transylvania during Middle Ages and pre-Modern era. This was reflected in the number of students from Turda at the major European universities. The first student from Turda was recorded in 1412 at the University of Vienna, Johannes Gregorii Zompol de Torda. Most of the students from Turda chose the University of Kraków, as this town was closest to their hometown. The evolution of the student population from Turda is found in two distinct phases: the first period is from 1412 until 1539 when 42 students enrolled mostly at the University of Kraków and the second period spans from 1555 until 1700 when the number of these students decreased to ten, four of whom chose the University of Wittenberg. This situation was a result of cultural isolation of Transylvania after the Battle of Mohács. On the other hand, through its students, Turda was connected with the European ideas of the time, the Medieval Scholasticism or the new ideas promoted by the Protestant Reformation. Of all the students from Turda, only thirteen were able to obtain the first academic degree artium baccalaureus and one of them was awarded a doctorate degree at the University of Padua. This person was a monk, Thomas de Torda and he became a professor at that university. This fact was unique in the history of Turda. Unfortunately, there is still a great lack of data about the students from Turda, mainly their subsequent career. Generally, it is known that they pursued the ecclesiastical career; a former student at Wittenberg became the second reformed bishop of Transylvania.
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Keywords: literary studies; analysis and interpretation; teaching of literature; core curriculum; values
This article considers the consequences of rejecting axiological ambiguity in the sphere of human experiences and reflection, as observed in statements made by lower secondary school children as part of a study Teaching language and literature in secondary school in light of the new core curriculum. The negative consequences are indicated of interpreting the world as one locked in the values of extreme opposition, based on an analysis of students’ interpretations of Balladyna by Juliusz Słowacki and Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Białoszewski. The risks may include alienating the student from reality, as well as the reformulation of values into a set of anti-values, which excludes the possibility of reaching interpersonal agreement. Constructing a personal axiological system on this basis can occur only at the cost of discrediting the values of others, who are denied the right to have them from the outset. In such a world, there is no place for dialogue about values differing from those already held.
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Keywords: intercultural education; intercultural communication; ERASMUS program; mobility; experience; cultural consumption of alterity; identity;
Student mobility programs grew in recent years more and more popular and, from an institutional point of view, they have been integrated in the sphere of public policies that touch the sensitive subject of intercultural education. The most popular project of this type is the ERASMUS program for students, which as well as being a part of a larger European scheme concerning the development of a labor force adapted to a flexible and globalized market, has developed over the years a certain image among the European public. This collective representation of the ERASMUS program can be summed up: the mobility experience offers the possibility of self-development (concerning personal, academic, cultural and/or social aspects) in an intercultural social space. Relying on empirical data, the present paper underlines various aspects regarding intercultural education, as it is lived by students who participate in the ERASMUS program.
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Keywords: Jewish student activist
Th e European Union of Jewish Students is an umbrella organisation of national Jewish students throughout Europe and the political representation of, Jewish students and young professionals. Today, after four decades of existence, the organisation must now take on the challenge to gain wider recognition and take responsibility to challenge the status quo.
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Keywords: review; One Hundred and One Poems; Leonid Dimov; Alina Bako;
This article aims to review the anthology One Hundred and One Poems that includes a collection of poems and critical quotes selected by Alina Bako, who not only provides an overview of the lyrical universe created by Leonid Dimov, but also the critical tools needed for the specialized or non-specialized reader in order to step into the essence of Dimov’s creation. Thereby, the researcher contributes to the revival of the work of a poet who is still actual and valuable.
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Keywords: Franco-Latvian children; bilingualism; language practices and representations; language psychological and social functions;
Sociolinguistically, Latvia is an example of a conflicting diglossic situation between the Latvian and Russian languages. Most of the research carried out on this sociolinguistic context focuses on the language policies implemented previously and nowadays in this state and on the changes in the language practices and representations of members of the Latvian and Russian-speaking communities during the twentieth century and up to the present day. This paper looks at the same context from a different angle: its aim is to understand how the children of Franco-Latvian families attending school in Latvia view the Latvian diglossic situation and themselves in it and what influences their opinions. Referring to the Dell Hymes model of SPEAKING, the study is based on the analysis of interviews of four children, an 8-year-old Latvian-speaking boy and girl and two 10-year-old Russian-speaking girls attending school in Riga, the capital of Latvia. According to the analysis of their language practices and representations, the interviewed children place themselves in two distinct linguistic environments and value their French-Latvian or French-Russian bilingualism. Detailed analysis of the psychological and social functions that the children attribute to their first languages reveals that they do this to claim a daily life outside the Latvian-speaking context (Russian-speaking children) or to stand out from other people in Latvia (Latvian-speaking children). These two distinct strategies allow the children to place themselves on the fringe of the Latvian diglossic situation.
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Keywords: vocation; artist’s ego; adaptation;
In our time, the theater has greatly expanded in scope to include education, personal development, and sometimes therapy. With its novel stage installations, it has penetrated into the realm of the visual arts and, since the covid-19 pandemic, into the virtual environment. As such, the Actor’s Art has inherently been subject to change. Drama schools no longer seek to train masters but to guide and to facilitate the discovery or the definition of each artist’s unique individuality, creativity, and personality.
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Keywords: Banat; Middle Age; thirtieth; custom;
The issue presents the general aspects of the locations of thirtieth collections functioning in the medieval Banat. The specific terminology is analyzed, the significances of the notion of thirtieth (tricesima), mainly. There are presented data on evolution of the locations of thirtieth collections (locis tricesimarum) in Caransebeș, Lipova, Lugoj, and Timișoara and Zeicani in the 15th–17th centuries. Biographical aspects concerning the customs collectors noted down in papers are also presented. They look like well-to-do individuals, weighty and enterprising persons finding the sovereigns ‘credence, who serve the interests of the state but also bear their own prosperity in mind. The papers show the variety of tasks and competences of the customs collectors; the evocation covers other aspects of the trading life too: presence of the merchants of the Balkans in the local markets, precautions the Diets took against those “Greek” merchants, advantages of commercial staple right privilege for the town of Caransebeș, etc. There are also put in light the abuses the customs collectors commit and the way such behaviors are punished. In the light of available data we can reconstitute the main methods the fisc valorized those locations, by leasing and/ or direct administrating, each one with its own advantages and limits. But then, the lack of customs registers obstructs us knowing both the flux and variety of wares passing through those locations, and the commercial routes. However, the sporadic information allows us knowing the ratio of revenues and the destination of the confiscated goods and of the revenues. The historic evolution of the customs in the Banat is rounded off by showing their fate in the modern age.
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Keywords: the Land of the Foresters; Hunedoara; vocal old style song; compound refrain;
The land of the Foresters from Hunedoara is an extremely rich area in terms of folk music productions, both from the occasional repertoire (carols, wedding or funeral ritual songs) and from the non-occasional repertoire (old style songs). During the field research campaigns carried out by Béla Bartók (1913-1914), Emilia Comișel together with a team of researchers from Bucharest (1946-1960) and Ioan Bocșa with Alina Stan (2017), the songs with free rhythm - parlando rubato, with an excessively rich ornamentation, with archaic melodic features, stood out due to several aspects. First of all, they were collected from the countryside, a very large number of songs belonging to this lyrical genre - the old-style song; the songs are individualized in the Transylvanian repertoire through distinct musical features such as the presence of different categories of refrain in the musical stanza and the way of interpretation, characterized by a strong vocal emission, chest voice, female group performance, very long sounds at the end and very long pauses between verses or stanzas. In the present study, we want to turn our attention towards those songs and melodic types which bring in the stanza a broader refrain, consisting of two musical entities, called compound refrain. Having at our disposal musical materials collected in different periods of time, we aim to identify these refrains within the melodic types, the evolution in time, the unitary character, as well as their spread in other folk areas.
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Keywords: bride’s ritual song; melodic type; Ținutul Pădurenilor [Land of Pădureni]; Hunedoara;
Throughout Transylvania and particularly in the Land of Pădureni (Ținutul Pădurenilor), the traditional form of the wedding custom used to include a multitude of actions, accompanied by ritual songs. These songs were dedicated to the bride, being known as “a miresei” [to the bride], and marked the main moments of the ritual, being sung in group, solemnly, only by girls and women, in a strong guttural voice. Over the course of a hundred years, researchers Béla Bartók, Emilia Comișel, Rusalin Ișfănoni, Ioan Bocșa and Alina Stan have collected 40 songs from the Land of Pădureni, belonging to a single melodic type. This is the oldest melodic type and is widespread in many Transylvanian areas, both in this genre and in the lyrical genre, in the old song proper.
More...![The Song of the Fir Tree in ‘Ținutul Pădurenilor’ [The Land of Pădureni], Hunedoara](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2020_74181.jpg)
Keywords: funeral ritual song; song of the fir tree; melodic type; Ținutul Pădurenilor [Land of Pădureni]; Hunedoara;
Among the funeral ritual songs of pre-Christian origin from the Romanian musical folklore, the song of the fir tree stands for a distinct thematic category. With a limited geographical spread of the custom (Northern Oltenia, Banat, Southern Transylvania), the song of the fir tree is found mainly in Ținutul Pădurenilor [the Land of Pădureni], in Hunedoara county. As proof stand the collections gathered in the area by Béla Bartók more than a hundred years ago, those of Emilia Comișel and of the team of researchers from Bucharest, gathered 70 years ago, and, last but not least, those gathered by Ph.D. Professor Ioan Bocșa and Ph.D. Lecturer Alina Stan, who recorded 26 songs reflecting this theme. The musical and literary elements of the ritual song performed in group only by women, with great interpretive force and spiritual emotion, are distinct from those of the songs from other areas. In this respect, we will undertake a comparative analysis of the melodic variants, taking into account: the identification of the main musical traits, the changes produced over time; the existence of a melodic type in several villages, or the existence of several melodic types in the same village; the identification of the most enduring melodic type, collected during all the research periods. Although the area is currently less inhabited, with an ageing population, the variety and multitude of songs collected show us that they are alive in the memory of the people of the entire Land of Pădureni, and that in many communities it is practised according to ancient customs.
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