FROM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES
CONFERENCE ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN SOZOPOL, BULGARIA
Professor Irena Mačerinskienė from the Faculty
of Economics and Finance Management, Mykolas
Romeris University, participated in the first International
Conference “Knowledge Society” of the
foundation of Knowledge Society Institute (Bulgaria)
together with Federation of the Scientific and
Technical Unions in Bulgaria, Scientific-Technical
Union of Mechanical Engineering, Scientific-Technical
Union of Mining, Geology and Metallurgy (3-5
September, 2008 in Sozopol, Republic of Bulgaria).
Scientists from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania,
Russia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Latvia,
Lithuania and Bulgaria participated in this international
conference. The main objective of the conference
was to discuss the opinions on the knowledge management
and innovation in knowledge economy. Thematic
spheres of the section “Knowledge Society”
of the international conference were problems about
modern aspects of the knowledge society, knowledge
management, legal and economic aspects of the
knowledge society as well as education aspects of
the knowledge society.
Prof. Dr. Irena Mačerinskienė presented a paper
on “University Role in the Knowledge Society:
Theoretical Insights” In the paper she discusses two
problems: theoretical aspects of knowledge society,
its reflection in a university and the second problem
deals with disclosing university’s role in the knowledge
management. Knowledge society refers to any
society where knowledge is the primary production
resource instead of capital and labour, i.e. this society
creates, shares and uses well-being of its people.
Knowledge society puts great requirements for universities;
it requires closer cooperation of universities,
the business environment and the state. In order
to assess the challenges that universities face in
embedding knowledge management, it is possible to
discuss four types of knowledge society objectives,
i.e. the creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories;
improving knowledge access; enhancing
knowledge environment, and valuing knowledge.
Universities can be seen as highly important in the
development of the know-how society, economic
competitiveness and social unity, i.e. it has to transform
into an entrepreneurial university.
In the second paper “Entrepreneurship Research
Dimensions”, Prof. Dr. Irena Mačerinskienė discusses
on the research dimensions of entrepreneurship,
its components and related processes. Despite the
definitional problems, entrepreneurship research
recently focus on two basic dimensions: individual
(trait) approach and organizational (behavioural)
approach, concluding on the outcome – new value
creation that fuels economic growth, but these dimensions
exclude some important entrepreneurship
phenomena components, such as nexus between entrepreneur
and entrepreneurial team and the influence
of close and remote environment to entrepreneurial
process. As the trait approach support only the
individual as the primary level of analysis and the
behavioural approach concerns on the organization
as the primary level of analysis, other aspects should
be also calculated into the possible entrepreneurship
research dimensions. The analysis show, that some
kinds of variation of trait taking into account six
entrepreneurship aspects: entrepreneur (individual),
entrepreneurial team (group), organization, creative/
entrepreneurial process (value creation), close
environment and remote environment. The three
aspects: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship process and
created new value (reward), that can be distinguished
but not separated from each other, form the true
nexus or core of entrepreneurship considered from a
behavioural or process point of view. This nexus is
the actual object studied in the field of entrepreneurship,
having in mind that the environmental components
cannot be disregarded. Thus, the two contextual
factors, e.g. close and remote environment, are
important environmental dimensions that could help
to gain the closest to reality research results.
Irena Mačerinskienė
Mykolas Romeris University,
Lithuania