No 2 (2017)

The ratings of universities, widely used in recent decades, the popularity of which picks up steam are the basis for the extensive list of debating issues some of which will be considered in the proposed scientific work. From the perspective of foreign authors, the paper proves the distribution of ratings in the sphere of education that is inseparably associated with the audit popularization and its modes intensification. The author considered the methods of gathering data on the universities, their ordering and assigning the points of three main international ratings of universities: Shanghai Ranking (Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)), the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), and the QS World University Rankings. The author estimated the positions of Russian universities in the leading rankings and considered the world university rankings with less influence and prominence: Leiden Ranking, Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, and U-Multirank. The use of various databases causes the significant differences between the places of domestic universities in the less known ratings, the positions in which were analyzed as well. The author concluded on the considerable strengthening and, according to some ratings, the improvement of positions of Russian universities. At the same time, there are many problems in assessing and measuring the indicators included in the rating compilation, having the obvious absence of more or less detailed justifications for the selection of indicators.

Public procurement system experienced considerable transformations in the procedure of organization and financing. The changeover of the legislative environment of public procurements caused the great number of issues both for customers and suppliers, both of organizational nature and from the point of view of economic efficiency. In the context of significant budget constraints caused by the budget deficit at all levels of management, the efficiency of public procurements dominates. The quality of procurement management, professional and rational approach to the procurement organization should contribute to the maximum achievement of the budget planning objectives. In this regard, the objective assessment of state customers’ activities and the systematization of the issues of procurement activities should promote the improvement of budget expenditures efficiency. Based on the analysis of the activity of the Republic Tatarstan state customer, the paper systematizes the features of procurement activities organization in the conditions of operation of the contract system law. The author studies the dynamics and the structure of customer’s purchases in terms of the way of determining the supplier and the purchased goods nomenclature. Based on the analysis, the author made the conclusions about the main issues in the customer’s activity both of system character and coming from the errors in the contract manager’s activity. It is defined that the great number of issues are associated with the special aspects of contract system which does not impose the requirements to the suppliers’ professionalism. This fact generates the difficulties of interaction with the customers and the violation of contract terms. Based on the systematization of issues arising for the customer at all stages of the procurement process, the author formulated the recommendations for their solution.

The cluster-network model of the economy organization concentrates the government authorities on the solution of the important public challenges by the development of top markets and innovations. The search for the regions’ “smart specialization” is the newest tendency in the sphere of cluster policy. Such specialization becomes the mechanism of transition to the postindustrial type of the economy development allowing the innovative partnership parties to diversify their activity at the simultaneous regional specialization enhancement. The paper covers the rationale of the significance of applying the “smart specialization” strategy as the efficient tool for regional innovative development in the domestic economy. To achieve the assigned tasks, the authors analyzed the definitions of such notions as “clusters”, “smart specialization strategy”, considered the preconditions for the advanced countries’ transition to the implementation of the “smart specialization” strategy based on the analysis of disadvantages of the existing innovative strategies of development. It allowed detecting the number of distinctive features of the “smart specialization” strategy. In particular, the authors marked the “process of business inventions” highlighting the necessity of participation of a wide range of business entities in the specialization and regional development priorities determination. It is established that, except the traditional groups of innovative partnership participating in the process of development and implementation of the regional development priorities (business, science, and state), the classification developed within the “smart specialization” concept involves the civil society, investors, and experts. The authors carried out the theoretical study of the feasibility to adapt the “smart specialization” strategy and the prospects of its applying in the national economic system and formulated the advantages of the applying the “smart specialization” strategy in the view of the critical necessity of transition of Russia to the innovative path of development. Based on the results of the study, it is established that the creation of cluster formation system on the basis of “smart specialization” will allow improving the efficiency of the domestic economy clustering by the technological retooling of the existing manufacturing industries, define the vector of interregional and international interaction in order to improve the investment attractiveness of Russian regions.

In the modern economic reality, the role of innovations is unimpeachable. In the Russian Federation, the significant attention is paid to the creating the conditions for the innovative development. Thus, the Strategy of innovative development of the Russian Federation, which determines the goals and objectives of the innovation policy and which is intended to change qualitatively the Russian economy structure is being implemented. The innovative projects are financed at the cost of venture capital. The important feature of venture investment, on the one hand, is the high risk and, on the other hand, is the ability to get the excess profits. Consequently, the investors commonly diversify the risks by forming the portfolio of the innovative projects. Therefore, we have the issue of developing the methods allowing the investor to allocate their capital optimally between the innovative projects.

The paper covers the development of the mechanism of the innovative projects selection based on the integrated assessment. The authors consider the theoretical foundation which is the basis for the proposed mechanism. It includes the method of real options for the evaluation of the project profitability taking into account the risk, and the T. Saaty’s analytic hierarchy process, which allows determining the priorities of the considered alternatives taking into account the criteria significance.

The authors suggest the mechanism of formation of the innovation projects portfolio involving three steps. At the first stage, the project profitability is being evaluated using the real options method adapted for the multi-stage projects. At the second stage, the integrated evaluation of the project is carried out using the analytic hierarchy process. Herewith, the authors predefine the project evaluation criteria including the project’s potential profitability, its duration, and its quality characteristics influencing its implementation feasibility. At the final stage, the projects are being selected with respect to their priority and considering the financing constraints.

The developed mechanism allows the investor to evaluate the expediency of financing the innovation project and to form the optimal innovation projects portfolio.

The relevance of the research issue is associated with the implemented national economy development policy toward innovations that caused the intrinsic necessity of the analysis and the economic and theoretical justification of management of competitive advantages technological support at the regional economic system level. It should be noted that the innovative strategy direction and formation depends on the innovative potential state, that is why its analysis and assessment are very important. 

The paper covers the consideration of the issue of Samara region innovative potential state, detecting its strengths and weaknesses. The research objective is the analysis of the innovative potential of Samara region enterprises and the conditions of its formation for constant economic development.   

The author carries out the diagnostic analysis of the innovative activity of Samara region enterprises for the three-year period, considers the dynamics of key social and economic and innovative indicators, the expenditures for innovations by their types, and the expenditures for technological innovations by the types of innovative activity, and indicates the causes of the enterprises’ innovative activity decrease.  

As the result, it is identified that the major weakness is the fact that the main source of the innovations financing is the internal funds of the organizations that are currently missing or in deficiency and it causes the decrease in the number of enterprises dealing with the innovations and the share of innovative products within the total volume of the performed work. The obtained results allow stating that the innovative activity intensity depends not only on the economic factors; when estimating the innovative potential, it is necessary to consider technological, organizational and regulatory, political, legal, social-psychological and cultural criteria identified in connection with the orientation on the creation of the innovative comfort of the region, the concept of which is formulated in the paper. 

In the modern conditions of development of the economy, the labor productivity at the industrial enterprises is one of the most important criteria of industrial production efficiency. The growth of labor productivity in the industry depends directly on the organizational and economic conditions created for each enterprise allowing creating the required level of labor productivity. Insufficient rates of labor productivity growth at the domestic industrial enterprises and, in particular, the domestic machine building enterprises causes the necessity to form the organizational and economic mechanism of labor productivity management that allows using effectively the existing opportunities for the growth. The basis of the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of labor productivity management must involve the improvement of production factors determining the development and active use of human resources that will allow the company to concentrate efforts on the development of directions related to the enhancing the qualitative characteristics of the human factor of the production.

The paper gives the analysis of the concepts of the human resources management that can be used for the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of performance management. The author carries out the assessment of their advantages and disadvantages determining the possibility of implementation in business practices of industrial enterprises and identifies the reasons limiting the application of the known concepts of human resources management in the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of performance management at the domestic machine-building enterprises. The paper defines the human resources management concepts aimed at the development of human resources of the enterprises and providing them with the decent working life conditions and proves the complex approach to the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of performance management implying the integration of the personnel management concepts based on the provisions aimed at the improvement of the human resources quality. The author developed the model of conceptual approach to the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of performance management at the machine-building enterprises and concluded that the proposed approach to the formation of the organizational and economic mechanism of performance management will enable a company to ensure the growth of productivity through the implementation of the existing potential opportunities provided by the scientific-technical progress achievements due to the activation of the human factor of production.

In recent years, in the domestic practice, special economic zones have proved to be not on the best side. Reasoning from this fact, it is necessary to carry out the analysis of the formation of the legal framework of Russian special economic zones creation and to identify the problems the initial zones faced. Besides, it is necessary to analyze special economic zones functioning at the present stage, to determine the reasons of their “trigging”, and to develop the recommendations about the introducing the amendments to the Federal law “Concerning Special Economic Zones in the Russian Federation” as well. Through the use of statistical analysis data of the Auditing Chamber on the performance results of special economic zones in the territory of the Russian Federation, the author determined the following gaps: the inefficiency of utilization by the managing company JSC “SEZ” of land property total area and the budgetary appropriation sums allocated for the creation and development of special economic zones; the incompliance of the number of jobs created by the residents in the territory of special economic zones and the number of infrastructure construction assets put into use with the estimated figure; low indicators of total value of tax liabilities and customs payments made by residents. The author’s definition of the concepts of “the infrastructure facilities of special economic zone”, “the surrounding area of special economic zone”, and “the list of engineering, transport, social and other infrastructures facilities which construction is supposed within the creation of special economic zone” are considered the basic results of the study to introduce the amendments to the Federal law “Concerning Special Economic Zones in the Russian Federation”. It will allow approving legislatively the exact tasks on the improvement of infrastructure of territories of Russian special economic zones.

Due to the impact of various historical and economic factors in Russia, territorial differentiation in terms of economic, social and cultural development, including in the field of methodology and analysis of these regional differences, is becoming an increasingly urgent task.

The modern economy has not worked out the unified theoretic and methodological approach to the assessment of the territorial social and economic system. Macroeconomic parameters (Gross Regional Product per capita (GRP), GRP volume index, fixed investment per capita, life expectancy, etc.) are generally used to assess the level of social and economic development of regions in our country as well as abroad. However, the calculation of parameters like GRP is not made in municipal statistics.

The paper offers to apply the intensity relative index that characterizes the share of municipal product per capita in Gross Regional Product per capita for the statistical assessment of the municipal territorial differentiation. The data base for the parameter calculation is made up by the data of the unified information web portal of Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), including the statistics of municipal units. The paper offers the main results of the municipal differentiation statistical analysis of Smolensk region as a typical region of Russian Nonblack Soil Zone based on the social and economic system development. The author performed the comparative analysis of the quality of territories using the municipal social and economic system assessment based on the quality value with three groups being identified: leader municipal unit, average municipal unit, outsider.

The results of the analysis allow to assess the degree of municipal unit development based on the social and economic system development and to create the data base for making effective managerial decisions aimed at increasing the quality of life of population.