This article analyses the advantages of applicable measures of motivation, taking into consideration the internal environment of an organization as a whole and focuses on the impact of internal environmental factors upon the results of the organization. The paper is based on the survey results obtained by inquiring, municipal administration employees in Lithuanian districts in February-June 2010. The goal of the research was to propose and justify theoretical components for the motivation model of municipal administration employees. The major integrated groups of motivation measures that are the most influential to the factors of internal environment as the main results of research were identified. The authors focus on the positional adjustment of the combinations of motivation measures, in order to improve the motivation of municipal administration employees.

This article analyses the elements of R. Hackman’s and G. Oldman’s work characteristics model: the essential work characteristics, critical psychological states, as well as personal and activity results. Research aim is to offer municipal administrative staff innovative elements of the motivation system. The elements of employee motivation are linked with certain work characteristics, distinguishing specific features of the work process that would meet the needs of workers such as the use of self-expression and potential opportunities, ensuring satisfaction with the content of work, independence and recognition. Before suggesting innovative motivation system elements, the factors and motivation measures that most influence municipal administrative staff of Raseiniai, Joniškis, Pakruojis, Akmenė had been found out. Essential elements of work characteristics model (essential work characteristics, psychological states and personal and activity results) among the employees were identified. It presents the characteristics of innovative motivation system elements of municipal administrative staff. Main analysis methods were used: analysis of documents, quantitative research – survey, comparative analyses, methods of statistical and cluster analysis.

Private forestry and forest owners in Estonia have become more profound research subjects in the last decade. One of the most common research topics has been the identification of private forest owners’ (PFO) values and objectives. However, much of the existing studies rely on quantitative data which usually describes more active owners and owners whose forest property is larger than the average. Thus, the aim of the present study is to identify the management objectives and motives of non-industrial private forest owners using a qualitative approach – something that has been rarely used in forest owners’ research in Estonia. Eight forest owner interviews form the dataset, which is analysed in order to identify PFO forestry objectives and forest use. The results of our qualitative content analysis show, in principle, similar generalized forest owner types of motivations. However, the qualitative approach opens up these generalized types even more. Income motive goes beyond just continuous financial returns and means in many cases a sense of security. Forest ownership is closely linked with “home” interpretations. We conclude that qualitative methods in small-scale forestry research provide new insights to forest ownership and its meanings to private forest owners.

Entrepreneurship education is a relevant topic in today’s study programs of higher education at two levels: as research object and as development of skills while preparing students. In fact, the latter is one of the most important objectives in Lithuanian universities aiming together with other disciplines at developing students’ entrepreneurial skills. The main aim of the article is to analyse theoretical and practical models of entrepreneurship education applied in universities and introduce development trends. Teaching process involves various methods, internships, consultation and instruction, but usually all activities are not systematically applied. From the behavioural perspective, this study analyses students towards entrepreneurship through the opportunity identification, motivational factors, information source, resources impact and entrepreneurial ability. Hypothetical deductive approach was used through a population sample of 194 students of Aleksandras Stulginskis University Faculty of Economics and management. The research summarized in this paper students attitude toward motives, factors encouraging and preventing entrepreneurship and information sources in the higher education institutions. The gap between teaching methods and student attitude towards at entrepreneurship educations can be reduced supplementing collaboration among stakeholders in the entrepreneurship education. In final part of the article, trends of entrepreneurship education in university enabling to assess dimensions of the development of entrepreneurship education are presented.

The culture industry and its human resources have been little researched in Latvia, yet research on the culture industry is important, because the industry makes a significant contribution to economic growth by promoting employment and the development of competitive regions. The culture industry encompasses libraries, folk art, theatre, music, museums, the creative industry and other sub-industries, yet in recent years those working in all the culture subindustries faced various challenges, including: a low remuneration and insufficient monetary and non-monetary bonuses, resulting in lower job satisfaction and a high personnel turnover. Accordingly, the aim of the research is to develop recommendations for hiring and retaining human resources by examining challenges in managing human resources in the culture industry. The authors conducted a survey among the personnel of the Board of Culture of Jelgava municipality. The survey found that the main challenges faced by the administration of the Board of Culture were an uncompetitive remuneration, the aging of the personnel and generational change as well as inefficient and insufficient motivation for working. The research has developed two scenarios for recruiting: ‘promotion of creativity and non-monetary motivation’ that aim to publicly appreciate human resources, so that they would feel important and significant as well as facilitate creativity, innovation and collective solidarity, while for the purpose of retaining human resources in a long-term and decreasing their turnover, the second scenario ‘competitive remuneration and the differentiation by position category’ aims to gradually raise the remuneration and differentiate it for all categories of personnel.

The article is meant to analyze the methodological qualitative characteristics of the creation of employees' motivation. These characteristics help to measure the reliability of research instruments. In accordance with Kendal ranking correlation (Henning, 1997) there are identified motivation indicators of managing employees and executives. The main attention is paid to the importance of motivation models' shaping and the essential principles by giving the results of model shaping and their interpretations.

One of the most important problems of modern education is low achievement in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects. Poor performance in mathematics is a serious problem in many countries. In order to improve the effectiveness of mathematics studies, it is more important to improve such key factors as students’ learning self–efficacy and learning initiative. This study is devoted to students’ learning initiative and the factors influencing it. It is the insufficiency of students’ regular learning initiative in the study process that is the basis of the fact that students are not sufficiently prepared for the final exam. Based on the research results of the scientific literature, a questionnaire was created that investigated the students’ learning initiative and factors that could improve it – attitude towards mathematics studies, motivation, as well as emotional factors that are often related to Causal attributions. The research was conducted at Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, surveying students of various specialties and various courses. Fisher’s exact test of independence is used to determine whether there is a significant relationship between two categorical variables – the respective factors and performance on the math completion test. The results show that one of the main causes is a low self–assessment of mathematics competence, which in turn affects motivation and attitude towards mathematics studies and slows down learning initiative.