Knowledge transfer, assimilation, transformation and exploitation significantly impact performing business activities, developing innovations and moving forward to new business models such as transferring to a circular economy. However, organizations’ decisions or willingness to transition to a circular economy are very often also influenced by the external environment. The study aims to determine the influence of the external environment on the transfer from a linear to a circular economy while mediating knowledge assimilation. The quantitative research involved 159 Nordic capital companies operating in Estonia and Lithuania. The survey has been performed by means of the CATI method. The analysis has been done also by applying structural equation modelling (SEM). In order to perform mediation analysis, IBM SPSS and a special PROCESS macro have been used. The study showed that knowledge assimilation partially mediates the relationship between the external environment and the transfer to the circular economy. Hence, the external environment’s direct effect is much more significant than the indirect. The added value of the study also consists in extending the concept of circular economy by including some aspects of absorptive capacity and the external environment.

Fire accidents are one of the serious security threats facing the metro, and the accurate determination of the index system and weights for fire assessment in underground stations is the key to conducting fire hazard assessment. Among them, the type and quantity of baggage, which varies with the number of passengers, is an important factor affecting the fire hazard assessment. This study is based on the combination of subjective and objective AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) with the available Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithm PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) and the perfect CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) empowered fuzzy evaluation method on the metro station fire hazard toughness indicator system and its weights were determined, and a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model of metro station safety toughness under the influence of baggage was constructed. The practical application proves that the method provides a new perspective for the fire risk assessment of underground stations, and also provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of mobile fire load hazards in underground stations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the published literature on human resource management and school performance from January 2012 to December 2022. Numerous literature evaluations have been conducted on human resource management and organizational performance, but school or teacher performance has received less attention than organizational performance. The PICOC (population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and context) technique is integrated into each stage of the PSALSAR framework to assure the study’s objective and comparability. This in-depth research is conducted in three stages: identifying pertinent keywords, screening pertinent papers, and selecting pertinent publications for review utilizing the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Mata Analysis) technique. This made a final database with 44 publications that met the study’s requirements for inclusion. This study reveals that HRM practices and school performance are correlated. The results of the research identify the eight most essential HRM practices for improving school performance, which included planning, organizing, recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, employee relations and involvement, reward and compensation, health, safety, and work-life balance. Leadership style, motivation, satisfaction, productivity and task performance, competency, culture and climate, empowerment, and commitment were among the performance-influencing elements.