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This study examines diaspora engagement and return migration programs aimed at providing diaspora youth with an opportunity to obtain higher education in Estonia and Kazakhstan. In particular, the authors sought to identify the main motivations, benefits and challenges of the programs, as well as understand how the programs contribute to the ethnic identity formation of diaspora students.

The paper employed a qualitative multiple-case study research design. In both countries, data were collected by means of 26 semi-structured interviews with return migrant students and experts involved in implementing the programs.

The study findings suggest that the primary motivations for diaspora youth to return to their homelands are tuition-free higher education, financial support and repatriation prospects in both countries. In Estonia, the scholarship holders struggled with language requirements for university admissions, the cost of living insufficiently covered by the monthly stipend and limited integration opportunities. In Kazakhstan, the students had to face the Russian language barrier and socio-cultural marginalization in their everyday life. It was also found that the return migrant students in Estonia and Kazakhstan develop hybrid identities to integrate into their domestic society. They reinforce their ethnic identities and negotiate their diasporic identities to make sense of their own background and cultural heritage and acclimatize to life in the new context.

The study provides practical implications for policy implementers and policymakers in Estonia and Kazakhstan. It can also be useful for the worldwide research community interested in exploring education-oriented diaspora engagement and return migration programs and their influence on the ethnic identity of diaspora students.

A growing number of countries have developed Teacher Professional Standards that describe how effective teaching is conceptualized and demonstrated. This article describes how initial teacher education and continuous professional development (CPD) is organized in Estonia, and what role professional standards have in the Estonian context. We demonstrate how the Estonian decentralized preservice teacher education and CPD system supports high quality and flexible teacher professional development throughout their careers. We will also pinpoint the biggest challenges that are currently experienced in Estonia regarding teacher education and professional development. Drawing on the international experiences, we will also discuss how Teacher Professional Standards could be further developed in Estonia to better serve as a guide for both initial teacher education and continuous professional development.

The purpose of the article is to introduce the outcomes of a study analyzing the relationships between willingness to use technology for health purposes, health information behavior (HIB), health behavior (HB) choices, readiness for COVID-19 vaccination, socioeconomic indicators and self-reported health among older adults aged = 50 years living in Estonia.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 501 people aged = 50 in Estonia in 2020, a month after the end of lockdown.

The results of the study indicate that the more recurrent the need for HI was (rho = 0.11, p < 0.05) and the more regularly one searched for it (rho = 0.14, p < 0.01), the more willing a person was to get vaccinated. Also, interest in digital applications corresponded to vaccination readiness (rho = 0.25, p < 0.001). However, this relationship did not emerge in the case of other HBs such as healthy eating and exercise. Differences in HIB should be taken into account when developing effective means of health communication designed especially for crisis situations.

Estonia is known as one of the digital front runners in the world. However, social welfare and the well-being of disadvantaged groups among the population (e.g. older people) have not yet caught up with the more developed Western countries. Thus, learning more about the health-related information behavior of older adults, e.g. the kind of health information they are seeking and using in Estonia, allows policymakers, health information providers and libraries in Estonia to plan and carry out more effective interventions and help them to improve the existing systems so as to furnish older adults with relevant information.

Although the significance of technological progress in economic development is well-established in theory and policy, it has remained challenging to agree upon shared priorities for strategies and policies. This paper aims to develop a model of how policymakers can develop effective and easy to communicate strategies for science, technology and economic development.

By integrating insights from economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature, a replicable research framework for analysing the opportunities and challenges of technological revolutions for small catching-up countries is developed. The authors highlight key lessons from piloting this framework for informing the strategy and policies for bioeconomy in Estonia towards 2030–2050.

The integration of economic complexity research with traditional foresight methods establishes a solid analytical basis for a data-driven analysis of the opportunities for industrial upgrading. The increase in the importance of regional alliances in the global economy calls for further advancement of the analytical toolbox. Integration of complexity, global value chains and export potential assessment approaches offers valuable direction for further research, as it enables discussion of the opportunities of moving towards more knowledge-intensive economic activities along with the opportunities for winning international market share.

The research merges insights from the economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature in a novel way and illustrates the applicability and priority-setting in a real-life setting.

All three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – share common features, similar history, and took similar steps to establish an external evaluation of their science base. Even though the three countries have similarities in terms of their geography, size, economic structure, development and demography, they demonstrate differences, for example Estonia is often considered to be ahead of Latvia and Lithuania in terms of the economy and development. So, do the Baltic countries share similarities or differences from the point of research management and administration?

This paper aims to investigate the cultural meanings of excessive drinking in three different countries with different levels of alcohol use chosen as case studies of wider geographies representing Northern (Denmark), Southern (Italy) and Eastern (Estonia) Europe.

Data were collected according to the Reception Analytical Group Interview method, using video clips as stimuli to enhance comparability. Eight online focus groups were organized in each country for a total number of 128 participants. Symbolic boundaries defining what drinking patterns are socially acceptable were then analysed to look at cross-national variations.

Results show how different conceptualizations of excessive drinking persist, although a convergence process among drinking patterns is also observed, which suggests that differences mainly depend on meanings and values attributed to intoxication. These are both rooted in the traditional drinking cultures and affected by ongoing social and economic change processes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability, even at country level, as there are differences also within the same drinking culture; however, addressing these differences was beyond the scope of the present study, which aimed to contribute to understanding persisting differences in European drinking culture despite different drivers seem to act for globalization of drinking habits.

The paper includes implications for the development of tailored and effective prevention messages, considering rooted attitudes and cultural values attached to drinking and drunkenness in different European geographies, which are also related to conceptualizations of risks and pleasure.

This paper fulfils an identified need to understand persisting differences in alcohol-related behaviours and outcome in different European countries emerging from quantitative data.

This study aims to answer two research questions: first, to what extent can workplace bullying be explained by ageism? And second, does the likelihood of workplace bullying increase when age interacts with gender and ethnic minority?

The authors report results from a survey carried out in 11 organizations in Estonia (N = 1,614) using the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (Einarsen et al., 2009).

The results show that ageism does not explain bullying in Estonia. As in some earlier studies, older age correlates negatively with negative acts, and women report less work-related bullying than men. These findings were unexpected because Estonia's post-socialist background and the highest gender wage gap in Europe suggested otherwise. However, there is gendered ageism in work-related bullying such that older women report more negative acts in their workplace. Respondents from ethnic minority groups do not experience more bullying in general, nor in combination with age. Surprisingly, managers reported both person- and work-related bullying more than employees with no subordinates.

The study contributes to intersectionality literature with a view to workplace bullying in post-socialist study context.

Appearance-based discrimination in workplaces based on an employee's physical appearance is a legal and ethical problem. This study provide important research findings concerning such discrimination in Estonia.

A qualitative case study strategy and narrative inquiry were used. The information which was gathered for the research consists of three cases which concern appearance-based discrimination against young women. Information for two of the cases was gathered together by means of open interviews. Information for the third case is based on articles which were found in Estonian daily newspapers.

Covert and overt discrimination based on an employee's physical appearance can occur in Estonian workplaces, even though discrimination and inequality are not tolerated in public and all forms of discrimination are illegal in Estonia. The appearance norms, which frame perceptions of attractiveness and unattractiveness, may at times be rather narrow and stereotypical in Estonian workplaces. The attempts by employees to resist such discrimination in an early phase of the employees' careers are generally not successful.

Through real-life cases, this study makes empirically visible a problem at the workplace related to employees' physical appearance in Estonia. This study makes suggestions for preventing this kind of discrimination in organisations. Narrative inquiry offers a fruitful approach for how researchers can address a sensitive problem, such as the appearance-based discrimination against the employees discussed in this study.

This paper aims to investigate the internal factors of resources and capabilities of five born globals (BGs) from Estonia. It explores quantitatively the internal factors between a medium BG and four small BGs.

The study used a survey questionnaire in collecting information from the CEOs of BGs. The questionnaire consisted of 105 questions relevant to export sales related to differences in internal factors.

The firms’ size and industrial sector play a role in export sales due to differences in internal factors. Small BGs expect financially based rewards, non-financial rewards, the job satisfaction of sales representatives with the export manager, and with work in general, and the representatives’ job satisfaction is higher in the small BGs than in the medium BG. The sales representatives’ job performance, their work performance, sales presentations, technical knowledge, adaptiveness, teamwork, planning, support, the organisational capabilities for business identification, relationship-building and innovation are all higher in medium BGs than in small BGs. Eleven sub-constructs of the model were shown to be important for small BGs.

The current study is focused on BGs from Estonia, i.e. small BGs and medium BGs. The study contributes to the internal factors of resources and capabilities of BGs as well as to the literature review on BGs. It also provides a logical conceptual model, indicating that the export manager’s job satisfaction is the central construct influenced by antecedent factors and is related directly to the export sales performance of the BG.

This study aims to examine and analyse data relating to cultural heritage, smart tourism and smart tourism tools for preserving cultural heritage in the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The paper is based on a qualitative review of data from National tourism board web sites, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and the European Heritage Label sites. The paper analyses various sources in terms of cultural heritage and smart tourism and examines different ways of applying smart tourism tools to cultural heritage.

The findings show that smart tourism, and especially the preservation of cultural heritage in the Baltic states, is not a new thing, and it is rapidly progressing by inventing new technological tools for tourists to use and as well by digitising cultural heritage. Comprehensive examination of three countries shows that there is significant potential already and that there is a way to grow further for each of the countries by applying new technological tools for preservation of a cultural heritage.

The paper reviews data on cultural heritage and smart tourism tools in the Baltic states where it already plays a steady and significant role. Specifically, it contributes to recognition of each of the states on a global level in terms of variety of cultural heritage that is being preserved and digitalised. The originality of the paper is determined by the assessment of the smart tools used for cultural tourism.