Holistic Approach to Human Health and Disease: Life Circumstances and Inner Processing

Human body is dinamic, energetic system under the influences of food intake, environment, interpersonal relationships, inheritance, culture and human activities. The environmental and psychosocioeconomic factors affect the individual’s health altering the performance of biological systems effecting disease risk and disease progression. The concerns in modern society are more and more devoted to stress and its influences on health. Life span is extended but the quality of life, well-being and productivity usually do not follow that extention. Body is a flow of energy and dinamic comunications with inside and outside environment. The way to improve health is to address its social determinants. Only in sinergy the questions about disease and health could be better understood. It is not enough to diagnose illness, important is to diagnose circumstances and environmental influences that consequently lead to disease. Emotional disruptions make base for physical disruptions. Social gradient and stress involving personal life and work is a significant factor in physical and mental illness. The best indicator of the successful social policy result is the sense of well-being of the inhabitants. Holistic approach to a patient and discussions about the influences in patient\u27s life can lead to a better health outcome. Anthropology studies people\u27s habits, means and conditions of life and can be the bridge between the medicine and the life circumstances that put people\u27s health at risk providing important insights into health and disease and assist in public health policies, preventive measures and health improvement of the populations

Wine and sun and sea tourism: Fruitful relationship or impossible dream?

Croatian Adriatic is well developed tourism destination with over a century of tourism tradition. With the rapid increase in tourism demand since 1950s many residents have abandoned traditional agricultural activities and turned to tending to the visitor needs. This trend was reversed during the early 1990s when tourism came to a halt, owning to the armed conflict. Residents have revived their age honored tradition of grape growing – cleaned up old and degraded and planted new vineyards – out of which a new wave of entrepreneurs emerged, willing to invest in winery as a primary entrepreneurial activity and striving to gain high quality and market reputation for their wines. This task was made easier by the fact that these regions are nationally recognized for the quality red wine and local variety of grapes. With the tourism demand restoring quickly after the cessation of war activities and renewed wine production, it would be reasonable to expect that wine tourism would develop quickly. The paper investigates the issues and challenges faced by wineries from the entrepreneurial perspective proposed by Getz and Brown (2006) based on the survey of winery operators in the Middle Dalmatia. The results fill the gap in the literature not only regarding better understanding of wine tourism and entrepreneurship in wine tourism development but in terms of understanding the compatibility of wine tourism with the dominant Mediterranean tourism product – that of the sun and sea

Vojo Radoičić’s artwork as a stimulus for early and preschool-aged children’s artistic creativity – case study

Art appreciation is an interactive experience, that leads to the development of artistic sensibility, but also encourages creative thinking. Therefore, it is important to expose children to a variety of artistic stimuli that also include artworks. In this paper, posibilities are being researched to use reproductions of Vojo Radoičić’s artworks to encourage art expression in preschool children, as well as the impact of this kind of incentive on the development of creativity and motivation in the tested group of children. Vojo Radoiĉić is a famous artist from Rijeka and an unavoidable figure in the Croatian art scene of the second half of the 20th century. His art expression is characterised as poetic, playful and is well - known for its lively coloring, resulting in his art pieces to often be compared to spontaneous children art expression. The research results showed that the selected artworks as a stimulus for children’s artistic expression had a positive impact on the development of art creativity and motivation in children who participated in the research. These positive qualitative changes can help preschool teachers in planning future art activities in kindergartens

RESEARCH OF AMBIDEXTROUS ORIENTATION IN CROATIAN SMEs

Organizational balance between continuity of operative business activities and changes aimed at future success is often emphasized as a precondition for long-term organizational success. In this context, ambidexterity in firms is studied. It should enable the simultaneous focus on operational processes and active exploration of new opportunities in the process of ensuring long-term success. Due to limited resources of SMEs the question is whether these companies have to decide between operational efficiency and building new business opportunities. Crucial for the implementation of ambidexterity in SMEs is the entrepreneur’s ambidextrous orientation which should indicate the flexibility of entrepreneur in reconciling different approaches in business. The assumption is that entrepreneurs who demonstrate ambidextrous orientation induce, encourage, reward and promote activities beyond existing operational processes in order to seek possibilities for exploration and exploitation of new business opportunities in the future. The purpose of this paper is to examine specificities of ambidextrous orientation in Croatian SMEs. Ambidextrous orientation, the level of strategic ambidexterity and the relationship between them will be examined on a sample of 190 Croatian SMEs. Furthermore, the relationship between ambidextrous orientation and performance of the SMEs will be studied assuming that successful companies have a higher level of ambidextrous orientation. The aim is to further clarify the features of ambidextrous orientation in SMEs and how it affects their current success and future potential

Ekonomija dijeljenja u kontekstu dijeljene mobilnosti: istraživanje stavova korisnika i preferencija digitalnih platformi u Hrvatskoj

The sharing economy is a very dynamic research area in different research contexts. It enables consumers to better manage their time, resources, budgets and experiences. In general, the sharing economy, with the help of ICT technology, enables greater efficiency of available resources and opens up new possibilities for solving some social, economic and environmental problems. In the transport sector, shared mobility has become increasingly important in the last decade, especially in the context of addressing the problems of sustainability and efficiency of the transport system resulting from excessive motorization and the way passenger cars are used. This paper examines the sharing economy in the context of the transportation sector, specifically shared mobility as an economic, transportation, and environmental phenomenon. The empirical part of this paper presents the results of a survey conducted with a sample of 172 respondents in the Republic of Croatia. Of the 172 completed questionnaires, 68 respondents (39.5%) use ridesharing services, while 104 (60.5%) do not. At the same time, 65% of these respondents also do not plan to use them in the future. The main motive cited for using ridesharing was financial. Users expressed a preference for using specialized digital platforms because of their functionality, with the ability to rate drivers and passengers standing out.The aim of this paper is to further clarify the specific motivating factors that encourage users to use mobility sharing services in order to provide guidelines for designing targeted policies to promote and raise awareness of the benefits and importance of these services for individual users, but also for the broader socio-economic and environmental context.Ekonomija dijeljenja vrlo je dinamično istraživačko područje u različitim istraživačkim kontekstima. Ona omogućuje potrošačima da bolje upravljaju svojim vremenom, resursima, proračunima i iskustvima. Općenito, ekonomija dijeljenja, sa svojom većom resursnom efikasnošću, a uz podršku IKT tehnologije, otvara nove mogućnosti za rješavanje društvenih, ekonomskih i ekoloških problema. U prometnom sektoru, dijeljena mobilnost postaje sve važnija u posljednjem desetljeću, posebice u kontekstu suočavanja s problemima održivosti i učinkovitosti prometnog sustava koji proizilaze iz prekomjerne motorizacije i načina uporabe osobnih automobila. Ovaj rad istražuje ekonomiju dijeljenja u kontekstu transportnog sektora, posebno dijeljenu mobilnost kao ekonomski, prometni i ekološki fenomen. U empirijskom dijelu rada prikazani su rezultati istraživanja provedenog na uzorku od 172 ispitanika u Republici Hrvatskoj. Istraženi su stavovi prema korištenju usluga dijeljenja prijevoza i preferencije prema dostupnim digitalnim platformama za posredovanje. Od 172 ispunjena upitnika, 68 ispitanika (39,5%) koristi usluge dijeljenja prijevoza, dok 104 (60,5%) ne koristi. Istodobno, 65% ovih ispitanika ih ne planira koristiti ni u budućnosti. Glavni motiv za korištenje dijeljenja prijevoza je financijski. Korisnici su iskazali preferencije za korištenje specijaliziranih digitalnih platformi zbog njihovih funkcionalnosti pri čemu se ističe mogućnost ocijenjivanja vozača i putnika. Cilj ovoga rada je dodatno razjasniti specifične motivacijske čimbenike koji potiču korisnike na korištenje usluga dijeljene mobilnosti kako bi se dale smjernice za osmišljavanje ciljanih politika za promicanje i podizanje svijesti o prednostima i važnosti ovih usluga za pojedinačne korisnike, ali i za šire društveno-ekonomsko i ekološko okruženj

VIEW OF MANAGING CHANGES AND STRESS IN CROATIAN ENTERPRISES

Every organization faces organizational changes during its existence. Changes in customer needs, emergence of new competitors, new technologies, availability of limited resources, economic and social trends are just some of the reasons why organizations have to adapt their strategies, structure, culture, technology and people (their skills, knowledge, habits…). Human resources are most valuable asset and therefore require to be carefully managed through the process of change implementation. This is a prerequisite for an organization to be successful in the contemporary environment. Changes generate stress for all members of the organization which in return affects the quality of work, behaviour and engagement. The purpose of this paper is to examine characteristics of managing changes and stress in Croatian enterprises from the perspective of the employees and managers. The results of the study conducted on a sample of 102 respondents show that organizations mostly operate in dynamic environment which reflects the necessity for continuous implementations of changes whether they are adaptive or innovative. More than 60% of the respondents perceive change as a positive process even though almost half of them regard resistance to change in their organizations to be moderate. Results from the simple linear regression also confirmed that change and stress management strategies have an effect on the level of resistance to change