Appreciation to reviewers in 2021

Appreciation to reviewers in 202

An empirical inquiry into the objective assessment and the top management perception of the need for organisational restructuring in large Croatian enterprises

On the basis of the extensive empirical research, this paper examines the objective need for organisational restructuring in large Croatian enterprises versus the managerial perceptions of the same issue. Building upon the analysis of the economic performance of the Croatian large enterprise sector and the assessment of the organisational design quality in large Croatian enterprises, the urgency for further organisational restructuring is established. On the other hand, the major restructuring motives at the top management level are also examined, leading to the conclusion that both the perceived quality of the organisational design, as well as the perceived gap between the enterprise competitive ability and the threats from the business environment at the top management level do not support the further restructuring of the Croatian large enterprise sector

Appreciation to reviewers in 2020

Appreciation to reviewers in 202

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN CROATIAN NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS: RESULTS OF THE EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

As the traditional sources of funding for the non-profit and civil society organizations seem to be vanishing in Central & Eastern Europe entirely, a higher level of professionalism, as well as a significant improvement of efficiency are required from the entire sector. In order to identify the managerial practices of the most advanced (or, at least, the most ‘visible’) non-profit organizations in Croatia, which seem to adequately address these challenges, a survey has been conducted among the ‘high-profile’ Croatian non-profits, identified on the basis of the snowball sampling. Results of the empirical analysis indicate that the pressures from the environment are not followed by the adequate development of the managerial and other capacities of Croatian non-profits, but rather are dealt with on the basis of individual initiative/competences and ad-hoc solutions, which can be concluded both on the basis of implementation of managerial functions, as well as from the relationship between the level of organizational development and the managerial practices. Practical, case-based evidence from selected civil society organizations and related empirical results seem to confirm the conclusion on the inadequate management development in the Croatian non-profit sector and advocate the need for the academic community and other relevant institutions to get involved in the capacity-building processes within the civil sector

Editorial to the Special issue of the journal

This is the editorial to the Special issue of the Management journal, dedicated to the 11th International Conference on "Challenges of Europe", organized by the Faculty of Economics in Split, Croatia, in May 2015

ROLE OF INFORMATICS TECHNOLOGY IN GOVERNING THE CHANGES AND BUILDING OF COMPETITIVE POWER IN LARGE FIRMS: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Autor u radu tretira problematiku inovativne uporabe informacijske tehnologije u projektiranju novih organizacijskih rješenja i u izgradnji njihove konkurentske sposobnosti. Dobijeni rezultati autorova istraživanja ukazuju napostojanje potencijala naših velikih poduzeća za inovativnu uporabu informacijske tehnologije u projektiranju organizacije i jačanju konkurentske sposobnosti, kako sa stajališta principa na kojima su izgrađeni njihovi informacijski sustavi, tako i sa stjališta percepcije informacijske tehnologije na razini top-menadžmenta.In this article the author treats the problems of innovative usage of informatics technology in projecting new organizational solutions (that is governing the organizational changes) and in building their competitive capability. First are given main theoretical comprehensions correlated to modern understanding of informatics technology in organization planning, with a special emphasis on its potential for initiating innovations. Later are shown substantial and methodological characteristics and research results of so defined problems in large Croatian firms. Gained results suggest the existence of potentials of our large firms for innovative usage of informatics technology in organization planning and in building of competitive capability, both from the point of view of principles on which their informatics systems were built, and perception of informatics technology at the top-management level

School management innovation and principal support systems: toward the agenda for Croatian school reform

In this paper, we discuss if the current educational management practices in Croatian schools are in line with the constructivist prescriptions and what is their relationship with the available principal support tools. Our research is based on previous empirical results, related to the perceived needs of school principals for training and support. Namely, in 2011, the surveyed school principals required additional competencies to be developed in the fields of school marketing and management. At that time, the primary school principals are being surveyed, related to their managerial practices and the obtained results are interpreted in the context of the already announced, comprehensive school reform in Croatia, designed according to the constructivist educational theories. The empirical results demonstrate that the managerial practices of Croatian primary schools are not compatible with the constructivist theory of education. One group of principals (27.6%) have adequate delegation skills and focus on the specific fields of project management and school marketing, while the majority demonstrate one (or several) forms of ineffective practices. There is limited empirical evidence of the statistically significant differences in the usage of principal support tools/approaches, although the specific usage patterns have been identified

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR E-GOVERNMENT: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INDICATOR DEVELOPMENT

It is often assumed that modern information technology (IT) is a source of performance improvement. Empirical research has not univocally confirmed this assumption, since complex, extensive and resource demanding IT tools require extensive organizational restructuring, in order to be properly and successfully implemented. This generates the need to create and use business intelligence and key performance indicators (KPI) to obtain a high quality basis for making decisions in real time. In this paper, authors analyze the existence of a potential relationship between the methodological approach to defining business intelligence (BI)-related KPIs and achieving business process performance, as well as the overall organizational performance. The methodological determinants of the process, in which the KPIs are defined, are empirically analyzed and associated with the two discussed aspects of performance. The empirical analysis is conducted for the case of e-government development, with the special emphasis on countries from Central, East and South-East Europe. The E-Government development is measured by two KPIs, which have been defined, by strictly following the recommended BI methodology. The two KPIs are related to a business process, performed by the public administration, which can be greatly facilitated by the introduction of E-Government. This is the process of opening a new enterprise, which can be also viewed as one of key measures of the national economic and entrepreneurial development. The public administration performance in serving the needs of new entrepreneurs for company registration is, therefore, considered in terms of E-Government performance. Two KPIs used measure the procedural complexity and costs for opening a new enterprise in a sample, consisting of 28 European Union member-states. The statistical analysis uses secondary data, available from the official Eurostat Web pages. The empirical results confirm the existence of the hypothesized relationship between the methodological procedures for developing KPIs and the process performance, which affirms the need to develop both E-Government, as well as other processes in public administration, by using solid planning and methodological approaches

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN CROATIA AND BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

In this study, authors analyze the practices and effectiveness of educational management and leadership, according to the selected psychological and sociological characteristics of school principals in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. The selected psychological traits have been already analyzed in the case of entrepreneurial orientation and proved to be relevant for differentiation of schools and principals, according to their inclination to entrepreneurship. In this paper, more comprehensive, analytic criteria are used to explore the effectiveness of educational management and leadership practices in the sample of Croatian and B&H principals. The objective of the study is to determine the significance of the psychological and sociological variables for the practice of school management and leadership, as well as to suggest potential implications for school leaders’ professional orientation and development