bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
How Public Relations Impact on a Company's Effectiveness
Authors: Jerman Damjana , Vukovič Goran , Završnik Bruno 
Published: August 2009

How Public Relations Impact on a Company's Effectiveness
The role of public relations is dealing with the identification of organization's strategic public and developing communications programs for building solid, open and trusting relations with them. Many companies have taken a limited view of the impact that public relations can have on company's overall effectiveness. This paper consists of two parts: the theoretical framework for the role of public relations in the overall effectiveness of the company and an empirical analysis based on the primary data collected. We classified and analyzed different public relations factors (i.e. factors related to managing and implementing public relations) that influences the effectiveness of the company. We explored the correlation between public relations and a company's effectiveness and argued that public relations factors play a critical role in that effectiveness. We used linear regression and we found a significant linier relationship between the independent variable (public relations) and the dependent variable (company effectiveness).
Corruption in Public Administration Units and Organizational Measures to Prevent and Fight Corruption
Authors: Mevc Andrejka , Pagon Milan 
Published: August 2009

Corruption in Public Administration Units and Organizational Measures to Prevent and Fight Corruption
This paper presents the results of a study that investigated the attitudes of civil servants in public administration units in Slovenia regarding corruption at work. The results show that civil servants employed in public administration units take corruption seriously. The employees' perceptions of corruption and their willingness to report the offender are closely connected to their opinion on how others - their colleagues - perceive it (i.e., how serious they find corruption and whether they are willing to report the offender). There are important gender differences regarding the perceptions of corruption, as well as differences in the function they have and their membership in organizational units. The authors conclude that it is necessary to develop and strengthen the feelings of the employees' security and increase the link between perceiving corruption and one's own judgment of the seriousness of corruptive behaviour, as well as to decrease the tolerance regarding corruption.
Fuzzy SERVQUAL Analysis in Airline Services
Authors: Aydin Ozlem , Pakdil Fatma 
Published: August 2009

Fuzzy SERVQUAL Analysis in Airline Services
This study is aimed at measuring and summarizing the perceived and expected service quality of passengers of an international airline and to provide the passengers' opinions to the decision makers employing fuzzy logic. The appropriate fuzzification procedure was determined to be the trapezoidal membership function. Using SERVQUAL methodology, the optimal fuzzy interval of the gap scores was determined for each item. The interpretations of these fuzzy intervals were categorized into three areas - optimistic, neutral and pessimistic passenger views - to assist the decision makers in identifying which items of services are satisfactory and which are in need of improvement.
Forecasting the Primary Demand for a Beer Brand Using Time Series Analysis
Authors: Bratina Danijel , Faganel Armand 
Published: August 2009

Forecasting the Primary Demand for a Beer Brand Using Time Series Analysis
Market research often uses data (i.e. marketing mix variables) that is equally spaced over time. Time series theory is perfectly suited to study this phenomena's dependency on time. It is used for forecasting and causality analysis, but their greatest strength is in studying the impact of a discrete event in time, which makes it a powerful tool for marketers. This article introduces the basic concepts behind time series theory and illustrates its current application in marketing research. We use time series analysis to forecast the demand for beer on the Slovenian market using scanner data from two major retail stores. Before our analysis, only broader time spans have been used to perform time series analysis (weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly data). In our study we analyse daily data, which is supposed to carry a lot of ‘noise’. We show that - even with noise carrying data - a better model can be computed using time series forecasting, explaining much more variance compared to regular regression. Our analysis also confirms the effect of short term sales promotions on beer demand, which is in conformity with other studies in this field.
Organizational Mental Map and Conative Competences
Authors: Kovač Darko , Bertoncelj Andrej 
Published: August 2009

Organizational Mental Map and Conative Competences
Employees with their knowledge, skills, behavior and personal traits impact the organizational learning. The concept of organizational mental map and conative competences, as inborn underlying characteristic that is influenced by employees being involved as well as endogenous and exogenous factors, is presented. Three Slovene small to mid-sized companies were studied in respect to the individual factors, especially conative competences, of their employees. The study suggests that conative side of mind and thus conative competences can actually influence the organizational learning. What matters in contemporary management practice is how hidden potentials are set free and how they intrinsically motivate employees according to their personal differences in capabilities. As conative competences are inborn and can not be learned but only encouraged, contrary to cognitive competences, it is important to better understand employees' personal traits.
Internet Marketing Communication and Schools: The Slovenian Case Study
Authors: Tankosić Aleš , Trnavčevič Anita 
Published: August 2009

Internet Marketing Communication and Schools: The Slovenian Case Study
Worldwide, some 1.32 billon people now use the Internet (Internet World Stats 2007). In the developed countries the Internet is also present in educational institutions; schools use the Internet as a means of communication with their customers. In Slovenia, however, research focusing on Internet marketing communication are rare in the field of education. This paper provides the theoretical framework and the results of the qualitative case study conducted at a school centre in Slovenia in 2005. Data were collected through group interviews and document analysis. The findings support the School Centre teachers' claim that the Internet does not enable personal contacts and the sensory collection of physical evidence, which are considered to be major disadvantages of Internet marketing communication. The teachers who consider Internet marketing communication to be an advantage stress the importance of virtuality which can function as a simulation of communication in the real world. Their adversaries, on the other hand, stress the importance of the physical world and warn us of the negative sides of virtuality.
Cost Optimal Project Scheduling
Authors: Klanšek Uroš , Pšunder Mirko 
Published: August 2009

Cost Optimal Project Scheduling
This paper presents the cost optimal project scheduling. The optimization was performed by the nonlinear programming approach, NLP. The nonlinear total project cost objective function is subjected to the rigorous system of the activity precedence relationship constraints, the activity duration constraints and the project duration constraints. The set of activity precedence relationship constraints was defined to comprise Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, Start-to-Finish and Finish-to-Finish precedence relationships between activities. The activity duration constraints determine relationships between minimum, maximum and possible duration of the project activities. The project duration constraints define the maximum feasible project duration. A numerical example is presented at the end of the paper in order to present the applicability of the proposed approach.
The Impact of Management Control Systems - Strategy Interaction on Performance Management: A Case Study
Authors: Peljhan Darja , Tekavčič Metka 
Published: August 2009

The Impact of Management Control Systems - Strategy Interaction on Performance Management: A Case Study
We study the interaction between management control systems and strategy its impact on organisational performance considering the way in which multiple aspects of control systems and dimensions of context combine in a variety of ways to enhance performance. Our purpose is to investigate the relationship among management control systems, strategy and organisational performance in a particular company. The contribution of this study is that it upgrades the existing theory in that it does not only establish a relationship between strategy and management control systems, but also considers how this relationships impacts on organisational performance. The study shows that the combination of performance-driven behaviour and regular use of management control systems leads to improved results. The second contribution of the study is that it incorporates a wider range of controls, including informal controls as being equally important as formal controls, to provide a more comprehensive analysis, as opposed to the majority of prior studies focusing on a more limited range of controls. In this way, this paper contributes to the literature in terms of examination of the broader components of management control systems than was previously done.
Organization in Finance Prepared by Stochastic Differential Equations with Additive and Nonlinear Models and Continuous Optimization
Authors: Taylan Pakize , Weber Gerhard-Wilhelm 
Published: August 2009

Organization in Finance Prepared by Stochastic Differential Equations with Additive and Nonlinear Models and Continuous Optimization
A central element in organization of financal means by a person, a company or societal group consists in the constitution, analysis and optimization of portfolios. This requests the time-depending modeling of processes. Likewise many processes in nature, technology and economy, financial processes suffer from stochastic fluctuations. Therefore, we consider stochastic differential equations (Kloeden, Platen and Schurz, 1994) since in reality, especially, in the financial sector, many processes are affected with noise. As a drawback, these equations are hard to represent by a computer and hard to resolve. In our paper, we express them in simplified manner of approximation by both a discretization and additive models based on splines. Our parameter estimation refers to the linearly involved spline coefficients as prepared in (Taylan and Weber, 2007) and the partially nonlinearly involved probabilistic parameters. We construct a penalized residual sum of square for this model and face occuring nonlinearities by Gauss-Newton's and Levenberg-Marquardt's method on determining the iteration step. We also investigate when the related minimization program can be written as a Tikhonov regularization problem (sometimes called ridge regression), and we treat it using continuous optimization techniques. In particular, we prepare access to the elegant framework of conic quadratic programming. These convex optimation problems are very well-structured, herewith resembling linear programs and, hence, permitting the use of interior point methods (Nesterov and Nemirovskii, 1993).
Social Classes and Social Mobility in Slovenia and Europe
Authors: Jereb Eva , Ferjan Marko 
Published: August 2009

Social Classes and Social Mobility in Slovenia and Europe
In closed social systems the social position of an individual is determined by the social position of the family into which he or she was born, whereas in open social systems mobility from one social class to another is possible. This paper concerns the relationship between the class position an individual actually occupies and the class into which he or she was born. First the concept of social class is described and different types of social mobility are presented. Than the research methodology is described and the results are presented and discussed. At the end of the paper certain comparisons to other European countries are made.
Production Control of a Polymerization Plant Based on Production Performance Indicators
Authors: Gradišar Dejan , Zorzut Sebastjan , Jovan Vladimir 
Published: August 2009

Production Control of a Polymerization Plant Based on Production Performance Indicators
The specifics of process manufacturing have a great influence on production management. The focus of process-production control is to maintain stable and cost-effective production within given constraints. The synthesis of production-control structures is thus recognized as one of the most important design problems in process-production management. This article proposes a closed-loop control structure with the utilization of production-performance indicators (pPIs) as a possible solution to this problem. Suggested concept takes into account also economic issues of production. pPIs represent the translation of operating objectives, such as the minimization of production costs, to a reduced set of control variables that can then be used in a feedback control. The idea of production-feedback control using production pPIs as controlled variables was implemented on a procedural model of a production process for a polymerization plant. Preliminary results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed methodology. At the implementation stage we must be aware that appropriate IT system has to be available which ensures needed online production data.
Accounting Treatment of Goodwill in IFRS and US GAAP
Authors: Jerman Mateja , Manzin Massimo 
Published: August 2009

Accounting Treatment of Goodwill in IFRS and US GAAP
The article presents an overview of the new accounting treatment of goodwill regarding International Financial Reporting Standards and American Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Goodwill acquired through a business combination is no longer amortized but tested for impairment. Despite the fact that the objective of the new International Financial Accounting Standard has been to move towards international convergence; significant differences between standards still exist. The article presents the main changes of the regulation in the last years and the key differences between the two accounting treatments. In spite of the new accounting approach there are still lots of discussions, which indicate that the field is still not properly regulated. Finally, the article offers possible directions for future research and reporting practice.
Implementation of the Scheduling Domain Description Model
Authors: Baggia Alenka , Leskovar Robert , Kljajić Miroljub 
Published: August 2009

Implementation of the Scheduling Domain Description Model
This paper presents the problem of auniform scheduling domain description. It was established that the algorithm used for scheduling is general, disregarding the type of scheduling domain. On the basis of five different scheduling domains, a general description model was developed. The research is focused on the programming application of the resource scheduling model, presented as a UML class diagram. Diverse meta-languages for the model description were considered. Of these XML, an EAV model and object oriented languages have shown to be the most effective. Even though Java is not widely used as a description language, it has proved effective as a meta-language for the description of the extensible scheduling model.
Implementation, Effectiveness and Experience With Remote Laboratory in Engineering Education
Authors: Rojko Andreja , Debevc Matjaž , Hercog Darko 
Published: August 2009

Implementation, Effectiveness and Experience With Remote Laboratory in Engineering Education
Modern educational methods bring many new challenges from the pedagogical, as well as from the technical aspect. One of the more significant is the integration of information and communication technology into the educational process. These is particularly noticeable in the engineering education where the requests of the industry for a faster and more efficient acquisition of knowledge and practical skills lead to a constant search for new solutions in the learning process which would attract and motivate students, as well as be user friendly. This is especially difficult to be reached with the practical education which is usually composed of laboratory exercises that are bound to a specific time and place. One of the possible solutions are the remote laboratories which offer the possibility of the implementation of real remote laboratory experiments in the educational institutions' laboratories and, therefore, enhance the students' knowledge and capability for dealing with some technical problems without the need for their physical presence in the laboratory. In the article, the example of a successful implementation of the remote laboratory in the field of engineering, developed and operating in the Moodle environment, is presented. The laboratory does not only represent the framework for the experiment implementation, but it also offers courses with complete documentation, therefore courses can be performed on distance. As an example, the case of the most widely used course from remote laboratory is presented, i.e., the "Control of nonlinear mechanism" course. Special attention is given to the description of the booking process for remote experiments, the execution of remote experiments and the applied user interface. The evaluation of the interface usability from the point of view of end users was performed via the acknowledged SUMI method. Additionally, another questionnaire was prepared in order to investigate the students' opinion about working in the remote laboratory. The results have shown that the presented remote laboratory is user friendly and accepted by both teachers and students as a suitable and interesting supplement to the conventional laboratory exercises.
Children and Virtual Reality — Some dilemas of Education
Authors: Zloković Jasminka , Černetič Metod , Dobrnjič Olga 
Published: August 2009

Children and Virtual Reality — Some dilemas of Education
Possible responses to the extremely complex and delicate question of the influence that <virtual reality> exercises on the development of a child as a unique personality, on the child's psycho-social development and on the education of a child generally may be provided by serious research of a cohort sequential design, either in research programmes in the field of educational sciences or of other social disciplines. The present paper confronts some dilemmas of the modern world. Particularly those between the <traditional> educational values, <obsolete> families and schools and <progressive> education supplied (imposed) by virtual reality that promotes the social standardization of behaviour and the perception of values and of the world around us. The aggressiveness of the mass media in presenting <virtual reality> as <progressive> and without an <alternative> often results in a virtual life for a child, with virtual friends, education and even virtual families. In the time of developing technology, an important question arises: how to deal with such a situation. Do we direct young people to carefully select from what modern virtual reality has to offer and how do we do that?
Trends that will Shape the Professions of the Future Information Society
Authors: Lang Alenka , Urbančič Tanja 
Published: August 2009

Trends that will Shape the Professions of the Future Information Society
In this paper we discuss the trends in present society that will have the most important influence in shaping future jobs, with an emphasis on issues related to sustainable development and an information society. We point out that based on the requirements of educated end-users, companies will have to follow the principles of sustainable development and social responsibility. In future, due to technical development, natural resources, environmental issues and demographical trends in the developed western world, the most attractive jobs will be in high technology, health and medical care, as well as the pleasure and free time industry. The most important sectors will be informatics and telecommunication, logistics, safety, healthcare and life-long education.
Data Envelopment Analysis - Basic Models and their Utilization
Authors: Martić Milan , Novaković Marina , Baggia Alenka 
Published: August 2009

Data Envelopment Analysis - Basic Models and their Utilization
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a decision making tool based on linear programming for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of comparable units. Besides the identification of relatively efficient and inefficient units, DEA identifies the sources and level of inefficiency for each of the inputs and outputs. This paper is a survey of the basic DEA models. A comparison of DEA models is given. The effect of model orientation (input or output) on the efficiency frontier and the effect of the convexity requirements on returns to scale are examined. The paper also explains how DEA models can be used to assess efficiency.
Research on Life Objective Structures of Managers and Entrepreneurs in Serbia
Authors: Sajfert Zvonko , Nikolić Milan , Djordjević Dejan , Atanasković Predrag 
Published: August 2009

Research on Life Objective Structures of Managers and Entrepreneurs in Serbia
The purpose of the paper herein is to investigate the different life objective structures of managers and specialists in public enterprises. Owners of private enterprises - entrepreneurs were analyzed as control group. Considering the data obtained by using the random sampling method, one may come to conclusions concerning the characteristics of the observed population. The research revealed that successful private owners-entrepreneurs, being the capital holders, have different structure of life objectives comparing to both managers and specialists in public organizations. The basic idea is that this can be considered as inseparable part of economic growth in any organization which also reflects on the management as well. Since the entrepreneurs invested the private capital to realize their ideas, it is logical that they want to increase their capital. On the other hand, managers and specialists in public enterprises do not have such a great sense for capital increment. They rather share the capital preferring to be sociable (clubs sponsors, great humanitarians). The reason of such acting can be found in a fact that Serbia was influenced by socialism which further resulted in poor education of managers and specialists to change their way of thinking. Managers as well as specialists should become knowledge workers who shall exchange the knowledge.
How does Networking Impact the SMEs Growth
Authors: Širec Karin , Bradač Barbara 
Published: August 2009

How does Networking Impact the SMEs Growth
Today's market conditions are forcing companies to adapt to changes in order to survive, grow and be competitive. Such changes include inter-company cooperation and networks, which allow for competition and innovation in a dynamic environment. Today, almost all industries are affected by the evolution of networking relationships within and between firms; however, previous studies have revealed that companies differ in their competitive strategies, strategic and technological orientation, and methods of networking. Most of these studies have linked networking with performance, with less empirical evidence on linking networking in SMEs with company growth. Previous research has also shown that entrepreneurial potential in Slovenia is not fully utilized. For this reason, the presented paper investigates a networking in SMEs and its contribution to the companies' growth.