Purpose: This study examines student satisfaction with the perceived performance of key business processes in a higher education institution and identifies process-specific parameters that significantly influence satisfaction. Service quality is conceptualized as a process-based construct embedded in institutional performance and quality management systems. Design/Methodology: A quantitative research design was applied using a structured survey instrument with Likert items. Data were collected from 160 students at one Croatian higher education institution. Multiple linear regression analysis examined the effects of process-specific parameters on satisfaction across six institutional business processes: Teaching, Library, Student Administration, IT Support, Publishing Activity, and Scientific Research. Findings: The results reveal clear process-specific determinants of student satisfaction. Teaching satisfaction is significantly predicted by lecturer preparedness, clarity of teaching content, and study program quality. Library satisfaction is associated with library staff competence and responsiveness to users’ needs, while Student Administration satisfaction is driven by communication quality and procedural knowledge. IT Support satisfaction is influenced by IT staff competence and classroom equipment. Publishing Activity satisfaction is primarily related to the availability of textbooks authored by academic staff. Satisfaction with Scientific Research is mainly associated with perceived institutional reputation, whereas academic staff research competence is not statistically significant. Practical Implications: Higher education institutions should prioritize process-oriented quality management strategies focused on staff competence, communication effectiveness, infrastructure optimization, and alignment of support services with student needs. Originality/Value: This study extends service quality research by operationalizing student satisfaction at the level of institutional business processes rather than isolated service dimensions.
Purpose: This study analyzes market developments in the Croatian milk and meat sectors from 2015 to 2024, focusing on price movements, foreign trade, and selected structural factors related to competitiveness. Design/Methodology: The paper uses secondary data from national and international statistical and institutional sources, supplemented by publicly available trade data. The analysis combines descriptive statistics with year-on-year indicators, three-year moving averages, index analysis, and non-parametric tests. Findings: Milk prices remained relatively stable until 2020, then increased sharply, with the largest annual rise in 2022 (25.69%), before declining slightly in 2024 (−3.61%). The post-2020 increase was statistically significant (p = .0095). Meat prices rose more gradually, but the upward trend was evident across all categories and was also statistically significant. Among meat categories, poultry recorded the highest relative price growth compared with 2015, while beef showed the largest absolute increase. During the observed period, imports of both milk and meat generally grew more strongly than exports, indicating rising import dependence and persistent structural weaknesses in domestic production. Practical implications: The findings may help producers, processors, and policymakers assess pricing pressures, investment needs, and measures to improve productivity and reduce exposure to market shocks. Originality/Value: This study provides an integrated view of price and trade developments in the Croatian milk and meat sectors over a ten-year period and relates these trends to broader issues of competitiveness, market vulnerability, and structural adjustment.
Purpose: This study examines how the world’s largest corporations disclose artificial intelligence (AI) in public reporting and whether disclosure intensity corresponds to short-term financial and employment outcomes. Design/Methodology: The analysis covers public reports issued from 2020 to 2024 by the top 300 companies in the 2024 Fortune Global 500. A computer-aided text analysis framework combines dictionary-based extraction, semantic-similarity validation, ChatGPT-assisted screening, and human review. Findings: AI disclosure follows a two-phase trajectory: stable, incremental growth from 2020 to 2022, followed by rapid acceleration from 2023, largely associated with generative AI and large language models. Disclosure varies substantially across sectors and regions, with Technology, Media & Telecommunications and Financial & Business Services acting as early and intensive disclosers, while Consumer & Commerce expands later. AI disclosure frequency is not materially associated with short-term revenue, profitability, or employment changes. Practical Implications: Disclosure counts should be interpreted cautiously as signals of corporate communication rather than direct evidence of operational AI adoption or economic impact. Originality/Value: The study provides large-scale empirical evidence on AI disclosure dynamics and proposes a validated computational approach for distinguishing substantive AI references from generic or symbolic communication.
Purpose: Despite growing research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in retail and an increasing body of work on consumer behaviour during major life transitions, limited attention has been devoted to understanding how the transition to parenthood shapes parents’ perceptions of CSR and responsible purchasing decisions in the baby and children’s products segment. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to determine how the transition to parenthood influences parents’ perceptions of the CSR of manufacturers and retailers of baby and children’s products, and to analyse the existence of a gap between parents’ environmental awareness and their actual purchasing behaviour. Design/Methodology: The research was conducted using a qualitative approach based on semi-structured in-depth interviews on a convenient sample of 30 current and prospective first-time parents who are in the transitional life phase and was analyzed by thematic analysis. Findings: The transition to parenthood leads to change in priorities, increased perceived risk, and more intensive information seeking before purchasing. Product safety and quality are dominant purchase motives and are perceived as the primary aspect of social responsibility towards consumers, while environmental responsibility plays a secondary but significant role. Parents rely heavily on recommendations from close friends and experts, while negative experiences from online sources have a stronger influence on purchasing behaviour decisions than positive recommendations. Practical Implications: The results suggest that manufacturers and retailers of baby and children's products should prioritize communicating product safety and quality as the foundation of social responsibility, with transparent and credible information at the point of sale, which may contribute to stronger consumer trust and improved retail performance. Originality/Value: The study contributes to the existing literature by integrating CSR and life-transition perspectives, specifically the transition to parenthood, and by identifying how perceived product safety, trust, and financial constraints interact in shaping responsible purchas-ing decisions among first-time parents. By highlighting the specific motives, perceptions, and con-straints associated with purchasing products for babies and children, the study provides actionable in-sights for manufacturers and retailers seeking to strengthen responsible consumption practices and improve retail performance.
Purpose: This paper reviews and synthesizes the theoretical foundations and practical applications of Total Quality Management (TQM), highlighting current trends, organizational prerequisites, benefits, and common barriers, with emphasis on operationalizing core TQM principles and adapting them to healthcare settings. The quality of healthcare is increasingly recognized as a strategic priority due to its impact on treatment outcomes, system efficiency, and user experience. Within this context, TQM is affirmed as a comprehensive, sustainable model for systematic quality improvement. Methodology: A narrative literature review with thematic analysis of recent literature was conducted using Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar. Findings: TQM principles are associated with improvements in safety, efficiency, patient experience, and resource use. Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma report measurable gains, including shorter waiting times, fewer errors, and cost reductions. Successful implementation depends on leadership commitment, open communication, a participatory culture, and staff capability, while common barriers include bureaucratization, fragmentation, limited empowerment and training, and poorly defined processes. Quality 4.0 and Healthcare 4.0 expand opportunities for predictive, data-driven, and personalized quality management. Practical implications: Organizations should operationalize TQM with clear accountability, leadership commitment, and a participatory quality culture, leveraging Lean/Six Sigma for measurable improvements while aligning digital initiatives (Quality 4.0/Healthcare 4.0) with core TQM principles and building skills and infrastructure. Originality/Value: The paper connects TQM with current healthcare challenges and digital transformation, highlighting how organizational and technological factors jointly shape quality outcomes and system-level improvement.
Purpose: This study examines how sector-specific corruption affects institutional trust in Greece and conceptualizes corruption as a governance and process-integrity deficit that constrains organizational excellence in both public and private settings. Design/Methodology: A mixed-methods approach based on analytical triangulation was used, combining a nationwide survey of 1 973 participants in Greece with a bibliometric analysis of 1 335 Scopus-indexed publications. This enabled a parallel assessment of citizen perceptions and dominant academic framings of corruption, governance, and accountability. Findings: Clear sectoral asymmetries emerge. Public-sector corruption is primarily associated with procedural opacity and administrative discretion, while bribery for expedited processing is perceived as more frequent in certain private-sector settings. The bibliometric analysis identifies three dominant research clusters: governance and accountability frameworks, ethical paradigms in public administration, and socio-economic drivers of corrupt behavior. There is also growing scholarly attention to digital transparency and accountability mechanisms. Institutional trust in Greece cannot be restored through legal reforms alone. Practical implications: Anti-corruption interventions should support organizational excellence through process redesign, stronger accountability structures, leadership commitment, and digitally enabled transparency in both public and private institutions. Originality/Value: Sector-specific corruption is reframed as a barrier to process integrity, governance quality, and sustained organizational performance. Combining citizen-level perception data with bibliometric mapping bridges empirical institutional realities and academic knowledge production, extending the business excellence literature toward institutional trust as a strategic governance outcome.
Purpose: The paper provides a comprehensive account of how the concept of fair value has evolved in financial reporting, emphasizing its historical development, theoretical foundations, and the diverse academic perspectives that have shaped its interpretation and application across different contexts. It also examines how these developments relate to the quality, transparency, and decision usefulness of financial information. Design/Methodology: The study employs a combination of bibliometric and content analysis. It draws on 4,132 peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus between 2005 and 2025 and uses VOSviewer software to identify trends, co-occurring terms, keyword networks, and citation patterns in publications related to fair value and fair value accounting. Findings: Interest in fair value accounting increased substantially following the 2008 financial crisis. The analysis highlights both supportive and critical perspectives, with recurring concerns regarding reliability, relevance, volatility, and informational usefulness. The findings also reveal a recent shift in the literature toward linking fair value accounting with broader themes such as sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Practical Implications: We clarified key areas of academic debate surrounding fair value and demonstrates how these discussions intersect with issues of reporting quality, risk, and transparency. The insights may be particularly relevant to standard setters, regulators, and financial statement users when evaluating valuation inputs and disclosures during periods of financial instability and structural change. Originality/Value: By combining quantitative mapping with qualitative interpretation, the study offers a structured synthesis of how fair value accounting has been debated and redefined in academic research between 2005 and 2025. It identifies dominant and emerging themes, highlights underexplored areas such as specific sectors and sustainability-related applications, and supports future research at the intersection of financial reporting, governance, and organizational performance.
Purpose: Motivating employees has always been a challenge, particularly in today’s diverse workforce. Organizations must address the distinct needs of multiple generations coexisting in the labor market, each characterized by specific work attitudes, loyalty patterns, interpersonal dynamics, and motivational drivers, which may lead to generational gaps. The study examines the relationship between motivational factors and generational preferences among four economically active cohorts (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z) in Croatia. Design/Methodology: A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in 2024 among employed individuals, exploring socio-demographic characteristics and motivational preferences. Data were collected using the snowball sampling method and analyzed through various statistical techniques. Findings: The study confirms some theoretical assumptions regarding generational differences but also identifies considerable overlap in motivational preferences, particularly related to external motivators, technological advancement, innovation, and work–life balance. Although certain distinctions exist, no statistically significant differences in overall motivation among generations were found. Practical implications: The findings highlight the importance of combining generation-specific approaches with universally relevant motivators to enhance employee engagement, satisfaction, retention, and organizational performance. Originality/Value: The paper contributes to the understanding of intergenerational motivational differences within a local segment of the Croatian labor market and offers practical insights for managers seeking to implement effective, evidence-based motivational strategies.
Svrha: rad istražuje ekonomske sankcije kao globalni fenomen oblikovan globalizacijom i međuzavisnošću država te ima za cilj utvrditi predstavljaju li sankcije izraz globalizacije međunarodnog poretka i sigurnosti ili, naprotiv, njihovu fragmentaciju. Dizajn/Metodologija: istraživanje se temelji na analizi 1547 slučajeva nametnutih ekonomskih sankcija evidentiranih u Globalnoj bazi podataka o sankcijama, uz primjenu komparativnog i interpretativnog pristupa radi procjene trendova, aktera i učinaka sankcija u kontekstu globalne međupovezanosti. Rezultati: Nalazi pokazuju da su ekonomske sankcije postale središnji instrument nacionalne sigurnosti i međunarodne politike, pri čemu njihova sve intenzivnija primjena istodobno produbljuje fragmentaciju globalnog poretka i potvrđuje prisutnost integrativnih i dezintegrativnih dimenzija globalizacije. Takvi procesi mijenjaju strukturu globalnog ekonomskog okruženja te stvaraju nove uvjete i ograničenja za međunarodne ekonomske tokove, što posredno utječe i na strateško okruženje unutar kojeg djeluju poslovni sustavi. Praktične implikacije: omogućuje donositeljima odluka procjenu njihova šireg geopolitičkog i sigurnosnog značenja u globalno međuzavisnom sustavu. Budući da sankcije mijenjaju uvjete međunarodne trgovine, financijskih tokova i regulatornih okvira, njihova primjena može imati neposredne posljedice na poslovne sustave, uključujući poremećaje opskrbnih lanaca, povećanje rizika, potrebu za prilagodbom poslovnih modela te jačanje organizacijske otpornosti. U tom smislu, rad pridonosi razumijevanju kako geopolitičke mjere poput sankcija oblikuju poslovno okruženje i stvaraju potrebe za strateškom prilagodbom poduzeća u globalno fragmentiranom kontekstu. Izvornost/Vrijednost: doprinosi teorijskom i empirijskom razumijevanju ekonomskih sankcija kao istodobnog proizvoda i pokretača globalnih transformacija međunarodne sigurnosti i upravljanja te nudi relevantne uvide za analizu poslovne otpornosti i prilagodbe poduzeća na promjene u globalnom okruženju oblikovanom sankcijama.
Purpose: This study uses projective techniques to explore how consumers perceive private labels and provides retailers with actionable findings for developing successful private label strategies. Design/Methodology: The research employed a qualitative design using two projective techniques, word association and a combined sentence completion and role-playing task, on a sample of 98 graduate students from the University of Zagreb. Findings: Projective techniques help uncover how consumers evaluate private labels by using a rational risk–reward analysis based on price and quality. Spontaneous associations confirm that price and affordability remain the primary mental triggers, but the decision to purchase is a value-driven substitution, frequently rationalized as receiving “equal quality at a lower price”. The study establishes a strong link between private labels and the retailer’s identity. Practical Implications: From a managerial perspective, the results indicate that retailers must move beyond simple low-price positioning and focus on communicating superior value and tangible savings. Managers should address quality polarization by actively improving product quality, cooperating with local suppliers, and using explicit quality-assurance claims to mitigate perceived risk. At the same time, they should recognize that confidence in private labels is fundamentally tied to the retailer’s image. Originality/Value: What is new in this study is the use of projective techniques in this context, which leads to several specific implications for retailers.
The integration of digital knowledge and information technology into all economic sectors is driven by the digital revolution and Industry 4.0. They also emerge as the primary driver of economic advancement across different nations. The main research goal of this paper is to analyse how the Digital Development Level influences the National Cybersecurity Index across different countries, as well as to determine the average Digital Development Level and the average National Cybersecurity Index value for all countries. A quantitative approach was employed in this research, utilizing secondary data. The analysis included one-way ANOVA, linear regression, correlation, and descriptive statistics. The study found a positive correlation between the Digital Development Level (DDL) and the National Cybersecurity Index (NCSI), as well as significant disparities between these variables. Qualitative factors, such as government policies, organizational culture, or international cooperation, are not accounted for in the analysis. Research results highlight the need for continued investments in both areas and underscore the importance of integrated policy approaches that address the complex challenges of the digital economy.
Jedan od ključnih izazova s kojima se malo gospodarstvo suočava u Republici Hrvatskoj jest ograničen pristup financijskim sredstvima zbog nedovoljno razvijenog financijskog tržišta. Fondovi Europske unije mogu predstavljati potencijalno rješenje za prevladavanje problema financiranja s kojima se suočava malo gospodarstvo u Republici Hrvatskoj. Financijski instrumenti alocirani iz europskih strukturnih i investicijskih fondova, poput ESIF zajmova, dostupni su malom gospodarstvu. S obzirom na ciljeve programa ESIF zajmova, može se očekivati da će navedeni instrument pozitivno utjecati na pokazatelje uspješnosti malog gospodarstva. Stoga, cilj je ovog rada istražiti utjecaj ESIF zajmova unutar sektora malog gospodarstva u razdoblju od 2016. do 2019. godine, to jest kratkoročne učinke financijskih instrumenata na mikro, mala i srednja hrvatska poduzeća. Korištena metoda hijerarhijske linearne regresije omogućila je analizu utjecaja zajmova u okviru različitih varijabli, a uzorak je obuhvaćao 1341 mikro, malo i srednje poduzeće. Rezultati istraživanja sugeriraju da iznos dodijeljenih ESIF zajmova nije imao statistički značajan utjecaj na uspješnost poslovanja malog gospodarstva, iako se izostanak utjecaja i rasta mora promatrati u okviru višestrukih ograničenja, kao što su kratko razdoblje praćenja, starost poduzeća, iznos sredstava i način korištenja financijskih sredstava. Daljnja istraživanja trebala bi uzeti u obzir detaljniju analizu drugih varijabli, a ovo istraživanje može poslužiti kao smjernica daljnjim analizama utjecaja ESIF jamstava na gospodarske subjekte, posebice u razvoju malog gospodarstva.
