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Present-day airline industry is quite a competitive field and crew scheduling represents one of the crucial problems due to significant impact on the airline's cost. The crew scheduling problem is based on the assignment of crew members to operate different tasks of route. The main goal of this paper is to provide an analysis and a solution to one of the biggest problems detected on a small airport in the Serbia - the problem of ground crew scheduling. The paper presents the main characteristics, goals and limitations of a real-life problem identified at this small airport. In order to solve the problem, we developed a dynamic discrete simulation model. The model is developed in a spreadsheet environment of Microsoft Excel. Some of the main limitations found in the development of the model are strong constraints and multiple goals. The model presented in the paper is designed as a useful management tool for smaller airports and is aimed at the improvement of operative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research within this paper is motivated by the opinion that different organizational factors in primary education can have a stronger or weaker impact on the quality of the learning outcome. Organizational factors, criteria analyzed in this paper, are school management, school infrastructure, students' foreknowledge, teacher competencies, curriculum content, student motivation, and the quality of the teaching process. Using SWARA (Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis) method of multi-criteria decision-making, the answers of elementary school principals, members of the panel of experts, were processed. The calculation within this method was performed using fuzzy numbers to ensure the reliability of expert evaluations. The results of the applied method, in the form of weighting coefficients of the criteria, indicate that school management has an influence on the selection and building of teachers' competencies while the given competence can indirectly affect the overall success of students through the establishment of an adequate school infrastructure, which affects the knowledge quality. Knowing the factor that has the highest impact enables principals to manage this factor and contribute to enhancing the knowledge quality. This research contributes to raising awareness of the importance of particular organizational factors in elementary education and the need to improve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates how institutional constraints and firms’ and entrepreneurs’ characteristics affect business recovery. Some elements have not yet been rigorously examined in the existing literature, especially not concerning the post-communist countries’ business recovery component and the same is the research gap current study intended to address. To evaluate the study model, ordinal logistic regression was used. More than 300 valid questionnaires are collected from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Serbia. The findings show that factors such as firm tenure and size, location, sector, entrepreneurial motivation, product change, etc., have conflicting effects on business recovery. Some of the outcomes of the present study is supported by the existing studies and some requires further research. The study focuses on the less explored independent variables and their association with business recovery, specifically on SMEs, which highlights the paper’s originality. The output of the current study adds to the existing literature of business recovery and institutional constraints. Policymakers interested in removing institutional limitations and promoting a quicker business recovery for SMEs are drawn to the research. The study findings are also helpful from a managerial standpoint because business owners and managers significantly impact decisions about entrepreneur motivation, product change, and other issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important segments in management of Universal Service Providers (USPs) is reaching the decisions concerning changes in the postal network infrastructure. USPs decide on such matters based on an analysis of financial indicators and defined qualitative parameters in accordance with the international regulations and obligations imposed by a competent regulatory agency. In this paper, the previously known method to analyse the existing postal network and define the minimal number of Postal Network Units (PNU) is implemented and upgraded by a new approach based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and fuzzy logic. The final aim of the proposed new approach is to determine which of the considered PNU should be closed or reorganized having in mind the minimization of negative effects, both financial and social. The proposed model gives the indices for all considered postal branches, which allows the decision-maker to rank the importance of each unit. The proposed model is a business intelligence tool, which replaces a multidisciplinary team composed from managers of the company and policymakers from both the postal sector as well as a sustainable rural development sector in reaching an important decision on changing the postal network. This decision may be considered as extremely complex since it should sublimate the opposed criteria that relate to the business success of the company, state regulations and sustainability of the local community. The indices obtained in the proposed method exactly include the mentioned three categories. The authors demonstrate the applicability of the suggested methodology based on the real data acquired in a district of the Serbia, i.e. in a regional organizational entity of the USP and provide the analysis of the results reached for the rural delivery post offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the impact and predictive effects of knowledge management on financial performance are analysed. The research also includes an analysis of the moderating effects of two moderators (National Origin and Enterprise Size) and their relationship. The data was gathered by interviewing 520 managers from manufacturing companies operating in Serbia. The most important conclusions of the research are: 1. High levels of knowledge management positively influence business performance, quality and competitiveness. 2. Financial performance is mainly influenced by the dimensions connected to the effects of knowledge management regarding its implementation and protection and the acquisition of competitive advantages. 3. Knowledge management strongly influences the market aspects of business, but also the increase of fixed assets. 4. Knowledge management has a slightly greater impact on financial performance in foreign enterprises (operating in Serbia) compared to domestic (Serbian) enterprises. The situation is similar when comparing medium and large enterprises (a higher impact) with small enterprises (a smaller impact). 5. The greatest effects are achieved when an effective organizational structure is in place, when the organization protects its knowledge, when it manages to materialize the knowledge gathered in the form of the efficient application of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Useful and important information for the spatial, ecological, and many other changes in the living environment may be obtained using the analysis of historical aerial photography, with comparison to contemporary imagery. This method provides the ability to determine the state of elements of the space over a long period, encompassing the time when it was not possible to acquire the data from satellite imagery or some other contemporary sources. Aerial images are suitable for mapping spatial phenomena with relatively limited spatial distribution because they possess a high level of details and low spatial coverage. With a comparative analysis of aerial imagery from the past, contemporary aerial imagery, and other sources of aerial imagery, we can obtain information about the nature and trends of the observed phenomena as well as directions of future actions, considering changes detected in the environment, whether they are preventive or corrective in nature. This paper gives the methodological framework for the appliance of the existing knowledge from various fields, intending to use historical aerial photography for monitoring of environmental changes of the Bovan Lake in Eastern Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency of the banking sector, particularly in developing countries, has captivated the attention of various researchers. Contributing to this issue, we present the results of in-depth analysis of the efficiency of Serbian banks during the period 2005-2016. Unlike previous papers evaluating the efficiency of South-Eastern European banks, we emphasize the importance of applying weight restrictions in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The aim is to incorporate every aspect of a decision-making unit's performance to avoid misevaluation of a bank's efficiency. As a possible remedy to the issue, a bootstrapped I-distance is suggested as a statistically sound framework for determining weight bounds in the Global Assurance Region (GAR) DEA model. In terms of average efficiency, the banking sector of Serbia exhibits an improving trend over the period analyzed. The results show how banks can be evaluated when the impact of all the operating inputs and outputs are properly factored into the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation, monitoring and comparison of traffic safety in various territories presents a major challenge to the traffic safety researches. Recently a large number of studies are focused on finding an appropriate method for the calculation of the traffic safety level which uses a single numerical value for its assessment. For that purpose, traffic safety indicators are combined into a single numerical value by appropriate techniques in order to represent a grade of the traffic safety level. This paper contains, after the summary of contemporary tendencies in the evaluation of traffic safety levels, the analysis of methods used in the evaluation of traffic safety levels so far in Serbia with the emphasis on their values and deficiencies. Considering those analyses, this paper introduces a new method for traffic safety level evaluation the so called Benchmarked Traffic Safety Level (BTSL). BTSL implies selection of appropriate indicators, transformation of chosen indicators, assigning weights and aggregation. The proposed scale appliance enables traffic safety level to define for the territory, and also compares it with a similar one. BTSL provides a single numerical value so that to evaluate the traffic safety level for the territory, derived from the aggregation of previously transformed and ‘weighted’ three outcomes indicators and three safety performance indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The human factor is one of the most dominant causes of railway accidents. For example, human impact appears to be the main reason for 44% of railway accidents in the Republic of Serbia. Thus, a remarkable effort is undertaken to investigate human factors. Therefore, plenty of researchers have analyzed a human influence on railway accidents. This paper develops a model for forecasting the number of railway accidents caused by the human factor. The proposed model is based on the renewal theory and assumes that working time between the faults of a locomotive driver has exponential distribution (or another Erlang distribution of a higher order) characterized by parameter λ that is treated as a fuzzy dependant variable and considered as a function of job complexity, the exposure of locomotive drivers (i.e. time spent in driving) and a tendency of locomotive drivers to make mistakes. The application of the model to the population of 777 Serbian railway locomotive drivers provided encouraging results in predicting the number of railway accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents estimation of the traffic accident costs in Serbia, based on original dominant costs model. Dominant costs model uses human capital approach and this model is developed for simple and quick calculation of the traffic accidents costs, because other simple methods as 1 million rules, are not suitable for estimation of the traffic accident costs in the countries with a low GDP per capita. Knowing the costs of traffic accidents is of crucial importance for establishing traffic safety to the level defined by the size of costs made as a consequence of unsafely. So, politicians, decision makers and stakeholders in the field of traffic safety often need quick estimation of the traffic accident costs and economic effects of the particular measures which are applied for decreasing the number and severity of traffic accidents. The estimation of the level of the traffic accidents costs in Serbia, based on the official data (from the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Serbia) about traffic accidents in Serbia for 2008 is shown in this paper and the comparison between predicted and calculated value of the traffic accident costs for 2009 is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Within the transport sector, road transport is the largest source of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions. Greater use of vehicles that run on clean alternative fuels can contribute to reduce CO2 emissions. This paper gives special attention to the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses and their comparison with conventional diesel buses, which in countries such as Serbia have a dominant share. Justification of using CNG buses in order to mitigate climate changes is measured by realised annual and average external costs of CO2 emissions. These external costs provide a basis for future use of economic instruments by which negative impacts of transport on the environment can be limited. Research of CO2 emissions and external costs of CO2 emissions in intercity bus service was conducted for three technical-technological concepts of CNG buses in comparison to the two types of conventional diesel buses. Analysis was carried out according to four various scenarios that define different operating conditions on the road network of the Serbia. Obtained results show that CNG buses reduce annual external costs of CO2 emissions by 2...24% compared to conventional diesel buses. Obtained average external costs of CO2 emissions per 100 bus-kms show to what extent their changes are a result of changes of external costs of CO2 emissions and to what extent they are due to changes of operating conditions on the road network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays competition has been spread to supply chains, instead of individual enterprises. Therefore, beside evaluation of enterprise’s capabilities to manage business processes, it is important to assess capabilities for business process management at supply chain level. The purpose of the research presented in this paper is to point out the necessity of supply chain management maturity in implementation of best practice. Research methodology is based on supply chain management maturity models. Application of the Delphi method enabled usage of maturity model, adapted to the enterprises in Serbia. The value of the research precedes from unique combination of best practice elements for the assessment of supply chain management maturity level. The research results show that best practice elements are not very popular in the enterprises in Serbia. All enterprises are at the second and third maturity level. Bearing in mind that everything has to be improved continually, maturity models, proposed by different authors can be further developed by including certain statistical tools. The original contribution of this paper and its practical implication refer to including statistical tools, hierarchical cluster analysis and correlation, into maturity analysis, thus enabling creation of framework as a road-map for the improvement of supply chain management maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Saturation flow is the base rate in the procedure for optimizing traffic signal operation and determining the measure for effectiveness of intersection operation. Different approaches and structures of analytical value models indicate the complexity of the problem of determining the saturation flow value in real conditions. This paper presents the synthesis of the results and conclusions of studying the saturation flow rate phenomenon at signalised intersections in Serbia in the last thirty years, by applying various survey techniques. The surveys relate to straight lane saturation flow value, in the survey conditions mostly resembling the idealised conditions in which saturation flow can be generated. The obtained results indicate that there is a significant trend of changes in the base saturation flow value compared with those first referred in 1963 by Webster and Cobbe, change in the significance of impact factor on saturation flow value, and the necessity to determine them on the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, railway passenger flows are analyzed and a suitable modeling method proposed. Based on historical data composed from monthly passenger counts realized on Serbian railway network it is concluded that the time series has a strong autocorrelation of seasonal characteristics. In order to deal with seasonal periodicity, Seasonal AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) method is applied for fitting and forecasting the time series that spans over the January 2004 - June 2014 periods. Experimental results show good prediction performances. Therefore, developed SARIMA model can be considered for forecasting of monthly passenger flows on Serbian railways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze education through e-learning. The author presents an overview of some recent projects with focus on Serbia and uses their results to discuss advantages of using e-learning as an alternative opportunity and support to "face-to-face" education. From the author's viewpoint, it is believed that online learning will not replace face-to-face learning but still should be offered as a style of learning that suits students needs. Through the research done on this subject, it has been identified that online learning can assist in complementing studies when coupled with face-to-face learning. In addition, the author's findings suggest that without good policy and financial support there is no good interaction between e-learning (classroom learning )or face-to-face learning and e-learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presents the results of the impact of organizational culture on public relations in business organizations. The data were obtained from a survey of 415 respondents from 93 companies in Serbia. The following statistical methods were used: descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis and hierarchical regression analysis. Some of the most important conclusions of the research follow: In most cases, the organizational culture dimensions have a statistically significant and positive influence on the communication models of public relations (CMPR) dimensions and the organization -- public relations (OPR) dimensions; A favorable organizational culture (represented through the favorable values of the organizational culture dimensions) has a positive impact on two-way models of communication, especially the symmetrical model, as well as on most of the OPR dimensions. On the other hand, an unfavorable organizational culture encourages one-way communication and the organization's orientation solely for its own benefit; The Power Distance dimension acts in contrast to the other dimensions of organizational culture: high power distance impedes two-way communication and promotes the utility of the company, all of which causes public distrust and dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]