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The paper focuses on the importance of e-democracy and the introduction of information and communication technologies in democratic processes. Digitalisation significantly impacts citizens' involvement in e-participation and direct decision-making in developed societies. We want to show the current local and national levels based on comparisons of direct decision-making solutions and e-participatory tools in Austria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia. It should be emphasised that with the development of e- participation tools, Croatia, Greece, and Italy are ahead, while Austria and Slovenia are lagging behind the current trends in the citizen's direct decision making and the emergence of e- participation. This is mainly due to a lack of confidence in online security and a decline in interest in e-democracy, mostly in Slovenia.

Within the framework of tourist safety and assessment of the tourism destination, it is necessary to include health and hygiene in the research as a newer safety paradigm. The number and type of outbreaks of infectious diseases have increased over the last 30 years, and as global trade and travel increase, international disease spread is expected to grow. All stakeholders in a tourist destination must continuously work together to improve decision-making, coordination, and communication within and between the public and private sectors in terms of risk, travel advice and border measures. The study's main objectives are to investigate the impact of Covid- 19 on the changes in business models in the tourism industry of the Opatija Riviera and to create health safety paradigms that will play an influential role in protecting tourists and residents on the Opatija Riviera also in the post- Covid-19 period. Up until the development of COVID-19 pandemic Opatija Riviera was registering growing tourism turnover, mostly achieved by foreign tourists. Due to the current pandemic, it is necessary to rethink for the future in which direction to go, and how to adapt in order to attract tourists, and profile Opatija Riviera as a safe and healthy destination. As part of the case study, semi-structured interviews will be prepared with managers of tourist firms and public officers in Opatija riviera destination. Managers and officers will be questioned about the impact of Covid-19 on changes in health security strategies and their new role in business models (of touristic firms and riviera as an administrative region), implementations of solutions for protection and security, organisational changes, as well as future approaches to providing health care to tourists and hosts in the post-Covid 19 periods, when new outbreaks of previously unknown viruses or bacteria may occur. The study aimed to critically examine the Covid-19 phenomenon and its impact on health security and the changes in business models, security strategies and development policies of both tourism concepts and the destination itself, also due to possible new pandemics in the future.

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus reflected significantly on the world economy and particularly countries in which tourism is developed strongly. Based on the current pandemic situation and consequences that reflected the world tourism industry, this paper aims to analyse the implications on Croatian wellness tourism. The authors used an epistemological approach in order to form a conceptual model whose starting point is from the constructivist approach, which emphasises the researchers’ ability to construct new knowledge with the use of a conceptual research methodology which includes reviews of the current theoretical and empirical findings in wellness tourism and development in the post-19 period in Croatia. The conceptual model tried to provide a theoretical development framework that stimulates and enables a new construct. This study aims to define the impact of a pandemic caused by COVID-19 on the tourism and hospitality industry and present strategies that will limit its consequences, especially in wellness tourism. Based on the findings, developmental guidelines are presented to improve current Croatian wellness tourists’ offers and future development in the post-COVID-19.

PURPOSE-The consequences of the COVID-19 virus are visible, especially in countries with strong tourism sectors catering to foreign visitors, these countries in Europe, especially in Portugal and Croatia. For this, countries apply that they are disproportionately affected, as every million euros lost in tourism revenue can mean two to three million fewer sales for the industries that supply tourism. According to the pandemic situation and consequences for the tourism industry, this paper aims to analyse the consequences for the wellness tourism of the Republic of Croatia. According to the global pandemic situation and its impact on the tourism industry, it is clear that it will never be the same before the pandemic. Therefore, we prepared the following research question: What will be wellness tourism like after the pandemic and how to adapt the wellness tourism strategies to the post-pandemic situation? RESEARCH METHODS-This study aims to use the content analysis and key- words co-occurrence analyses for analyzing the content of touristic business reports, government strategies and policies, wellness companies’ strategies and scientific articles in tourism and hospitality. The goal of the content and key-words co- occurrence analyses is to define the impact of COVID-19 on tourism and hospitality and to present strategies to limit the consequences, especially in wellness tourism. Following the difficult situation, increasing the demand for foreign travel, and ensuring domestic tourism growth. Therefore, an investigation of this nature goes in-depth to identify changes in future tourism strategies. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-One of the important consequences of COVID-19 will be that it will accelerate the decline of the period of mass tourism. The post-COVID-19 period will be characterized by an increase in demand for individual travel, while a decline on the demand side for group travel is expected. The consequences of the pandemic affected the decline in income in Croatian wellness tourism. According to study findings, the wellness tourism companies will have to restructure and adopt the wellness tourism content according to the resilience sustainable solutions. Strategies will need to focus on combining the high-quality wellness offer that will include a complete health and hygiene control and the new customer demand situation in which tourists will increasingly seek genuine personal contact, so getting to know the locals and local cultures will no longer be so playful, visibly staged, and artificial. IMPLICATIONS-Based on this paper’s findings, the authors will present the developmental guidelines to improve other Croatian wellness tourists’ offer and further development in the post COVID- 19. The knowledge gathered can provide guidelines for further research that will later contribute to the theoretical and practical managerial policies for post-pandemic tourism wellness development strategies and concrete solutions based on resilience sustainable sources.

Purpose – paper analyses the most recent and most important scientific literature contributions in developing and managing European smart touristic destinations and how they impact urban sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to gain new knowledge about European smart tourist destinations with the use of the most recent data obtained from secondary sources. Methodology – The research uses bibliometric, topic analysis, and automated content analyses to determine smart European touristic destinations' key features. It was analyzed 66 scientific articles published in 36 scientific journals between 205 and 2020. Only those scientific journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI -EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A & HCI) and Web of Science - Emerging Sources Citation Index were selected. Findings – Results are segmented into ten sections: (1) cultural heritage, (2) smart city ; urban, (3) virtual reality, (4) mobile devices, (5) business ecosystem ; open innovation ; (6) human ; (7) smart tourism destinations ; communication technologies, (8) cultural heritage, (9) marketing and management, and (10) European regions and regional development. Each section is discussed in this article. Contribution – The study contributes the new knowledge about the smart European touristic destinations research phenomena.

The pandemic COVID 19 has actually brought tourist flows to a standstill in 2020 and caused a loss of 460 billion dollars worldwide. More than 75 million people are projected to lose their jobs globally, and according to the UNWTO, the cycle of recovering tourism to precrown levels is expected to take about five years. Tourism will certainly no longer be the same as we were before COVID-19. The tourism industry’s fundamental question is - what will tourism be like after the pandemic, and how to adapt to it? Using a Comparative Automated Content Analysis (ACA) approach, the article compares recent scientific work and determines the pandemic’s socio-economic consequences in tourism countries and the planned strategies for tourism recovery in the coming years.

The term corporate sustainability represents a crucial part of the concept of sustainable development. The main goal of the companies, which adopted corporate sustainability practice is to fulfil a sustainable development agenda and brings a balanced approach to economic and social progress and environmental management. The purpose of the article is to highlight the importance and issues of corporate sustainability in the context of awareness and approaches to social responsibility in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The paper aims to make order in the plurality of definitions of concept «corporate sustainability» and its practical understanding in terms of «corporate social responsibility». It does so through a literature review and the analysis of different attempts of definition. It identifies the main challenges these concepts bring with them., Cambio. Rivista sulle Trasformazioni Sociali, Vol. 10 No. 19 (2020): Intercepting and Modeling Global Change?

System dynamics is a whole-system modelling and learning approach, useful for tackling non- linear problems, such as sustainable urban development. The purpose of this paper is to review system dynamics applications in the simulation of sustainable urban development over a period from 2005 to 2017. The analysis reveals that the number of applications of system dynamics modelling in the area of urban sustainable development increased in the analysed period. Research has changed its focus from the modelling of environmental problems to more complex models, portraying the multidimensional socio-economic processes that have an impact on the sustainability of urban development. Analysed case studies most often use the behaviour reproduction test for model validation, but without a unified approach. In most cases, modelling has been done in China, Germany and the USA, while urban development in the Eastern European countries, Africa and Latin America has not often been investigated. This paper indicates the knowledge gaps and suggests future research directions. Papers that report the use of system dynamics modelling reveal a wide range of applications in urban sustainability. The analysis shows significant emphasis on environmental problems, while the interest for modelling social problems has been increasing during the last several years. Most of the modelled problems examine the sustainability of resources (land, water) and waste management, which are used for insights into the reasons for the system behaviour, forecasting future behaviour and policy testing. The presented models were developed in most cases for the purpose of understanding the phenomena examined, as well as the future use of the models in policy planning. This brings us back to the need for greater stakeholder involvement, not only in the initial phase, but also during the whole modelling process, which could increase understanding, use and ownership of the models in the future, and thus increase their practical application.

This article discusses the importance of knowledge management and employee turnover, using the example of selected Slovenian organisations, in particular, technology parks. The purpose of this article is to point out statistical characteristics between employee turnover and certain selected independent variables. The empirical research was conducted on a population of 667 Slovenian organisations gathered from the subjects of an innovative environment database, and a further sample of 51 chosen technology parks from the A group. By implementing multivariate regression analysis, we sought to examine whether knowledge requirements and knowledge transfer paths in these organisations have a statistically significant influence on employee turnover. The aim of this article is to present the results of empirical research that defines the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the influence of knowledge management on employee turnover. The results have shown that the importance of intellectual and social capital, intangible capital assets and their continuous measurement must be acknowledged within an organisation. V prispevku obravnavamo pomen menedžmenta znanja in fluktuacijo zaposlenih na primeru izbranih slovenskih organizacij, natančneje tehnoloških parkov. Namen prispevka je na osnovi empirične raziskave izvedene na populaciji 667 slovenskih organizacij zajetih iz evidence subjektov inovativnega okolja in nadaljnjem vzorcu 51 preučenih tehnoloških parkov iz skupine A, prikazati statistične značilnosti med fluktuacija kadrov ter nekaterimi izbranimi neodvisnimi spremenljivkami. Z izvedeno multivariantno regresijsko analizo smo preverjali statistično značilen vpliv med zahtevami po znanju in potmi za prenos znanjaznotraj preučevanih organizacij na fluktuacijo zaposlenih. Cilj prispevka je podati empirične izsledke, ki opredeljujejo razvojkonceptualnega okvira za razumevanje vpliva menedžmenta znanja na fluktuacijo zaposlenih. Izsledki preučevanja kažejo, da je znotraj neke organizacije pomembno izpostaviti pomen intelektualnega in socialnega kapitala, neopredmetenih osnovnih sredstev ter stalno merjenje le-teh.

Innovation and the creation of new knowledge are key drivers for the success of organizations (Ilinitch, D’Aveni & Lewin, 1996 ; European Commission, 2010). Research differentiates between two types of innovations (Ettlie et al., 1984): Incremental innovations are characterized by only minor changes or improvements (e.g., adapting or adding small features), while radical innovations entail changes on a more fundamental level. In most cases radical innovations are not just linear extrapolations or adaptive extensions of past experiences, products, services, or business models, but rather fundamentally new and future- relevant/driven (Peschl & Fundneider, 2013). Radical innovations can open up completely new categories, new knowledge spaces, or even markets (O’Connor & DeMartino, 2006), however, it is unclear how they can be achieved (O’Connor & Ayers, 2005).Early-warning system is of great importance, specifically due to its possibility to improve organization’s performance. Few studies employ early-warning systems in the field of management. The aim of our study is to conduct literature review on early-warning management systems, to examine geographical area of the study, journal, where the article was published and areas in management where they are used and define critical factors of emergency, useful for early- management systems. The findings are based on meta-analysis. Content analysis of the articles was used to summarize and compare qualitative data. Results indicated that early- warning management systems are mostly used in the field of tourism, project and strategic management. Critical factors of emergency, useful for early- management systems, are management issues (experiences, strategic approach), rapid and instant response and early recognition of the problem. Contribution of our study is the widened understanding of usage of early-warning management systems and defining its critical factors of emergency. Further studies should be focused on deeper investigation of this topic and could include case studies of early-warning systems in management with qualitative data.

The new forms of smart and artificial intelligent technologies present a great risk to the society (political – ethical challenge). For this reason the ability of the society's decision makers to prepare an appropriate ethical response is needed. The paper is focused on the outline the main social, economic, and ethical issues, raised by the faster development of the smart and artificial intelligent products or services in everyday life processes. Smart technologies can today explore their environment, communicate with each other or with humans and help their users. The development and implementation of the smart technologies in the human environment is and it will be influenced by social and economic changes and opening new social and ethical problems in the near future, because smart technologies are now: (i) invading into the sensitive human areas and allow others to come easier for sensible private information in real time ; (ii) causing job losses ; (iii) replacing humans for tasks such as driving and more demanding (e.g. management of the industrial processes). The paper presents the issues of technology and human sciences. It is going for a complex subject which is quite often misrepresented, some of the fundamental concepts relating ethics in science and technology are recalled and clarified. At the conclusion of the paper social responsible model for implementation of the smart technology in human environment will be presented. The purpose of the model is to provide ethical and social norms and thus protect human before the socioeconomic changes caused with the high penetration of smart technologies in human everyday life.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of innovation in tourism planning for the countryside development and adaptation to an ever-changing rural socioeconomic environment and its successful management. This paper addresses tourism and tourism planning in rural areas on the example of the organization of tourism in three rural regions in Slovenia and Croatia. In order to accelerate the rate of innovating the countryside tourism facilities, it is important to understand the complexity of many different perspectives that have to be considered. Rural areas are affected by different problems, such as ageing population, emigration, lack of employment opportunities, and dependence on agriculture and forestry. The research examines critical factors that have impact on the role of tourism in the rural region development and its spatial potentials that can help to revive the countryside. The paper contributes to the discussion about the importance of the development of non-agricultural SMEs in rural areas and entrepreneurship engagement in sustainable and responsible tourism. The topic is relevant for designing new business models for the progress of the rural regions.

This paper is focused on the importance and influence of the innovations in the time of the fourth industry revolution for the creation of value added in tourism industry. Innovative technology solutions solve problems in a tourist destination, as in the case of the effects of climate change as well as the revival of cultural heritage. New products that are connected with the Internet (e.g. Internet of things) and digital solution services invites small and medium sized firms, and other relevant actors, to apply for funding of co- operative tourism innovation projects. The proposals should primarily focus on the development of innovative products, services and concepts to accelerate the tourism sector. Innovative products and services form the framework of marketing efforts to encourage consumers to decide for the purchase and thus affect the sales success of tourist firms. Innovations that are intended to satisfy the wishes and needs of consumers, based on existing knowledge. Usually it is a technological innovation with features that provide additional solutions compared with the existing ones. Firms want to attract customers who have different needs from the existing customers. The contribution of the paper is mainly conceptual. With the development of the digital innovations (web 2.0., web 3.0., internet, the internet of things) that is central to the new industrial revolution, has led to “Industry 4.0” in tourism. The aim of this paper is to provide answers to RQ1: To present the known theory and practices of innovations in tourism ; RQ2: To investigate the changes that will result from Industry 4.0 in tourism.

In the context of sustainable growth, sustainable tourism (ST) is represented as a set of policies which ensure minimizing negative impacts on the environment, cultural and natural attractions. Resources are used so that will remain available on a long-term. Formulation of economic strategies that include the development of ST provide a substantive basis for the development of programs with which it is possible to obtain foreign investors and candidates on international development projects. The positive effects of ST in the region will affect on the development of rural areas, employment in the local environment, the performance of tourism enterprises and tourist satisfaction. According to the trend of low growth of the economic and social factors, it should be noted that ST is not only intended to make a profit and protecting the environment, but care must be given to the development of local communities (non profit activities). This can be achieved with the participation of local stakeholders in the processes of implementing ST. The policy of ST includes the protection of the environment. An example of good practice presents the ecotourism as a form of ST. The goal of this conceptually constructed paper is to achieve the understanding of how to integrate cultural and natural heritage of the Western Balkans in the framework of the development potentials that provide ST. Based on the analysis of the data obtained, it was developed the holistic ST model of integration of ST development scheme in the rural areas for rural areas. In the model are pointed out factors that significantly affect the development of ST and within this on rural ares development.

The goal of this conceptual paper is to draw attention to the problems caused by the rapid growth of the global economy, coupled with high population growth and excessive exploitation of natural resources. It is necessary to be aware that the global economy will not be able to grow at the actual speed in the long term. A paradigm shift in production and consumption is therefore necessary to avoid the collapse of ecosystems and the concurrent reduction of stocks of natural resources. This is the reason why capitalism has to take a new direction towards a sustainable and naturally harmonized development model.

The purpose of this paper is to study the importance of sustainable development in the innovative economy. Knowledge-based processes in the innovative economy seem to open up several new avenues to be explored in the direction of sustainability. The theory of the innovative economy, in contrast to the neoclassical theory, is not based on the accumulation of financial capital as the main driver of economic growth in the knowledge- based economy but in greater extend on intellectual capital. This new business logic assumes that the rate of economic growth in the innovation economy depends on the products and/or services that are incurred predominantly as a result of knowledge integration. The emergence of the internet in the early 90s affected the growth of dot.com online businesses and the emergence of the third wave of capitalism. In the current economic crisis and recession, the consequences of low economic growth will further affect the changes in the global markets. This is reflected in different behaviour of consumers and resulting in the development of new business models, which include the concepts of sustainability. The paper examines critical factors that influence the role of innovative technologies in organizational change to ensure sustainability. Focus on sustainability directs corporate behaviour towards the environmental protection, which presumes the fulfilment of organizational and human needs. Therefore, current demands can be satisfied in the present, but the resources for their fulfilment will be preserved for future generations. In order to realise this goal, companies must invest in assets that provide sustainable development. Companies that comply with the sustainability concept are expected to create greater value. This conceptual paper contributes to ongoing discussion about increasingly important role of sustainable development as a major concern for the European Union, companies and NGO’s that have to develop new policies in order to foster sustainable growth of the society.