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Abstract This article presents a novel model for understanding the structure and dynamics of business networks, emphasizing the role of propensities to connect and cooperate as key drivers. The model incorporates behavioral elements and imperfect information updates, departing from traditional rational actor approaches. Starting from the theoretical background, several propositions are outlined, such as dynamism, connection choices, costs, strategy selection, information update, and the update based on experiences. Through simulations, the study successfully demonstrates that the proposed model effectively captures essential characteristics of business networks, including reciprocity, complexity, adaptation, and cooperation. The findings highlight the significance of propensities to connect and cooperate in shaping network structure, evolution, and stability. Particularly, higher propensities to cooperate and connect lead to denser and more cohesive networks, fostering reciprocity, stability, and network performance. The increase only in connection propensities does not have the same result. The lower cooperation propensities result in scale-free networks and asymmetrical distribution of cumulative payoffs. This highlights a crucial insight: different levels of cooperation lead to distinct network properties. Practical implications, increasingly relevant with the rise of digital platforms and metaverse, suggest targeted interventions to enhance network effectiveness, such as incentivizing cooperation, reducing relationship costs, and promoting a culture of trust and collaboration. While providing valuable insights, certain limitations exist, such as not considering the influence of preexisting economic or social structures, equalizing costs and payoffs among actors, and overlooking specific reasons for network connections. Future research should address these refinements and explore their effects on network structure and process characteristics.

This study aims to enhance the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) model by incorporating the aggregation approach and addressing the research gap concerning interpersonal conflicts within this framework. Building on the theoretical background and placing interpersonal conflicts in the JD-R framework, we adopted a quantitative research design, utilizing a structured probabilistic sample of 343 elementary school employees in Croatia who responded to the COPSOQ III questionnaire distributed online. Furthermore, validating the COPSOQ III questionnaire in Croatian ensures the relevance and applicability of the findings in this cultural context. We employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model and establish a second-level higher-order model, assessing and analyzing the relationships within the JD-R model. The results indicate that conflicts and quarrels, as proxies for interpersonal conflicts, thrive when perceived job resources are high, and job demands are low, leading to improved health outcomes. These findings suggest that interpersonal conflicts may serve as a mechanism for mobilizing resources to cope with job demands, emphasizing the importance of effectively managing conflicts for healthier and more productive work relationships and environment.

Awareness and human factors are becoming ever more important in cybersecurity, particularly in the context of small companies that may need more resources to deal with cybersecurity effectively. This paper introduces a theoretical framework for game analysis of the role of awareness in strategic interactions between the manager and a hacker. A computable approach is proposed based on Bayesian updating to model awareness in a cybersecurity context. The process of gaining awareness considers the manager’s perception of the properties of the hacker’s actions, game history, and common knowledge. The role of awareness in strategy choices and outcomes is analyzed and simulated, providing insights into decision-making processes for managers and highlighting the need to consider probabilistic assessments of threats and the effectiveness of countermeasures. The accuracy of the initial frequencies plays a significant role in the manager’s success, with aligned frequencies leading to optimal results. Inaccurate information on prior frequencies still outperforms complete uncertainty, emphasizing the value of any available intelligence. However, the results suggest that other awareness modeling approaches are necessary to enhance the manager’s agility and adaptiveness when the prior frequencies do not reflect the immediate attacker’s type, indicating the need for improved intelligence about cyber-attacks and examinations of different awareness modeling approaches.

Purpose: The role of consumer ethnocentrism (CE) in choosing a hotel is still not well explored. This research aims to identify if there is a relationship between CE and the preference of Romanian/Croatian respondents for a hotel belonging to a domestic chain vs. international (foreign) chain. Methodology: Exploratory and descriptive research was performed. The data were collected through an online survey, aiming for a quota sample stratified by age and gender. The resulting sample comprises 714 and 832 valid questionnaires in Romania and in Croatia, respectively. Factor analysis, nonparametric correlation analysis, and hypothesis testing were performed. Results: “Defensive patriotism” and “protectionism” were identified as CE factors. CE is moderately expressed for Croatian and Romanian respondents. Respondents from two countries with higher CE factors prefer a national rather than an international hotel. Customers who grew up in the communist era have higher ethnocentrism scores on defensive patriotism and protectionism and prefer national hotels more than those formed in the post-communist period. Conclusion: The results of this research relate to the previously revealed regularity that ethnocentric consumers prefer buying national rather than foreign goods and services. The same is now confirmed for respondents’ hotel preferences when engaging in domestic tourism, contributing to closing a research gap. However, the results indicate that polycentric consumers might evaluate hotels by other criteria and not necessarily by their association with an international chain. In addition, in the case of rechecking post-COVID-19 results, the results presented here can serve as a pre-COVID-19 baseline.

This paper aims to explore conflict as a process that includes antecedents, management strategy, and outcomes while examining the role of affective states in an elementary school working environment. After a theoretical overview and systematization of the conflict elements, a questionnaire was developed that satisfies internal reliability and construct validity. Conflicts at the workplace were modeled with Bayesian SEM, and the results point out the prominent role of affective states in conflicts. Findings confirmed that (1) affective states affect the conflict management strategy choice; (2) different conflict management strategies lead to different conflict consequences; and (3) different affective states lead to differently perceived conflict consequences/outcomes. In addition, we conclude that conflicts with dominantly positive and negative affective states behave structurally differently. The revealed role of affective states facilitates future intervention possibilities in education about conflict management strategies and control of emotions and affective states. Raising awareness about affective states’ role in the conflict might increase mutual un-understanding and contribute to a healthy school social environment as a safe space for learning, sharing ideas, and joint actions toward a common goal.

The Croatian Fiscalization Law implemented in Croatia in 2013 created dynamic interaction and significant consequences for business and the Government. We examine the influence of the Fiscalization Law on decision making of businesses and its consequences. The paper provides an overview and analysis of the implementation process, business decisions, interactions between business and Tax Administration, as well as the consequences. Financial benefits of tax evasion form a clear motivation for businesses, but noncompliance could lead to losses due to penalties. Given the decision-making under risk, the interaction between a business and Tax Administration should be formed as a game model enriched with empirical data. Given the empirical data, while businesses show tendency to deviate, Government generates gain. Hence, it is necessary to examine the equilibrium: how much deviation will the Government tolerate before raising penalties, and which amount of risk will business be willing to take in order to evade taxes.

This paper deals with one of the possible methodological approaches to an empirical examination of game awareness. Such an outline should enable the gathering of a deeper understanding of individuals’ awareness. The questionnaire is based on a scenario technique, and it is focused on game awareness in situations with possible strategic interactions. The goal is to assess the instrument regarding its reliability and validity. Internal reliability is assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. A k-nn analysis was used to estimate divergent construct validity and criterion validity, and nonparametric factor analysis was used to estimate convergent construct validity. The questionnaire satisfies the requirements of reliability and validity. Moreover, there is an indication that each of the eight scenarios may be used separately, as they also meet the criteria for reliability and validity. Possible practical and theoretical implications involve questionnaire use as a basis for educational intervention, other instruments’ development, as well as for the collection and publication of behavioral insights about game awareness. Behavioral insights should enrich the theory and incite behavioral game theory models of game awareness and its implications.

The applications of social network analysis to the world tourism network are scarce, and a research update is long overdue. The goal of this research is to examine the topology of the world tourism network and to discuss the meaning of its characteristics in light of the current situation. The data used for the analysis comprise 193 target countries, 242 source countries, and 17,022 links, which is an overall 1,448,285,894 travels in 2018. Social network analysis is applied to the data to determine network topological and diffusion properties, as well as the network structure and its regularities (does it behave more as a social or a technological/biological network?). While results presented in this paper give a thorough insight into the world tourism network in the year 2018, they are only a glimpse in comparison to the possibilities for further research.

Budget allocation of the couples belongs to the field of family finance management, but also represents a source of dispute among them, which directed the research of this topic towards family therapy and psychology. This paper will offer quantitative approach, implementing Cournot’s duopoly model to a situation of a couple’s budget allocation. That will emphasis the underlying economic principles, as well as show that there exists an equilibrium solution or an equilibrium set of possible solutions.

In everyday life, games begin inconspicuously, leaving an individual to stumble upon their assessment of a situation. An unaware individual is unlikely to exhibit strategic behavior in a given situation, which highlights the importance of awareness examination. The purpose of this exploratory analysis is to examine awareness and assessment of a game’s existence at the individual level. That requires examination of respondents’ detection (as an indication of their awareness) and identification (as an indication of their assessment) of game elements in game-like situations and their relation to awareness of the game existence. The empirical data is collected using a scenario technique and is statistically analyzed. The results show that the respondents are, on average, at least partially aware of possibility for strategic interaction (even in vague situations). The revealed regularities point out to the relation of the game elements to game existence belief, but also indicate the presence of psychological biases and information utilization issues. For example, the respondents assign different levels of belief to game existence regarding possible losses or gains. Research limitations involve the use of a small convenience sample and lead to suggestions for results validation in future research. Possible implications of the results are discussed.