In the field of operations management, most decisions are seen as being based on measurement results. However, every measurement has some uncertainty and therefore managerial decisions can be incorrect. Measurement uncertainty can cause particularly large losses in the case of maintenance decisions, where decision error can cause the breakdown of the entire production or service process. Taking measurement uncertainty into consideration the losses can be decreased. The standards, technical reports and guides dealing with measurement uncertainty use probability approach and focus on the metrology aspect. They do not support a risk based decision based on the forecast of the observed characteristics. In the proposed risk based model the realized (or lost) revenue is treated along with the occurred costs in order to maximize the profit with the help of analytic calculation and simulations. This paper suggests that by treating measurement results as a time series the time of probable failure can be predicted at a given confidence level, this can support the scheduling of maintenance tasks. The uncertainty of measurement and the uncertainty of forecasting can be treated in the same model.

The paper presents results from a study, conducted in the beginning of the year, with the purpose to determine how the human resource management function is realized in Bulgarian tourist organizations and specifically to identify possible problems. The study includes fifty accidentally chosen organizations from the hotel keeping branch, of approximately equal size (from three to five star hotels with over 200 employees). Consecutively are presented the practices, connected with basic activities, composing the human resource management, as well as summary results from the analysis given as recommendations for the management. It has established as a general conclusion that the practices connected with HRM in the investigated hotels, have some positive sides, but dominate the negative aspects that need an elaboration. The taking of actions directed towards improvement of HRM in these organizations is a consequence from the awareness that: 1) the quality of the tourist product in the hotel keeping is in direct dependence on the quality of the human resource, i.?. the policy for its management and 2) in the conditions of a global economic and financial crisis, not only the survival of the organizations but their prosperity as well, are connected mostly with identification and preservation of the quality part of their personnel.

Employee resistance to change draws on conventional knowledge and prior research. Hence resistance is presupposed before a merger. In the literature advice is given on how to minimize resistance to change. A main recommendation is to inform and communicate extensively to down-play feelings of anxiety and support involvement. Nevertheless, post-merger integrations are known to be problematic and seldom achieve the predicted success. This longitudinal case-study follows a merger from the administrators’ perspective. Prior empirical findings were promising for the post-merger implementation and showed administrators who welcomed the merger. Furthermore, they were happy with the overall merger information and found themselves fully participating in the change processes. The recent findings (after the merger) showed that the administrators experienced lowered productivity, higher fragmentation of the workday and less involvement. Furthermore, the information and communication had been changed after the merger. The human factor is important to acknowledge for preventing post-merger failure and the findings from this longitudinal case-study highlights the importance of maintaining positive employee perceptions after a merger. The longitudinal case-study aims at adding to the knowledge base on facilitating post-merger implementations.

Customer’s culture is a very important element in the international marketing. Raising global competition pressure doesn’t allow companies to ignore culture codes of target groups. Customer’s decision making process about buying a new housing is very complicated. Modern consumer’s preferences are rooted in the mists of the time when our ancestors struggled with nature for their lives; and stay in the field of unconscious. When a modern human buys a home he unconsciously seeks for the same attributes that his ancestors were seeking long time ago. This set of attributes is a culture code for Home. New trends like universality and pragmatism make just temporally changes in consumers’ brains. Producers of such permanent products as houses must pay attention to permanent values not to trends. The main purpose of our research is to find out unconscious culture codes that influence a customer’s decision making process about buying a new housing. The primary data from Turkey, Czech Republic and Russia were collected using in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted among 17 Turkish, 25 Czech and 6 Russian, minimum age of 30, using simple random sampling technique. For the purpose of our research we have used Conceptual analysis of the data gained. In result, we have identified common for each ethnic group patterns. They are Cleanness for Turkey, Nature for Czech Republic and Heat for Russia. Finally, we have made suggestions regarding application of the results to the Marketing mix.

Today, more and more businesses depend on communications for their success since a well-organized communication system is shown to be an important factor in stimulating worker satisfaction in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to assess organizational communication and its impact on worker satisfaction in organizational workplace. The paper examines three Ghanaian organizations in the formal sector using a quantitative survey of ninety respondents to gain information for the study. The chi-square test was used with cross-tabulation of the independent and dependent variables to test and answer the hypothesis and research questions formulated for the study. Findings show that there is a significant relationship between efficient organizational communication and employee satisfaction. Findings also show that organizational communication has a positive impact on employee performance. Analysis of the findings further reveals that workers prefer good leadership communication behavior because it has positive effects on workers in organizations. The study proposes that organizations in the formal sector will achieve their objectives if they pay proper attention to the communication processes through efficient organizational communication in the workplace.

This study examines the impact of the adoption of software tools for Financial Management support on the Financial Management function. In addition to that, it was intended to study the level of contribution these technologies can bring to a company. The study was supported by research conducted on a sample of 46 small and 39 medium-sized manufacturing companies in the Czech Republic. The primary technique of data collection was a questionnaire distributed via mail, followed by further telephone and e-mail support. Collected data were explored by correlation analysis to determine the dependency between the use Financial Management supporting ICT and economic results of companies. For medium-sized companies has been established low to moderate dependence. Therefore in this case the use of soft ICT to some extent contributes to better economic performance. In contrast for small companies the dependence was negligible and sometimes even slightly negative, the use of software tools here can thus be counterproductive.

Network planning methods for project planning and scheduling have been applied for more than fifty years including CPM, PDM, PERT and GERT (Fondahl, 1961; Fulkerson, 1962; Kelley and Walker, 1959; PMI, 2006; Pritsker, 1966), which can be widely applied to project planning fromareas as diverse as construction and RandD. However, these network planning methods are not very appropriate in cases where IT, innovation or product development are involved. There are some shortcomings when using network planning methods for scheduling these kinds of projects, because these methods cannot handle the importance of the task realizations. They cannot solve the problem, when some tasks have to be left out from the project because of the constraints, or when the completion order of tasks can be different. In this paper new matrix-based project planning methods are introduced which illustrate how all possible solutions can be determined in two steps based on the Project Expert Matrix. Firstly those tasks are selected, which have to be or can be realized during the project. Afterwards the dependencies (the sequence of the chosen tasks) are determined taking the project constraints into account. The possible solutions can be ranked and the most probable solution can be chosen which can be realized within the given constraints. This method can be a useful tool for project managers as a part of an expert system.

The researcher examines the existence and nature of inter-firm relationships between tourism stakeholders within various Bulgarian tourist destinations and how they relate to the competitiveness of the destination. The purpose of the study is to analyze the degree of cluster relationships and their importance for the strategic management of tourist destinations. In the course of the study representatives from 16 Bulgarian regions were interviewed and asked about the level of cooperation between the tourism participants. Based on this data the regions were grouped according to the level of perceived cluster collaboration, as well as according to the importance given to this cooperation. As a result, inferences about the key obstacles, as well as key factors and best practices for increased cooperation in tourist destinations can be made and can be incorporated into future development policies. The analysis indicates that the majority of the Bulgarian municipalities realizes the benefits of cluster relationships but so far have not been able or willing to extract any benefits from them. There is a need for a high profile tourist destination that can serve as an example of good strategic positioning achieved through the formation of clusters, public-private partnerships and increased inter-firm cooperation on the local level. Managing networks is an essential managerial challenge for the contemporary tourist destination. Understanding clusters, their structure, processes and development is essential to the successful strategic management of a tourist destination in the 21st century.

Nowadays disciplines of maintenance management are widely applicable in other fields of science as well. This paper shows the possible uses of maintenance strategies in connection with inter-corporate cooperation by determining the relations between procurer and supplier. The objective of the paper is to support the CEOs in describing the business processes maintenance system and its attributes in the company. The research is based on a survey attended by the CEOs of more than 260 companies from different operational fields in Hungary. The basic theory of the research is that the inner operations of a company are driven by the principles of some sort of maintenance strategies or a combination of those. Based on this theory the research answers the question of whether these companies can be integrated into clusters and how they can conclude the expectation systems of the members of a certain cluster towards the suppliers. The paper also shows which corporate culture types are more or less resistant to different failure types of the business processes such as misuse fault, manufacturing fault, systematic fault, etc.

The increasingly competitive higher educational environment compels the management of universities and colleges to assign high priority to an overall maximisation of client services. Consequently, while academic leaders must become familiar with the aspects of on-line communication much favoured by today’s younger generation, the intensification and improvement of the quality of available on-line services cannot be imagined without reliable information on the Internet use habits and behaviour of clients. The managers and administrators of Hungarian college and university websites are mostly unfamiliar with the web-related conduct or habits of their customers as in case of long-running web-pages based on an unchanging structure only basic visitor statistics are available at best. Yet marketing communication decisions should be based on information reflecting real website-consumer traits acquired via a more professional analysis. Data mining is one such decision-making support mechanism. Data mining models are capable of revealing and predicting information hidden beneath the respective critical mass. Therefore inspired by the methodology of marketing science this type of research concentrates on the segmentation of on-line consumers via the elaboration of visitor clusters. The present article provides a scientific overview and analysis of the main difficulties related to cluster construction, especially the development of the relevant algorithmic forms. The successful application of the model provides much-needed reliable and vital support to the institutional decision making process. Thus pertinent data yielded by cluster research can facilitate more effective on-line service customized to the needs of the users.

We can surely assert that over the last two decades a very significant attention has been paid to management. It is great that more and more attention is paid to the systemic approach in management (Robinson, 1996; Jackson, 2003; Bellinger, 2004; Cyrus, 2010). It is obvious, that there are many approaches to management, for example, problem solving style, situational approach, effective steering etc. And not only to management, but also to adjacent, management related spheres. Systemic approach is reasonably considered to be as cornerstone to management. On the one hand, this is bound to common systemic society life changes. Such topics as knowledge economy, learning society, information society and so on… are constantly accentuated. On the other hand, in some countries management as a science was basically “beyond the boundaries” of cognition. First of all, this can be said about East and Central Europe countries, in other words, still called post-soviet countries up to now. Though, the latter term is neither true nor full of sense in many respects. Not without a reason, in the public discourse of these countries the opinion is still vital that the manager is the one who is hardly able to do a thing himself. Even quite practically we can analyse a simple example. Social science field study programmes “have been in the leading position” in Lithuanian higher education for almost two decades already. It is interesting, that in many cases, fewer difficulties in studying, is pointed out as the main motive. We can agree with Gary Hamel (2007), that today more than ever, organisations need brave management innovations. Modern management model orientated to control and productivity doesn’t suit in the world where business success is determined by adjustment and creativity. Thus, it is believed that discussions on these mentioned and not mentioned management questions will go on in these journal pages. One thing is obvious, that values become one of the most significant and perspective instruments of management effectiveness and optimisation. Value institutionalisation in the organisations is one of the most important guarantors of their effective activity.

It is crucial for a credible decision making theory to provide unique answers for the alternatives of a decision. However, different methods and algorithms devised in order to elicit true priority vectors from intuitive judgments give different priority vectors, especially when judgments are inconsistent what constantly takes place in the real life. One could deduce that such variety of results that a potential decision maker can obtain violates the uniqueness requirement mentioned above and therefore is seemed unacceptable. On the other hand, it is known that Eigenvalue Method, commonly applied in the Analytic Hierarchy Process, captures transitivity in matrices that are not consistent in the unique way. That could lead to a conclusion that maybe the Eigenvalue Method is necessary and sufficient to facilitate credible decision making based on priority weighting followed by inconsistent matrices comprising pairwise comparison judgments. However, the Eigenvalue Method, despite of obvious advantages, has also few disadvantages that cannot be neglected. A research described in this article gives rise to a new method for priority vectors deriving which coincides with the Eigenvalue Method but avoids its drawbacks.

This research paper presents the principals’ practices in delegating responsibility to teachers in public secondary schools in Kenya. A random sample of 20 secondary schools was used where 120 teachers filled questionnaires, and 20 principals from the selected schools were interviwed. Both the questionnaire and interview guide were designed based on six research questions. The data were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The study revealed that responsibilities related to financial decisions were not delegated. Teachers needed to consult before making any decisions on delegated responsibilities. There was little preparation of teachers for delegated responsibility; had limited opportunity to attend seminars and staff development programmes; little support was given to them, and had little or no guidance from the principals. Lack of finances, inadequate training, understaffing, and lack of cooperation among the teachers constrained the process of delegation. It is suggested, among other recommendations, that schools should be adequately financed and staffed, while motivation and staff development programmes need to enhancement in order toimprove the effectiveness of the delegation process.