In recent decades, business conditions have changed dramatically. In the global competitive environment, enterprises as business systems (BSs) can survive in the long term by permanently improving their business. Usually, BSs have limited resources and they face hard conditions; but they can significantly improve their business results if they manage their business operations better. The new challenges require a thorough innovation of management in general, including operations management (OM) as management of their own business operations. Generally, we can define OM as a synergetic entity of the design, operations, and improvement of the internal and external organizational, technical, informational, resources, and other systems that create product and service combinations in any type of enterprise. But in theory and business practice, we can find different approaches to research on OM and different definitions of OM. Therefore, the main interest-based and science-based dilemmas of modern OM include the questions of how to more holistically define OM and how to more holistically understand different definitions of OM. We see a possible solution to these dilemmas in a requisitely holistic consideration of the simultaneous existence of different understanding of OM for different purposes.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11161372
This paper explored Slovenian entrepreneurs' personal characteristics to understand the existing gender gap in transitional countries, testing the proposed model among small and medium-sized company owners (N = 201; 32.3% female, 67.7% male). The research operationalized entrepreneurs' characteristics according to psychological and non-psychological motivation factors; the former resulted in four types of Slovenian entrepreneurs while the latter was divided into human and social capital. Significant differences emerged among genders related to certain psychological motivation factors and social capital categories, but not human capital. Women remain an unexploited source of entrepreneurship; thus, Slovenia should establish effective mechanisms to promote female entrepreneurship.
COBISS.SI-ID: 10980636
In the management literature there is limited empirical evidence as to how internal and external oriented enterprise culture impacts market (customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, market share and sales volume) and financial performance. The present research gives clear empirical insight into the importance of both cultures as prerequisites of market and financial performance. Considering the theories and research observations presented in this paper, we can state that organizational culture, with its values and norms, is essential for ensuring the long term success of an enterprise. The present article shows the research conclusions on the impact of enterprise culture on the success of the enterprises observed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11108636
The chapter discusses issues relating to the importance of managing strategic outsourcing relationships and the role of entrepreneurial adaptation and learning. Managing the outsourcing relationship is incorporated mostly in the outsourcing process itself, and no special attention is paid to it, although it is crucial for the effectiveness of the outsourcing relationship. Such an approach neglects the importance of governing, supervising, and developing the relationship with the outsourcing provider. The chapter contributes to better understanding of the importance of knowledge management related to managing tacit dimensions on companies’ level cooperation. The most important element of the strategic outsourcing relationship is knowledge management as both parties must share their knowledge to jointly create and exploit a common knowledge lexicon. As any knowledge base consists of tacit and explicit knowledge and the explicit knowledge is relatively easy to share, special attention must be paid to tacit knowledge. The main prerequisite for sharing tacit knowledge is to make it clear to the partner what can be done by investing enough time for the sharing and internalization of tacit knowledge. Participants involved in outsourcing activities not only learn from each other, but they also need to unlearn obsolete knowledge and skills contained in procedures, routines, and ways of doing business from the pre-outsourcing period. Sharing tacit knowledge is a demanding task, but its unlearning is far more difficult. In the era of ever-increasing globalization of outsourcing, the management of knowledge—especially its tacit dimension—is becoming one of the key drivers of competitiveness. To overcome the perpetual elusiveness of tacit knowledge, we presented a conceptual model that could help manage the strategic outsourcing relationships and contribute to the creation of a common knowledge lexicon for outsourcing partners.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11068700
Purpose - In the global competitive environment, managers of organizations must permanently rethink and renew their work, especially about the use of different managerial tools. A selection of suitable management tools for organization requires consideration of characteristics of the known tools, comparison of different tools, and consideration of demands and conditions of the organizations. But direct comparison of different management tools is not possible because of their content-related and methodological differences. In management theory, various authors tried to consider the use of management tools more deeply. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of important organizational factors on usage of single management tools in Slovenian organizations. Thus, we consider: 1) usage patterns of management tools in different areas worldwide, 2) the influence of single organizational factors - i.e. education, position, and working years, on the usage of management tools in Slovenian organizations, and 3) the influence of a linear combination of selected factors on usage of management tools in Slovenian organizations. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative analysis is applied on the basis of the selected cognitions from Management, and Organization. The quantitative analysis includes desk research about the management tools, and analysis of the results from a survey about management tools in Slovenian organizations in 2010. In examining the impact of the considered organizational factors (separately and in combination) on management tools we use linear regression analysis to predict the influence of single factors and linear combination of the selected factors on the use of selected management tools. AMOS 17.0 was used for analysis. Findings - Intensity of management tools usage in Slovenian organizations is similar to the global patterns, while patterns of their usage are rather different. Examination of factors influencing usage of the top five management tools in Slovenian organizations reveal: education has the strongest impact on the usage of management tools, the impact of employeesʼ position in organization is weaker, and the impact of working years is very weak. When we take into consideration all three predictors simultaneously, the impact of education and position becomes weaker, while the impact of working years becomes insignificant. We apply a deeper approach to gauge the influence of organizational factors on usage of the selected management tools. The impact of other considered factors, we find, is not significant. Research limitations/implications - Research is limited to a hypothesis, broader qualitative aspects encountered during desk research, and some quantitative analysis of results from our survey. We test our hypotheses and the chosen model on the top five management tools most used by employees in Slovenian organizations. Practical implications - Authors try to overcome the prevailing practice of very general consideration of management tools usage, especially regarding organizational factors, which influence the usage of management tools. Authors suggest a new approach, hardly known in the main-stream literature. They propose a more specific and target-oriented approach to consideration of management tools usage in business. Originality/value - Available management literature does not provide a similar solution for considering and researching the usage of management tools in business. This is useful for business practice in organizations, for advancing the usage of management tools, since the most important organizational factors on management tools usage are outlined.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11143196