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Internet-based purchasing (online purchasing) in the Republic of Serbia is analyzed, comparing the period before the Covid-19 pandemic versus afterwards, aiming to discover the effect of the pandemic on customer behavior during online purchasing. A sample of 217 individual shoppers from Serbia has been examined in the period from July to September 2022. T-test is applied. Results show that: (1) online purchasing has increased during Covid, (2) purchasing preferences for product categories have changed, (3) the amount spent on online purchases has increased in the Republic of Serbia. In conclusion, Covid has had a significant impact on consumer behavior in regards to online purchasing.

Internet-based purchasing ("online") is an alternative to traditional purchasing in a physical store ("offline"). First "online" purchasing is analyzed in the context of digital transformation, as a consequence of digitization (switching from analog to digital processes) and digitalization (introduction of computers and the internet). Secondly, "online" purchases are examined through three perspectives: (1) frequency of "online" purchasing, (2) consumer preferences during "online" purchasing, and (3) the amount of money spent on "online" purchasing. Finally, in last two decades we witness the increasing role of "online" purchasing versus the decreasing role of traditional "offline" purchasing in physical stores.

Internet-based ("online") purchasing during the Covid-19 pandemic is presented. The effect of the pandemic on "online" purchasing is presented from three perspectives: (1) the effect of pandemic on the frequency of"online" purchasing, (2) the effect of pandemic on purchasing preferences for product categories, (3) the effect of pandemic on the amount spent on "online" purchases. In conclusion, Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on consumer behavior in regards to online purchasing.

The audit of agribusiness operations is present in companies with significant agricultural potential, which can be accepted as justified in our conditions. The agricultural sector is one of the development sectors in the Republic of Serbia, which necessarily represents a significant economic resource, and therefore the object of business audit. The factors of modern audit-based processes are conditioned by the complexity and subject specificities of the object being audited, which is expressed in the conditions of the agricultural sector. This paper will present the application of a quantitative planning method that is widely used in complex processes, and which can also be applied in the auditing processes of agricultural enterprises.

Waste foundry slag, which is formed in the process of melting iron and is collected from the mouths of electric arc furnaces, is stored in all foundries in Serbia in temporary landfills, usually within the factory. Given the large amounts of waste slag, there is a need for a permanent solution to this problem. As one of the solutions, the possibility of depositing foundry slag as a buffer base under the concrete cover is imposed. In order to dispose of this type of waste, appropriate geomechanical tests of the waste in question were performed. It was concluded that waste casting slag, without impurities of piece materials, ground to a granulation below 10 mm, stored so as not to contaminate with hydrocarbons can be used to make the road bed and make the lower bearing buffer layer in the granulation below 31.5 mm. In this way, the system of waste management and treatment as a material resource based on scientific knowledge and procedures and in accordance with the principles of circular economy will be improved.

Staff competency, as the only distingent factor in a working process in an organization, is in a base of a successful and sustainable business. Managerial competency, especially in complex business systems, is even more significant. Competency requirements result of both the international management systems standards and the modern business environment conditions. Meeting these requirements require the implementation of a planned and systematic process of organizational learning. A well-designed procedure for selection, acquisition and managerial competency development, available resources for human resource investment and well-chosen topics in different educational and training programs are required, but not sufficient to reach wanted effects in the organizational system. Results of the empirical research on a case study of a large-scale domestic company with international business activities show a positive experience of standardizing the organizational learning programs outcomes to meet organizational and individual interests. Standard competencies, learning programs goals and anticipated effects of manager trainings represent the company's expectations and defined obligations and responsibilities for all actors in the organizational learning process toward achieving learning and business quality goals. Some of them are highlighted in this paper.

In the global competition in agriculture, countries must allocate considerable financial resources in order to create preconditions for the continuous development of agriculture. Bearing in mind the unfavorable competitive position, the low investment rating, insufficient foreign direct investments, the Republic of Serbia can see its development opportunity in the application of public-private partnership in agriculture. Cooperation models are conditioned by investor plans and regulations created by the state. The mutually significant and complex relationship between the private and public partner beside economic and legal aspects, also acquires significant social and political dimensions. That is why through public-private partnership operations, there is an opportunity to improve the operations of economic entities. The authors conducted a survey of business entities in the territory of Srem, analyzed a successful case and concluded that the mentioned partnership can lead to an improvement in the competitiveness of business entities in the field of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bankruptcy procedures are devised for companies which are entering into a more serious operational crisis, which means they are not able to regularly abide to their short-term and long-term responsibilities. Thus, to keep the creditors form incurring any damages, a special procedure is introduced and that is the bankruptcy procedure. The bankruptcy procedure is introduced upon the suggestion of the creditors or debtors and certainly its goal is to consolidate business ventures of the company in a particular timeframe where it would be "protected" from paying out the creditors. Of course, that timeframe should be as short as possible, or, in a reasonable deadline (e.g. a year or two). The majority of former companies went through bankruptcy procedures because of poor business which did not suit the market. Were they run and did they last in a reasonable timeframe? Were the businesses reorganized thorough reconstruction and modernization? in this paper we will try and answer what would contribute to the reorganization and continuation of business. We will focus on the former giant in the are od fruit production and that is certainly PKB -Voćarske Plantaže Boleč.

The aim of the paper is to determine balanced key performance indicators of the largest Serbian foundries, as well as to examine the influence of organizational learning through internal processes to foundries financial perspectives, by using the BSC method. The empirical research was conducted at the Guča foundry. After establishing the performance indicators, it was identified four perspectives - financial perspective, customer relationship perspective, perspective of internal processes and learning and development perspective. Subsequently, it was considered the impact of financial perspective to the Guča foundry business operations. Through multivariate regression statistics, it was confirmed that in the Guča foundry existed significant linear interdependence between the level of organizational knowledge and the financial perspective expressed by EBITDA rate. Conclusions reached through the research may be applied for proper and timely adaption to new business conditions, new trends and new technologies, both to foundry industry and economy as the whole, in Serbia as well as in the whole world.

The aim of this explanatory research is to contribute to the knowledge of the marketing of spirits through research into Serbian rakija producers, with an emphasis on the marketing of their alcoholic beverages. In order to demonstrate that marketing results in higher product prices and revenues, three hypotheses related to the elements of the marketing mix will be investigated. In this quantitative survey, the questionnaire was distributed online to Serbian distillers (N = 104); hence, the sample was intentional and predetermined. The key finding is that only 4% of distillers have fully mastered marketing in the sense that they use all four elements of the marketing mix in their businesses; they also achieved significantly higher prices. It seems that it is not clear to Serbian rakija distillers exactly who they are targeting with their marketing and who will buy their products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the way to building smart factories as the vision of Industry 4.0, the casting process stands out as a specific manufacturing process due to its diversity and complexity. One of the segments of smart foundry design is the application of artificial intelligence in the improvement of the casting process. This paper presents an overview of the conducted research studies, which deal with the application of artificial intelligence in the improvement of the casting process. In the review, 37 studies were analyzed over the last 15 years, with a clear indication of the type of casting process, the field of application of artificial intelligence techniques, and the benefits that artificial intelligence brought. The goals of this paper are to bring to attention the great possibilities of the application of artificial intelligence for the improvement of manufacturing processes in foundries, and to encourage new ideas among researchers and engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the application of machine learning in the control of the metal melting process. Metal melting is a dynamic production process characterized by nonlinear relations between process parameters. In this particular case, the subject of research is the production of white cast iron. Two supervised machine learning algorithms have been applied: the neural network and the support vector regression. The goal of their application is the prediction of the amount of alloying additives in order to obtain the desired chemical composition of white cast iron. The neural network model provided better results than the support vector regression model in the training and testing phases, which qualifies it to be used in the control of the white cast iron production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a communication scenario in which the primary and the cognitive radios wish to communicate to different receivers, subject to mutual interference. In the model that we use, the cognitive radio has noncausal knowledge of the primary radio's codeword. We characterize the largest rate at which the cognitive radio can reliably communicate under the constraint that 1) no rate degradation is created for the primary user, and 2) the primary receiver uses a single-user decoder just as it would in the absence of the cognitive radio. The result holds in a "low-interference" regime in which the cognitive radio is closer to its receiver than to the primary receiver. In this regime, our resuits are subsumed by the results derived in a concurrent and independent work (Wu et al., 2007). We also demonstrate that, in a "high-interference" regime, multiuser decoding at the primary receiver is optimal from the standpoint of maximal jointly achievable rates for the primary and cognitive users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]