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Abstract Background Sustainable development and public health quite strongly correlate, being connected and conditioned by one another. This paper therein attempts to offer a representation of Europe’s current situation of sustainable development in the area of public health. Methods A dataset on sustainable development in the area of public health consisting of 31 European countries (formally proposed by the European Union Commission and EUROSTAT) has been used in this paper in order to evaluate said issue for the countries listed thereof. A statistical method which synthesizes several indicators into one quantitative indicator has also been utilized. Furthermore, the applied method offers the possibility to obtain an optimal set of variables for future studies of the problem, as well as for the possible development of indicators. Results According to the results obtained, Norway and Iceland are the two foremost European countries regarding sustainable development in the area of public health, whereas Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia, some of the European Union’s newest Member States, rank lowest. The results also demonstrate that the most significant variables (more than 80%) in rating countries are found to be “healthy life years at birth, females” (r2 = 0.880), “healthy life years at birth, males” (r2 = 0.864), “death rate due to chronic diseases, males” (r2 = 0.850), and “healthy life years, 65, females” (r2 = 0.844). Conclusions Based on the results of this paper, public health represents a precondition for sustainable development, which should be continuously invested in and improved. After the assessment of the dataset, proposed by EUROSTAT in order to evaluate progress towards the agreed goals of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), this paper offers an improved set of variables, which it is hoped, may initiate further studies concerning this problem.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for automatically determining the optimal allocation of police officers in accordance with the division and organization of labor. Design/methodology/approach – The problem is defined as the problem of the goal programming for which the mathematical model of mixed integer programming was developed. In modeling of the scheduling problem the approach police officer/scheme, based on predefined scheduling patterns, was used. The approach is applied to real data of a police station in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Findings – This study indicates that the determination of monthly scheduling policemen is complex and challenging problem, which is usually performed without the aid of software (self-rostering), and that it can be significantly facilitated by the introduction of scheduling optimization approach. Research limitations/implications – The developed mathematical model, in its current form, can directly be applied only to the scheduling of police officers at police stations which have the same or a similar organization of work. Practical implications – Optimization of scheduling significantly reduces the time to obtain a monthly schedule. In addition, it allows the police stations to experiment with different forms of organization work of police officers and to obtain an optimal schedule for each of them in a short time. Originality/value – The problem of optimal scheduling of employees is often resolved in other fields. To the authors knowledge, this is the first time that the approach of goal programming is applied in the field of policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the methodology of planning the promotions of the higher education organizations, which are aimed at target group of potential users of the high education services. Intention is to stress the necessity of planning communication activities in higher education institutions, with the main goal of building positive corporate image and reputation in order to gain leading position on the educational services market. The research problem is to determine the precise timetabling of visiting the secondary schools in order to promote higher education organizations which have equal aims, contents and expected results, but different places of promotion. The original Goal Programming model of deciding process of organizing the visits to the secondary schools is developed. Scheduling the promotion participants in the secondary schools, as the target destination, is done by the model, and the basic criteria were uniformity of their workload. In the case study of organizing the promotions, the suggested model was applied on target group of students in secondary schools as the potential users in The Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. In addition, we developed and implemented an original algorithm for solving the promotion participants scheduling problems of large dimensions.

This paper analyzes the effects of investment in advertising in the three-stage entry game model with one incumbent and one potential entrant firm. It is shown that if a game theory is applied, under particular conditions, advertising can be used as a strategic weapon in the market entry game. Depending on the level of the advertising interaction factor, conditions for over-investment in advertising for strategic purposes are given. Furthermore, three specific cases are analyzed: strictly predatory advertising, informative advertising and the case when one firm’s advertising cannot directly influence the other firm's profit. For each of them, depending on the costs of advertising and marginal costs, equilibrium is determined, and conditions under which it is possible to deter the entry are given. It is shown that if the value of the advertising interaction factor increases, power of using advertising as a weapon to deter entry into the market decreases. Thus, in the case of informative advertising, advertising cannot be used as a tool for deterring entry into the market, while in the case of predatory advertising, it can. Also, we have proved that in the case of strictly informative advertising an over-investment never occurs, while in the two other cases, there is always over-investment either to deter or to accommodate the entry.

This paper shows design and implementation of data warehouse as well as the use of data mining algorithms for the purpose of knowledge discovery as the basic resource of adequate business decision making process. The project is realized for the needs of Student's Service Department of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FOS), University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro. This system represents a good base for analysis and predictions in the following time period for the purpose of quality business decision-making by top management. Thus, the first part of the paper shows the steps in designing and development of data warehouse of the mentioned business system. The second part of the paper shows the implementation of data mining algorithms for the purpose of deducting rules, patterns and knowledge as a resource for support in the process of decision making.