Organizacija, Volume 50 Number 3, August 2017Editorial 191 In December 2016 our esteemed colleague, dear friend, mentor, and father, Professor Emeritus D.Sc. Miroljub Kljajić, suddenly had passed away. This was a shocking news for all who knew him as a man full of life, creativity, wisdom, humour, and kindness. Sometimes it felt he was greater than the life itself. Prof Mirojub Kljajić was born on November 4th, 1943 in a little village Vražogrnci in the south of Serbia, then Yu- goslavia. His childhood was marked by extreme shortages in the post-war Yugoslavia. At the age of 15, dreaming to become a pilot and being an outstanding student, he was enrolled in the military school, which was the only school- ing his family could afford. Harsh childhood experiences marked him for life. He was hard working, strict to him- self and his colleagues, and never gave up. His thirst for knowledge, especially in natural and technical sciences, but also profound love for art, drove him to seek possibil- ities for further studying. After finishing military school, he got his first employment in the army. During that time, and in different cities (Kraljevo, Belgrade, Split, and Pula), he finished the classical gymnasium and enrolled as a part time student at the dislocated unit of Visoka tehniška šola (Hihger Technical School) of Maribor, in Pula. After grad- uation, he enrolled as a full time student at the Faculty of electrical engineering, University of Ljubljana, while still working at the military airport in Pula. In his last year of studies, he was placed in Ljubljana, graduated and final- ly demobilized from the military. He started to work as a postgraduate researcher at the Institute Jožef Stefan in Ljubljana, Section for automatics, bio-cybernetics, and ro- botics. He finished his master studies under supervision of Prof Dr France Bremšak. In 1973, he obtained his PhD in the field of bio-cybernetics, from University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, under supervision of academician Prof Dr Lojze Vodovnik. In 1976, he started to work at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences half time and half time at the Institute Jožef Ste- fan. Since 2000 he was fully engaged with the Faculty. For many years, he was a chair of the Laboratory for Cybernet- ics and Decision Support Systems, transferring ideas from the field of automation, cybernetics and robotics to the world of organizational sciences. With his kindness and pedagogical instinct, he attracted and encouraged many excellent young researchers. Besides mentoring many un- dergraduate and graduate students, he also supervised 10 PhD students. His laboratory was always full of vibrant discussions, ideas, and hard work, sometimes, if needed long into the nights. During his long and fruitful research years, he has pub- lished over 100 original scientific papers, 29 in esteemed journal with impact factor. According to the Web of Sci- ence, his work was cited more than 500 times. Prof Miro’s research interests were very wide, and reflected his beliefs that topics are interconnected as in a complex system, which he understood on a top level, yet with a full atten- tion to the fine details. Prof Miroljub Kljajić was recognized by renown interna- tional scientific circles, and thus, he has held special sym- posiums at various international conferences. His most prominent symposium, Simulation Based Decision Sup- port, was held in Baden-Baden, Germany, for many years at the InterSymp conference, organized by The Interna- tional Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics. Lately, he was a member of the editorial team of the journal Organizacija, and a co-founder and an editor of the International Journal of Information Tech- nologies and Systems Approach. His meticulous research eye was a reason for being a prominent reviewer in renown international scientific journals and conferences. Having an outstanding scientific background and being a social persona with an exceptional ability to connect peo- ple with different backgrounds, he was a founder and a long-time head of the research group “Decision Support Systems in Electronic Business” at the Faculty of Organi- zational Sciences, University of Maribor. Research group offered supportive environment to outstanding senior and junior researchers and PhD students from the wide area of System approach research to solve complex managerial decision problems in the environment of rapid technolog- ical developments and electronic interactions. The wide plethora of research streams, brought together under one umbrella within this research group, describes Miros’ per- sonality best. His main research interest, Simulation Based Decision Support, refers to the research stream originating from cybernetics, where systems can be efficiently managed by DOI: 10.1515/orga-2017-0019 Editorial In Memoriam Professor Emeritus D.Sc. Miroljub Kljajić 192 Organizacija, Volume 50 Number 3, August 2017Editorial information, both feedback and feedforward. Therefore, organizational systems, inherently being complex in their nature, comprising of people, processes and technology, are the focus of this thematic issue. Thus, it is not surpris- ing that this area has attracted scholars from all over the globe and from various fields of research, such as Math- ematics, Organizational sciences, Computer Science, In- formation Systems, Operational Research, etc. Although the research topics presented in this issue are diverse, we believe that they are well balanced and harmonized under a common denominator, the Systems Approach Methodol- ogy, which makes this issue innovative and unique. Prof Miroljub Kljajić has left well-established flourishing research garden where his successors can further develop and build upon his noble ideas. We believe that this the- matic issue of Organizacija issue is only the first step. Guest editors Mirjana Kljajić Borštnar, Davorin Kofjač, Andrej Škraba, Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber, Andreja Pucihar