FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE SLOVENIAN ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT
Assis. Prof. Dr. Jože Kropivšek
University of Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty
Dear reader,
This spring, new members of the executive board of the Slovenian Academy of Management, who will provide the activities of the Academy in the future and guide its further development, were elected at the Electoral Assembly. Before introducing them (us) in more detail, I would like to express my special thanks to the previous President of the Academy, Professor Dr. Tomaž Čater, for his contribution to the operation and development of the Academy. During his mandate, a new website of the Academy was launched. It represents an important communication platform that presents all the main activities of the Academy transparently and attractively, including the online publication of journals and proceedings to ensure their wider reach and potential impact. This is undoubtedly very important for the authors of the articles in these publications. I am also grateful to all members of the former Board of the Academy, who each individually and collectively contributed to the recognition and development of the individual activities within the Academy. Special thanks go to the first President and founder of the Association, Professor Dr. Rudi Rozman, to whom the solid foundations and key program orientations of the Academy and its visibility in academia and business are attributed.
As already mentioned, the new Executive Committee took over the leadership functions in the Academy in Spring 2020, just during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Special circumstances considerably prolonged the appointment of functions and the transfer of activities from the former management. However, the new Executive Committee became operational in May 2020, while the formal recognition of the President took place in August 2020, when the transition was completed. The new
Executive Committee consists of five members, two of whom were already members in the previous mandate. They are Associate Professor Dr. Matej Černe from the School of Economics and Business at the University of Ljubljana, who was appointed as Vice President of the Academy, and Assistant Professor Dr. Nina Tomaževič from the Faculty of Administration of the University of Ljubljana, who continues to work as the Secretary of the Academy. The new members of the Executive Committee are: Associate Professor Dr. Polona Šprajc from the Faculty of Organizational Sciences of the University of Maribor, who has been appointed to the new position of Public Relations of the Academy, Rebeka Žgalin Koncilja from the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana, who has taken over the position of Treasurer of the Academy, and myself, Assistant Professor Dr. Jože Kropivšek from Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana as President of the Academy.
The Academy's Supervisory Board remained unchanged from the previous mandate, with Dr. Vojko Toman from Slovenian Intellectual Property Office as President and Professor Dr. Borut Rusjan from the School of Economics and Business at the University of Ljubljana and Assistant Professor Dr. Milena Alič from ALZIT d.o.o. as members.
There are no revolutionary changes planned in the key activities and main dedications of the Slovenian Academy of Management. The Academy continues with its dedication towards uniting academics, researchers, and experts from the field of management in the Republic of Slovenia and broader. The Academy will continue to act following its mission and thus organize conferences and other events, publish academic and professional literature in the field of management and organize other education, training, and research activities.
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One of the first challenges we faced immediately after taking over the management of the Academy was the new situation dictated by the pandemic measures of Covid-19. Therefore, we had to cancel our academic conference entitled "Integrating organizational research: individual, team, organizational and multilevel perspectives", for which the Organizing Committee, led by Dr. Aleša Saša Sitar with strong support from colleagues from the University of Zagreb, has already received a sufficient number of high-quality papers. The decision was to postpone it until the next year, and we are currently planning to hold it in Bled in June 24-25 2021.
This period is also very demanding for communication and maintaining contacts with members of the Academy and the wider community. We have decided to approach this more systematically, and the first step was the establishment of the Academy PR. Thus, we will use all the possibilities offered by the Academy's website, while at the same time look for other ways to make "virtual" contacts to exchange opinions and messages via social networks, especially on Linkedln. One of the main priorities of the new management is to expand the membership and ensure closer cooperation among members, so we are planning several measures in this respect. One of them is enrolling young graduates immediately after graduation, which could bring fresh ideas and thus provide the development of the Academy. I take this opportunity to invite all readers of the Dynamic Relationships Management Journal to become a member of the Academy. This invitation is extended to everyone - Slovenian and foreign researchers, as well as experts and practitioners in the field of management and related fields. The more of us, the more the Academy will be able to create as a community, which will multiply the benefits and new opportunities for everyone and enrich each of us.
Let me briefly present the main activities of the Academy. Most of them are already well established and will just be continued, whereas some will be upgraded. One of the main activities of the Academy is the organization of scientific conferences, from which one is international, and the other more local. International scientific conferences are primarily focused on the presentation of the latest academic findings in a specific area of management, on the
exchange of opinions, and on establishing links among the participants. The purpose of the Slovenian scientific conference is to connect the Slovenian professional public with researchers, i.e. to transfer knowledge into practice, which is the fundamental goal of the Academy. A similar role of knowledge transfer and exchange is played by the two journals, whose development is successfully managed by both editors. The international journal of the Academy, i.e. Dynamic Relationships Management Journal, is managed by Associate Professor Dr. Matej Cerne as an editor-in-chief. The quality of the journal is proven by its inclusion in the Scopus database and a rising number of manuscripts that are being submitted from all over the world. We would like to receive even more high-quality articles and manuscripts that put the dynamic relationships at the centre of their interest to directly address the aim and scope of the journal, so we would again like to ask academics and professionals to submit the outcomes of their research. Manuscripts can include literature reviews, theoretical contributions as well as qualitative and/or quantitative research. Soon, the editorial process will be transitioned online, including on-line submission. The Academy will also continue with the publication of the Slovenian journal titled "Izzivi managementu" (Management Challenges). It is more practically oriented and dedicated mostly to helping managers at their everyday work. Besides managers, the journal's targeted readers are also academics who wish to learn more about the practical aspects of management and related areas. The journal's editor remains Assistant Professor Dr. Lidija Breznik.
For the future, we plan to organize more forms of socializing, with the emphasis on formal and less formal debates and/or the exchange of opinions, knowledge, and experience. I would like to mention our regular activity "debate evenings", which is organized by Assistant Professor Dr. Nina Tomazevic. The current situation and the circumstances caused by the pandemic force us to look for new, mainly virtual ways and media to ensure their execution. One of the possibilities is certainly the transition to the hybrid or full online form of debate evenings using any of the Virtual Meeting Platforms and/or the introduction of thematic socializing via social networks. All those interested in this way of socializing,
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I am already inviting to join us and help to shape the first steps towards building this platform.
Although the main direction of the Academy and its activities will remain unchanged, we plan to grow and expand the activities in the (near) future, with a focus on quality, and on improving its accessibility. This is only possible by increasing the number of active members and membership in general, including through expansion abroad. We will be very pleased with all the initiatives we will receive from you, dear readers, and especially with your commitment and dedication to the activities of the Academy. We are also open to more constructive cooperation with related societies and associations in the search for synergy effects. The pandemic and with it associated measures of isolation cause many challenges to establish and maintain contacts, but I am convinced that in the Academy we will successfully continue to maintain our connections also through the rational and imaginative use of all modern technological possibilities. This will help us to survive as individuals and, above all, to move forward as a community that transcends physical boundaries. This opens up entirely new possibilities for the Academy in its further development.
Finally, I have the pleasant duty to present some highlights of the new issue and invite you to read it. I am confident that everyone will find something interesting and useful in this issue of the journal. It contains five articles covering a range of different topics, research approaches, and levels of analysis. The first article was written by Chulsoon Park and focuses on the management of inter-organizational relations, thus fitting directly into the narrow framework of the DRMJ. Based on an agent-based model and the theory of the organizational learning curve, the author has shown that the knowledge performance of organizations can be changed by the way the structural factors of an egonetwork are managed. The second model was created by a team consisting of Avigdor Zonnenshain, Gilead Fortuna, Eithan Adres, and Ron S. Kenett, who focused on regional development in the Industry 4.0 era. The paper presents the theoretical foundations of an integrated approach that includes an assessment using the Industrial Maturity tool for Advanced Manufacturing (IMAM), applied to the case of the Galilee region. The third paper included
in this issue was co-authored by Ardita Todri, Petraq Papajorgji, and Francesco Scalera who analyzed the close interaction between organizational networking and financial mechanisms of growth and sustainable growth of SMEs operating in Albania. The authors used multivariate regressions and multilayer artificial neural perceptron networks to assess the growth of SMEs and promote their sustainable growth process using the age of the firm, which is divided into the start-up, grown, and maturity phases. The fourth paper was written by Stephen Ndula Mbieke and presents a systematic literature review of the literature on Outbound Open Innovation in the academic world. The author analyzed the literature in 42 academic journals and 118 articles specifically dealing with this research topic. This review is the first to systematically analyze the literature in terms of the financial benefits that universities derive from technology transfer and how income can best be generated. Finally, the fifth paper included in this issue was co-authored by Tomislav Hernaus, Marija Konforta, and Aleša Saša Sitar and provides a multi-informal assessment of agility maturity from an organizational perspective. The authors used Organizational Agility Maturity Model within a case study of an oil company to determine whether and to what extent there was an agreement between management and employees (informants) on the assessment of agility across different hierarchical levels.
With the desire to cooperate within the Academy, and to create new content for the Dynamic Relationships Management Journal, I wish you many new scientific and professional insights. Stay healthy!
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