Violeta Domanović
Miloš Marjanović
In a time of fierce competition in the tourist services market, it is very important to pay attention to businesses’ service orientation towards end users. Service orientation can be considered as a competitive advantage on the demanding tourism market. In this study, the relationship between service orientation, job satisfaction and empowerment among the employees of Serbian travel agencies is examined. A survey was conducted through an online questionnaire. The survey included a total of 94 respondents. The study is aimed at investigating the connection between employee service orientation, job satisfaction and empowerment. The paper also investigates whether there are significant differences between the measured variables among the employees with and without tourism education. The results showed that job satisfaction had a significant impact on service orientation. The impact of empowerment on service orientation proved to be a less significant statistical variable. According to the research study, job satisfaction occurs as a mediator between empowerment and service orientation. Also, there is no statistically significant relationship between the measured variables and tourism-related education.
Vojislav Babić1 and Siniša Zarić2
The study measures and analyzes the influence of knowledge management on average wages in Serbian construction companies. For the purpose of this research, of Knowledge Management (KM) dataset with 11 variables was created. The main goal of the research was to examine the influence of the dataset on the average wages in medium-sized and large construction companies. At the basic sample level, through factor analysis, a total of four factor scores were isolated, representing the strategies that the companies combine in KM. Using a regression analysis, it was found that the set of the four independent variables explained 84.5% of the average wage variability in the medium-sized and large construction companies. Two of the four strategies were statistically significant. According to the first strategy, the management insisted on a larger share of experts with the master’s and bachelor degrees, while the second strategy was based on the introduction of the formal, legal protection and registration of innovative solutions, as well as a larger number of employees with a PhD degree.
Edirin Jeroh
This paper comparatively analyzes the internal determinants of environmental disclosure practices among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To achieve this, secondary data on the characteristics of the measures of the board and the characteristics of the audit committee were obtained from a sample of 60 companies from across the region (20 each from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa). The regression technique was used to analyze the data and the results revealed the fact that, while the characteristics of the measures of the board and the audit committee were found to be the significant determinants of the environmental disclosure of firms in Kenya and Nigeria, the same cannot be said of firms in South Africa. The study, therefore, recommends that borrowing from South Africa, environmental management practices should be institutionalized in the entire region. Additionally, standard-setters should make practical efforts by developing new reporting standards which will guide and encourage a full disclosure of environmental concerns by firms.
Wasiu Abiodun Sanyaolu1, Trimisiu Tunji Siyanbola2 and Hafeez Babatunde Makinde3
Credit risk is one of the biggest challenges banks in Nigeria are faced with. By implication, it is also the one with dire consequences for their operation and survival, given the fact that a series of banks’ failures have significantly been brought into connection with nonperforming loans. Thus, this study examined the bank-specific and macroeconomic determinants of the nonperforming loans of the listed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs). Regression analysis involving fixed effect was adopted in order to analyze the panel data of the 10 selected deposit money banks in the period from 2008 to 2017. The findings show that the capital adequacy ratio, the size and the loans-to-total-assets ratio negatively and significantly affect nonperforming loans, whereas profitability and age were found to significantly but positively influence nonperforming loans of the Nigerian deposit money banks. More so, the liquidity ratio negatively, but insignificantly, affects nonperforming loans. However, not a single macroeconomic variable exerts a significant effect on nonperforming loans. The study recommends that banks should always deploy strategies for credit risk management by taking cognizance of the bank-specific and economic determinants of the nonperforming loans.
Olgica Glavaški and Emilija Beker Pucar
In the aftermath of the global recession, the need for fiscal consolidation in order to reduce budget deficits and the public debt has intensified, but with the aim to make the measures applied not affect the further slowdown of the economic activity in the European Union (EU) economies. In this paper, the episodes of the fiscal consolidation in the period from 1990 to 2015 in the 28 EU economies are analyzed, differentiating the multiyear episodes against the one-year (i.e. cold shower) episodes and their effects before and after the global recession. The episodes of the fiscal consolidation that result in successful (a reduction in the cyclically-adjusted primary budget deficit) and expansionary effects (the GDP growth) are identified, thus empirically confirming the existence of non-Keynesian effects. The stated affirms the idea that the achievement of fiscal sustainability by using austerity measures does not necessarily imply contractions in economies and that the development of a fiscal architecture in the EU by establishing complementarity between the national and supranational fiscal rules is of extraordinary importance in the post-crisis period.
Taiwo Azeez Olaniyi and Babatunde Akinola
Traditional theories ignored the power of culture with respect to tax performance, even though culture does have an impact on everything that people do or decide not to do. This study examines the impact of the national culture dimensions: the power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence on tax performance in ten African countries. A quantitative research design was adopted and a panel dataset from 2010 to 2016 was analyzed using the Panel-Corrected Standard Error estimator. The results show that indulgence indicates a significant positive impact on tax performance, the power distance, individualism and long-term orientation have a significant negative impact on tax performance, whereas masculinity and uncertainty avoidance have an insignificant impact. Thus, high tax performance is associated with a low power distance, low individualism, low short-term orientation, moderate uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and high indulgence. This study recommends that tax policymakers should consider cultural values when designing tax compliance legislation or when investigating possible behavioral irregularities.
Vlastimir Leković
After the conducted double-blind peer review process and the improvement of the manuscripts accepted for publication, Issue 1 Year 2020 of the Economic Horizons contains seven contributions: four original scientific papers and two review papers, as well as the announcement of an international scientific conference.