Vojko / Potocan

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Maribor

While business studies on gender have increased, they continue to adopt traditional approaches with limited samples drawn from general populations (e.g., students and teachers). In contrast, we investigate gender differences with our focus solely on business professionals. Specifically, we study 40 societies using the four dimensions of subordinate...

This study focuses on two significant factors shaping university students’ perception of environmental sustainability. Those are (a) personal values, measured by the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) and (b) the usage of and proficiency in information technology. Personal values have been widely used to analyze individual perspectives toward vari...

Drawing from status characteristics theory, we develop a multilevel model to explain the relationships between gender composition (e.g., female‐female supervisor‐subordinate dyads, a female majority at the next higher level, and a female majority at the same job level) in the workplace and women's career satisfaction. We hypothesise that working wi...

Young people born within the Internet era are entering the higher education system, streaming to the transition phase for their future workplace. This generation demonstrated a unique set of work values, expectations, and motivation, which will have implications at their workplace and must be better understood to develop effective human resource ma...

Due to changes resulting from the economic trends of the last decades, entrepreneurs are faced with a new requirement, called sustainable development and demanding systems / holistic thinking, an explicit or implicit one, as a precondition of success. It is supposed to enable the existence and development of humankind after recent centuries in whic...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261653.].

Purpose Prosperity and growth of emerging economies rely heavily on the innovativeness of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their ability to provide employable graduates with entrepreneurial competencies and flexibility in the assessment of their progress in gaining knowledge. The innovativeness of the higher education system is not always r...

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss how implementation of Industry 4.0 principles in organizations contributes to sustainable development. Based on desk research of literature, several contributions of Industry 4.0 to sustainable development are outlined. We discussed the issue of monitoring of Industry 4.0 contributions to sustainable dev...

We examined patterns of change and stability in four individual-level higher-order groups of Schwartz personal values among individuals during societal lockdown caused by COVID-19 epidemic. The study involves comparison of personal values of 85 business students during societal lockdown, with their personal values in pre- and post-pandemic periods....

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the change in the personal values orientations of individuals in Croatia and Slovenia resulting from the countries’ accession to the European Union (EU). We examined business managers’ and professionals’ value orientation by using four individual-level higher-order dimensions of self-transcendence, s...

Companies are increasingly aware that employees are an important factor in success, so they pay more and more attention to them. Because of that, organizational culture and normative commitment are also included as ex-tremely important factors. The research includes a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature and at the same time obtain...

We investigate the relationships between gender-role-orientation (i.e., androgynous, masculine, feminine and undifferentiated) and subjective career success among business professionals from 36 societies. Drawing on the resource management perspective, we predict that androgynous individuals will report the highest subjective career success, follow...

In our 40-society study of business professionals, we first constructed four microculture cohorts based on gender and life-stage (young: 20-39 and middle: 40-59). Next, using the alignment method and HLM, we investigated the preferences that these microculture cohorts had for four unique organizational culture types (Clan, Adhocracy, Market and Hie...

Since the days of Hofstede (1980), cross-cultural comparisons of countries based on societal-level work values have been a norm. This approach has been represented more recently in Ronen and Shenkar’s (2013) 11 clusters of country cultures. However, more contemporary research found within-country heterogeneity of values/behaviors is substantial and...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the ethicality of future employees’ attitudes toward advancement in the workplace in Slovenia and Lithuania. This study focuses on students representing young adults from Generation Z as future employees in organizations. Using a survey of work-related issues, we collected 212 answers from Slovenian and...

Namen učbenika je študentom ponuditi celovit vpogled v razvoj managementa, temeljne koncepte in modele managementa, možnosti uporabe managementskih spoznanj v sodobnem poslovnem okolju ter predstaviti možne smeri prihodnjega razvoja managementa organizacij. Učbenik obravnava temeljna področja delovanja managementa in njihovo povezanost z dinamičnim...

The luxury goods market is growing constantly, despite the fact that there is no unified definition of the basic terms such as ’luxury’ and ’prestige’. This can lead to misunderstandings and wrongly created synonyms. It is for this reason that, from an academic and organisational point of view, there is a distinct need to define the fundamental con...

This paper examines how values and professional socialization in business schools impact the formulation of students’ contextualized view of social responsibility. We propose the empirical concept of a mental gap between the existing and the wished-for level of a business school’s corporate social responsibility and estimate it empirically by using...

We investigated the significance of an economic crisis for organizations’ ethical behavior, employees’ unethical behavior, and association. To capture the effect of the “2008’ World economic crisis,” we compared the behaviors of organizations and employees’ unethical behavior during a crisis with their behavior in more favorable circumstances befor...

This study examined the importance of technologies in advancing modern organizations’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). Drawing upon environmentalist and technological theories, we analyzed the shift from the traditional development of technology to the development of sustainable technologies for the further sustainable advancement of organiza...

This paper analyses the effects of organizational culture on the transfer of knowledge in organizations. While prior literature has considered relations between individual classifications of organizational culture and the whole process of knowledge development, we focused our analysis on the dimension of cultural strength and its effects on the sel...

The main aim of this draft paper is to discuss the progress towards Industry 4.0 in organizations, through the lenses of management tools utilization. Our discussion is based on the cognitions that management tools support organizational working under Industry 4.0 circumstances. According to the management tools utilization we argue about the level...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of leaders’ personal values on their democratic behavior from a sustainability perspective. We specified and tested the research model, drawing upon modified versions of the theory of basic values and the autocratic–democratic leadership continuum. A total of 208 Slovenian and 196 Austrian...

The paper reports how the offered university activities support the development of students’ entrepreneurship abilities. Data were collected from 306 students from Slovenian and 609 students from Croatian universities. The study reduces the gap between theoretical researches about the academic entrepreneurship education and individual empirical stu...

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between intellectual agility, entrepreneurial leadership (measured through future orientation and community building) and the innovativeness of micro and small businesses in an efficiency-driven economy. Building on nexus of entrepreneurial leadership, human capital and economics of innova...

In the fashion, industry brands are especially important, because the competition is high, and companies need to attract new customers and keep them. Successful branding requires a good knowledge of consumers and their purchasing processes. Brands have an important function in the fashion world, both for businesses and consumers. The brand is assur...

The main purpose of this study is to examine how the use of management tools supports the readiness of manufacturing organizations for the implementation of Industry 4.0. The originality of the research is reflected in the exploration of the relationship between the use of the selected well-known management tools and their readiness for the impleme...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report about research how Society 5.0 balances Industry 4.0, responsible economic development and resolution of social problems by advancement of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in organizations. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from organization, sustainable development and social functionalism the...

Recent research has investigated how personal values of university stakeholders shape social responsibility of universities. Interest of universities for their responsibility toward society, beyond fundamental academic goals related to creating, transferring and preserving knowledge in society has become more widespread since 1970s. As social respo...

The main purpose of this chapter is to comprehensively examine the role of managers’ personal values in terms of influencing behaviour. First, the chapter introduces existing studies about the relations between individuals’ personal values and managers’ behaviour, where values are considered as key drivers of manager behaviour in organizations. The...

The main purpose of this chapter is to consider the role and outline the drivers of managers’ behaviour for organizations. First, the chapter presents some possible approaches to empirically examining and measuring these drivers, and reveals a promising concept for values-culture-ethics-norms drivers. Studies have revealed fundamental behaviour dri...

The main purpose of this chapter is to address the links between values and management behaviour within the Germanic values system. The chapter provides an insight into the typical characteristics of the Germanic values system and of organizations operating in the area with prevailing Germanic value system. Findings are based on studies that utiliz...

The main purpose of this chapter is to present the scope and the content of the book by outlining its central ideas—that is, how personal values influence managers’ behaviour. The chapter provides an overview of the literature about managers’ behaviour, their personal values and the correlations between the two. The discussion in this chapter lays...

The main purpose of this chapter is to outline the characteristics of a Central European transforming economy (Slovenia), the state of managers’ behaviour according to the newly developed framework for examination of managers’ behaviour and the associations between managers’ personal values and behaviour. The chapter focuses on the empirical examin...

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and outlines the current state of managers’ behaviour in Slovenia and Austria as well as the impact of personal values on manager behaviour. We briefly outline the central idea of the book, with an emphasis on the development of our new framework for measuring managers’ behaviour and its distinc...

The main purpose of this chapter is to develop a new framework for investigation of managers’ behaviour, to provide a detailed description of the proposed framework and outline starting points for empirical research into associations between managers’ personal values and behaviour. Building upon existing approaches to examining managers’ behaviour,...

This paper reports on research that examines the state of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the impact of economic attitudes on natural and social CSR in Lithuania and Slovenia. The study exposes CSR and organizational behavior theories and analyzes answers from 159 Lithuanian and 183 Slovenian business students considered as future employe...

This Issue begins with a paper by Kirchmayer, Remišová and Lašáková on ethical leadership in public and private organisations in Slovakia. Authentic leadership and interpersonal conflicts in Poland are further taken up by Sypniewska and Gigol. Perceptions of the ethical climate in Serbian tourism industry are explored by Dragin, Jovanović, Mijatov,...

This book investigates the influence of personal values on managerial behaviour in modern organizations, and how this impacts upon company performance and relationships. With a focus on central Europe, the authors explore the notion of a personal values system and seek to identify the influencing factors behind behaviour. Providing a new methodolog...

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationships between three underlying aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), namely economic, environmental, and societal aspects, and the level of CSR, as perceived by the employees. The strength and direction of the impact of a single underlying aspect of CSR, on the level of CSR in o...

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the role, importance, and actual usage of emerging information technology solutions that support and have potential to enhance supply chain management in practice. The role of information technology in supply chain management is discussed through the lens of several selected emerging management tools,...

The adoption of market orientation practices at the Higher Education Institutions is a rising trend, since the challenges of changing the global higher education environment raise a growing issue for meeting the needs of the global market. Developing an appropriate strategy to cope with all of the requirements of the global education market changes...

The purpose of this draft paper is to empirically examine the role of concern for economic results for shaping corporate social responsibility in Lithuania and Slovenia. Results are based on 80 answers of students from Lithuania and 101 answers of students from Slovenia. Results reveal that Slovenian students on average show significantly higher co...

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the utilization of management tools in Slovenian manufacturing organizations and assess the readiness of those organizations for the implementation of Industry 4.0 principles. Certain management tools, such as lean manufacturing, six sigma, RFID, knowledge management, etc. are due to their digital nature...

The main objective of this paper is to examine the importance of influential employee’s personal values, which shape development of innovations among employees in enterprises. Enterprises can use for realization of sustainable development different economic concepts of new economy, like very promising creative economy, which inter-relates creativit...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to report about a requisitely holistic examination of the business ethics, focused on internal gaps between company’s and employees’ ethics. Contribution considers reasons for emergence of business ethics’ internal gaps and their appearance forms. Design/methodology/approach The authors specify and test model dra...

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of personal values for social responsibility (SR) of higher education. Besides the core mission of higher education to create, transfer and preserve knowledge in society, the idea of SR has gained its importance also in institutions of higher education. SR has many drivers, among which personal val...

Background: The contemporary world-wide socio-economic crisis tends to escalate and contribute to the global crisis. Limitation of education to one-sided ‘knowledge management’ rather than socially responsible ‘knowledge-cum-values-management’ is one of the crisis’s causes. Objectives: The limitations to current knowledge management should be analy...

The main purpose of this chapter is to empirically examine the utilization of most frequently used management tools among employees in Slovenian production and service organizations and outline the benefits of commonly used management tools through the lenses of improving productivity and efficiency in organizations. In that framework, the contribu...

This is no engineering issue, but a conceptual issue with impact on engineering and other professional work and humankind's survival. Humankind has put itself in existential troubles by its one-sided behaviour over the entire industrialisation period, which provided a big material progress, but to a very small minority of humans only. The natural p...

This is no engineering issue, but a conceptual issue with impact on engineering and other professional work and humankind's survival. Humankind has put itself in existential troubles by its one-sided behaviour over the entire industrialisation period, which provided a big material progress, but to a very small minority of humans only. The natural p...

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the utilization of management solutions in non-profit organizations in Slovenia and compare their utilization with utilization of solutions in profit oriented organizations. We used 357 answers from employees in Slovenian organizations, where 58 answers were from employees in non-profit organizations....

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationships between three underlying aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), namely economic, environmental, and societal aspects, and the level of CSR, as perceived by the employees. The strength and direction of the impact of a single underlying aspect of CSR, on the level of CSR in o...

How does length of exposure to communism, the communist footprint, affect individuals’ influence behaviors at work today? While imprinting theory has debated how exposure/lack thereof to communism—communist imprint—affects individuals, it has disregarded the exposure’s length. We show that the shorter the communist footprint, the less negative prof...

This article reports on examination of the relationships between manager’s personal values, their attitudes toward concern for environment, concern for economic results and enterprise environmental responsiveness. Schwartz’s list of values and statements about the environmental and economic concerns is used. We analyzed 1179 managers’ answers from...

In this paper we theoretically discuss and empirically examine the influence of trust on collaborative behavior in supply chain relationships. These concepts are very important in today’s interorganizational business world, and therefore in supply chains. In theoretical part of this article we presume that establishment and development of relations...

Knowledge management and especially knowledge appliance process plays an important role in organizations for a long time, although its importance has been clearly emphasized and established through the concept of learning organization and rise of knowledge society. In such circumstances has become evident, that for the realization of aims of learni...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the utilization of management practices in catching-up and well-developed economies. Within that framework, the paper examines the utilization of management practices in Slovenian and Croatian organizations, as both are considered the representatives of catching-up economies from Central and East Europe...

Innovation is unavoidable in the modern business, both the technological and non-technological ones. Though, innovation results from interdisciplinary cooperation, which is hardly supported by the traditional sciences and practices. They namely both enjoy in and suffer from over-specialisation, once the experts do not feel and practice ethics of in...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine utilization of management practices in Slovenian industrial organizations. The focus is on examination of the level of utilization of management practices in industrial organizations and comparison to the level and pattern of use with Slovenian organizations in services. The paper discusses the role and...

Theories of organization and management have offered several concepts and models which indicate that organizational values are an important factor for running organizations successfully. A still unexplained question concerns the creation of balanced organizational values, which can support the achievement of several different and even conflicting g...

In this paper, we focus on the importance and influence of employees’ values as an essential element of organizational culture in the acquisition of knowledge. Based on empirical research, we studied the influence of employees’ values in Slovenian organizations on the acquisition of knowledge, enabling us to identify the core values that exert the...

This paper examines the use of management tools among Slovenian and Croatian employees, with the main focus on linkages between the current use of management tools and patterns of its future use. The authors developed and tested a model for predicting the future use of management tools based on the current use of tools by employees in organizations...

The paper discusses theoretically and examines empirically the influence of the relationship commitment on collaborative behaviour in supply chains. In today’s unstable business environment companies should collaborate to achieve mutual goals and competitive advantage. Defining relationship commitment and collaboration in supply chains (from social...

Empowering Organizations through Corporate Social Responsibility addresses the implementation of businesses’ ethical standards in both emerging and advanced economies, interpreting the social impact of this issue in a global context. Highlighting case studies, interdisciplinary perspectives, and strategies in business management, this book is a piv...

The main purpose of this chapter is to present a possible alternative for optimization of supply chain management. The chapter discusses the virtual organization as an important tool for optimization of supply chain management. A simple model for discussing organization of supply chain is introduced, which serves as an important starting point for...

The main goal of our research is to analyze and display causes of a bullwhip effect formation within a supply chain, as well as to provide the appropriate solutions to limit the occurrence of the bullwhip effect by using the proper information flow and partners’ cooperation within the supply chain. The bullwhip effect is one of the most important i...

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and i...

The challenge of managing in modern organizations is to achieve and sustain mix between the people, technology, knowledge and behavior that organization possesses. In that framework e-learning has become an important way of transferring knowledge in modern society, which importantly influences on operating of all organizations. Creation and impleme...

Realization of a socio-economic order depends crucially on human values, including employees' personal values. The main purpose of this article is a requisitely holistic examination of the influence of employees' personal values on their attitudes towards economic, environmental and social aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Schwartz...

The purpose of this paper is to report how organizational stakeholders' personal values influence innovativeness. In that framework, we discuss management's understanding and perception of innovativeness. We analyse the selected values (as apart of the entity of culture, ethics and norms - VCEN) of managers. Based on a literature review, we argue t...

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationships between three underlying aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), namely economic, environmental, and societal aspects, and the level of CSR, as perceived by the employees. The strength and direction of the impact of a single underlying aspect of CSR, on the level of CSR in o...

The main purpose of this draft paper is to examine usage and key drivers of management tools that support supply chain management, among employees in Central Europe catching up economy. Results are reported for 155 Slovenian employees. Use of supply chain management practices in Slovenia is weaker than on average in well-developed parts of world. I...

Values of individuals, culture of groups, ethics of communities, and the resulting influential norms (i.e. VCEN) are interdependent. VCEN tend to crucially influence development and application of knowledge, skills, talents, and other resources. In the current very competitive and increasingly global economy, organizations and countries become more...

Our research aims to establish the influence of IT managers’ personal values on their innovativeness. We examine the directions and intensities of considered influences related with the survey which included 208 IT managers’ responses from Slovenian enterprises, obtained in 2012. Schwartz values survey questionnaire was used for measuring IT manage...

The enterprises’ social responsibility (CSR) importantly depends upon behavior and its important factors like values, culture, ethics and norms. This article investigates how employees’ ethical behavior defines CSR. Article includes a comprehensive literature review, and empirical results of survey about employees’ perception of ethical behavior an...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine how employees' personal ethics, expressed through their personal values and attitudes toward social and environmental issues, are associated with the ethics of organizations in public administration. The authors introduce their own theoretical model that examines the relations between employees' personal...

Purpose – In the global economy, managers of organizations are constantly innovating with their use of available supply chain management tools. Some tools, like strategic planning and customer segmentation, have gained strong global acceptance while others are less universal. The paper aims to focus the contribution on the organizational factors th...

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to emphasize the role and importance of management innovativeness for development of innovative working and behavior of organization and its employees. Design/methodology/approach – General management literature quotes a plethora of reasons for the differences in organizations development level. Many the...