Matej Galić’s scientific contributions

Nowadays, management is challenging with various unpredicting economic, political, and technological changes. Management controlling facing unpredictable changes, which require major adaptability. Recently, there have been major changes in the world that have an impact on the overall market culture. This study aimed to investigate market culture orientation in the context of the diversity of product requirements and the diversity of competitor strategies. Cross-sectional research was performed, using an online self-administered questionnaire. This study included 68 adult working-age participants (63.2 % males). The web-based survey included market culture and environmental complexity scope. The main findings of this study showed that there are significant relations between various market culture orientations and environmental complexity. Diversity of product requirements is related to almost all market culture orientations, except manager leadership orientation. The greater the diversity of product requirements, the greater is orientation to competitiveness, goal accomplishment and achievement, leadership, and result-oriented market culture. However, diversity of competitor strategies is related only to market leadership orientation and result-oriented market culture. These findings give insight into the importance of market culture regarding the levels of environmental complexity, which could be crucial in planning effective models of a company’s market orientation.

The emergence of coronavirus led to evident consequences for the global economy. During the previous financial crisis, organisations have already determined the elements of crisis management so they could met the new corona crisis readily. Global changes, like the current pandemic situation, provide a different view toward the future expectations. The pandemic has caused new way of functioning under special circumstances such as various restrictions in many European countries, restrictions on people’s mobility and other novelties that have encountered for the first time. Characteristics of this crisis include novelty and pressure in a business environment, which can reveal various vulnerabilities in organisations. Managers were affected by major business changes, and there appeared a need for rapid reorganisation of the current way of functioning. Management had to introduce new control systems that refer to their strategies for exchanging information and decision-making. In general, each crisis is a new opportunity for seeking modern and appropriate models and tools for business improvement. When business situations are challenging, managers are more oriented toward controlling. Therefore, organisations that focus on traditional management models are not very successful in normal circumstances, and even less so in a crisis. This study aims to examine the extent of the structure and function of management control systems in pandemic conditions in Croatian organisations. An overview of current systems in organizations was given, as well as management challenges of the pandemic situations. This study includes the analysis of management control system during the pandemic times. The research was conducted using survey method what referred to analyses of strategic plans, performance evaluation systems, and management controls for performance evaluation in Croatian organisations. The factor analysis of the main components was conducted in order to examine the contribution of predictor variables in explaining the broad-scope management control system. In order to examine the contribution of gender, age, work experience, education, company size, aggregation, timeliness, and integration for explaining of broad-scope the management control system hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. The results confirm that integration is significant predictor in the crisis controlling model, but at the same time, when the integration and timeliness should have positive connection, greater timeliness does not increase to the greater availability. This withdraws the conclusion that uncertainty of environment extents the speed of business processes. Despite of the equal integration during pandemic crises the remote working conditions caused the decrease of the promptness of reporting collected information, which requires new models of controlling in unpredictable situations.

All functions within the company, regardless of its size and activity, meet with an extremely dynamic economy and an environment in which they perform many day-to-day activities. In that sense, procurement is no different. It no longer serves only the purpose of ordering goods or services at the request of production at the lowest possible prices. Today's modern procurement systems offer solutions, improvements and thoughts on all aspects of business operations in which they are involved. There is a special emphasis on the dynamic resolution of challenging situations, which lies in unpredictable circumstances and crisis. The procurement department always works closely with other functions that directly affect production, and this is where extremely dynamic, high-quality and timely communication is expected. Communication with functions within the company is followed by communication with partners, where procurement becomes a sort of link between production and suppliers. Members of the procurement team are in most cases representatives of their companies, and it is based on their communication skills, behaviour and decisions that the image of the company is created among partners. Quality and timely communication of procurement team members with partners can play a key role for the continuation of production in turbulent market situations. Managers must organize all procurement processes in a quality manner, as well as motivate, educate and reward members of the procurement department. With their comments, opinions, advice and experience, partners offer an additional perspective, solution and an alternative path in the further planning of steps which would help achieve all of company's objectives. Experienced management, especially in times of crisis, use all possible information to make quality decisions, but also learn from these situations in order to make all possible preparations in regular business operations to minimize the shock that a new crisis could cause. The theoretical part of the paper will present a description of the concept of procurement business, management and crisis management, business and crisis communication, creating partnerships, and maintaining the company's image. The empirical research, conducted through questionnaires which were filled in by employees from the procurement department in the Republic of Croatia, provides us with answers about the importance of partnerships, with a special emphasis on the current coronavirus pandemic. In conclusion, we have explained proposals for improving and maintaining partnerships in the procurement business during crisis, as well as in regular business situations.