engleski

Current and future use of management tools

This paper examines use of management tools among Slovenian and Croatian employees, with the main focus on linkages between current management tools use and patterns of their future use. Authors developed and test a model for predicting a future use of management tools, based on current tools use by employees in organizations, underlying assumptions of the theory of planned behavior and information- perception-behavior link. Descriptive statistics suggests that there are differences in management tools use patterns among Slovenian and Croatian employees. Among most used tools, employees in both countries, significantly differently use especially outsourcing, mission and vision statements, knowledge management, total quality management, and customer segmentation. Using structural equation modeling for testing proposed relations in developed model on samples of Slovenian and Croatian employees reveals that current use of tools plays an important role in predicting of future use of tools in Slovenian organizations, while linkages for Croatian sample are rather insignificant. More specifically, current use of management tools has positive influence on future use of management tools, while the impact of current percentage of satisfied users with management tools is very weak. Further, a comparison of results with international data reveals differences in patterns of management tools use between former catching up countries, studied are two former transition economies, and economies with longer tradition in market economy. Based on current state of management tools use, linkages between their current and future use and patterns of tools use in high developed economies, the authors speculate about future pattern management tools use in catching up countries, based on experiences from high developed market economies. Those assumptions represent a building block for boosting use of management tools in organizations in catching up economies, and thus helping those organizations to reduce gap between them and most developed organizations.

Croatia; current use; future use; management tools; perception; planned behavior; Slovenia; pattern of use

Čaopis je indeksiran u Social Sciences Citation Index, Social Scisearch and Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition (www.thomsonreuters.com). Prati da i e-inačica EconLit index (www.econlit.org), International Bibliography of Social Sciences (www.ibss.ac.uk) i Inspec (www.iee.org), Scopus (www.info.scopus.com), ABI/INFORM (www.proquest.com), EBSCO (www.ebscohost.com). Navodi ga i 11. izdanje Cabell´s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Economics and Finance/Management (www.cabells.com).