The performance commercial banks in the Croatia have been widely studied, but there is little known about the examination of the nature of competition. For these reasons, it is important to investigate whether the banking sector in Croatia exerts monopoly or monopolistic behavior. This research empirically explores the nature of competition in the Croatian banking sector by covering 24 commercial banks between 2008 and 2018. In this vein, the panel data analysis was used along with H-Statistics. This study for Croatia and its findings confirms early findings of the existence of monopolistic competition in the most transition and developing countries. In fact, the findings obtained from this study reveals that the commercial banks in Croatia operate under monopolistic structure. Moreover, the results reveal that variable of RIETD, RLTA, RETA, and RDTA are statically significant. It indicates that banks operated in Croatia are focus more on traditional loans than other activities.

In this paper, the authors explore the conditions for the development of innovation in the Republic of Serbia. The paper analyzes the factors influencing the development of the innovation environment. The influences of state institutions, international institutions and programs as well as the influences of the NGO sector on the development of the innovation environment in Serbia are discussed. In order to valorize these efforts to develop the innovation environment in the right way, the authors also analyzed Germany, as the leading economy in supporting the innovation environment and building innovation infrastructure.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are seen as one of the main drivers of economic growth in the modern economy that is characterised with free markets, private ownership, entrepreneurship, and a major change in the basic approach to business and management. As a result, human capital is regarded as the most important asset, and therefore, in order to grow and prosper, SMEs need to embrace the strategic approach to the human resource management (HRM) which should, in return, increase their competitiveness and responsiveness to the market changes. The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of strategic human resource (HR) practices on organisational performance. The results of hierarchical regression used to test the hypothesis supported the relationship between strategic HR practices and business performance. The findings presented in this study were used for making recommendations to the SMEs' managers in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1 Faculty of Business Administration (FBA), International University of Sarajevo (IUS); E-Mail: gridic@ius.edu.ba, 2 Faculty of Business Administration (FBA), International University of Sarajevo (IUS); E-Mail: minelaahmic57@gmail.com, 3 Faculty of Business Administration (FBA), International University of Sarajevo (IUS) E-Mail: oridic@ius.edu.ba, 4 Faculty of Business Administration (FBA), International University of Sarajevo (IUS) E-Mail: sbusatlic@ius.edu.ba ABSTRACT