Education and employment stakeholders worldwide have increasingly acknowledged the need to teach students soft skills to improve their academic performance and long-term prospects. Soft skills are transferable across jobs and industries and related to personal and social competencies. Their development aims to empower and increase personal growth and learning participation and improve job opportunities. Given their central role in shaping students’ educational experiences, teachers must be well-versed in the value of cultivating soft skills and awareness of the necessity to incorporate their study into various curricular frameworks. As a result, this article investigates whether business schools adequately prepare their students for the soft skills demanded by today’s labor market. Business teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina were the subjects of the survey. The findings indicate that teachers recognize the value of teaching students soft skills but that current curricula may be strengthened in this area.

There is a generally accepted opinion that young people, born in the era of intensive use of ICT and the Internet, are much better at handling new technologies and using Internet resources than older generations. In support of this claim, it is stated that different digital technologies and the Internet have been a natural environment for these generations since birth. This paper aims to check to what extent the above statements apply to University of Mostar (SUM) students. For this purpose, the authors researched SUM students to determine how they self-assess their knowledge and use of Internet resources. On the other hand, it was necessary to use Internet resources to pass exams in certain subjects. In this paper, the authors compared the results obtained by surveying students with actual exam results. The results of the research suggest that the students have relatively good knowledge and coping skills with the tasks they solve within the individual courses of their studies. However, Insufficient mastery of the Internet and its information is indicated by lower ratings of the ability to evaluate found materials and ratings of the ability to use the advanced functions of the Google search engine.

For successful leadership, skills such as management should be measured, in addition to high emotional skills, knowing how to apply leadership styles to each situation faced within the organization. Be influential and know how to involve the team to masterfully achieve the proposed objectives. The present investigation portrays the leadership styles present and applied by leaders of an IPSS's (Private Social Solidarity Institution). Topics such as motivation, satisfaction, approaches, and leadership concepts were proposed to be studied, using the literature review of other studies already carried out. The necessary information was obtained, using a questionnaire to a sample of the active population in Lisbon Municipality Area. The results obtained from the sample of 19 responses to the questionnaire was subject to statistical treatment, showed that an effective leader must not only reveal technical knowledge to transmit to the subordinates who perform tasks, but also the ability to deal with people, to communicate with employees to get job done. These same results demonstrated the transversal preference of leaders in IPSS's for the adoption of the democratic leadership style, regardless the situational variables that explain some conflict situations. In the opposite direction, autocratic leadership style is the least adopted by them.

Today's extensive requirements for the storage, management, and analysis of complex, dynamic, evolving, distributed, and heterogeneous data from different sources and platforms, e.g., Big data, generate enormous challenges for IT, especially database applications. That is why the demand for data reduction is increasingly coming from the world of databases, intending to reduce the costs of storing, processing, and querying Big data. There is a large number of different techniques for Big data reduction that can cause confusion and complicate this process. Because of that, the authors proposed a Big data reduction framework to structure and present both data reduction techniques and necessary components essential for a better understanding of the process. The importance and the components of the proposed framework are explained in this paper.

The rapid development of information technology (IT) both forces and supports the transformation of universities in almost all their operations (strategic planning, budgeting, education, research, quality control, cooperation with business and society, etc.). The paper presents the research results related to the digitalization of different processes at universities – more specifically, teachers’ opinions on the effect of digitalization on different processes. The survey was conducted among the University of Mostar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina (BH) teachers. The authors identified processes at the university and investigated the perceived impact of information technology on them. The findings show that the impact of digitalization is positive on most processes, whereby a strong influence is determined for research projects financed by the Ministry of Education, quality management, teaching, and evaluation of acquired knowledge (examination).

The mail goal of this paper is to research usefulness and satisfaction with the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system from the end users' point of view in companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The research was conducted using a questionnaire, prepared on the findings from the literature. The data were statistically analysed in accordance with the research objectives. The results show that there is a significant difference in user satisfaction with ERP regard to numbers of modules in ERP. Research shows that end users in participated companies are relatively satisfied with their ERP solutions and consider them useful for business, but improvements are still possible.

The aim of this paper is to determine the relationship between the quality of information from the Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP system) and business performance. The quality of information from the ERP system is assessed using a survey questionnaire examining the end users of the ERP system, namely middle and top management because they use information from the ERP system to make business decisions. Business performance is monitored from a controlling point of view, using selected indicators from the DuPont system. Empirical research was conducted on medium and large enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The existence of a positive correlation between information quality and business performance was examined using regression analysis and correlation analysis. Regression analysis and correlation analysis indicate that return on sale (ROS) and return on assets (ROA) have a medium significant correlation with the quality of information, and total asset turnover ratio (TR) does not correlate with the quality of information. Based on the obtained results, a positive relationship between the quality of information from the ERP system and business performance was confirmed. This can be interpreted that information is becoming an increasingly important resource in supporting organizational activities, and information quality has been identified as one of the main determinants influencing the decision-making process.

The global pandemic of the virus COVID-19 dramatically has impacted Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and worldwide. HEIs were forced to switch overnight to online lectures and exams without almost any teachers' and students' preparation and education. After one year of online classes at the University of Mostar (SUM), whether that kind of teaching impacts creativity. In order to find the answer to the research question, the authors used a questionnaire they developed and applied in 2015 to investigate students' perceptions about creativity at the University of Mostar. The research presented in this paper is limited to SUM students who have had online classes since March 2020. The primary research goal is to investigate whether there are any significant changes in students' perceptions of creativity compared to research from 2015. Namely, the authors investigate whether the enhanced use of IT and online platforms (Google Meet, SUMARUM – the University of Mostar’s variant of Moodle) affected students' creativity. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Recently, social media has become an integral part of different business activities. One of these activities is the recruitment and selection of employees. The paper presents the results of empirical research conducted among the students of the University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) and BH employers related to the use of social media in the process of recruitment and selection of new employees. The aim of the research is to find if there are similarities or/and differences in standpoints of students and employers concerning the use of social media in job finding and recruitment. The results show that most students and employers recognized social media as a valuable tool in the process of job finding, i.e., recruiting. However, both students and employers expressed reserve about data accuracy on social media. Students were resolute that their activities on social media should not affect their employment, while employers saw social media only as an additional tool in human resource management.

The article presents research about the use of genetic algorithms in the analysis of the interrelation among curriculum courses in higher education. The authors used genetic algorithms as a method to analyse the influence that achieved grades in predictors' courses have on achieved grades in dependent courses as well as to observe whether the genetic algorithms can contribute to improving the curriculum. The research was based on a set of data related to the success of students from the Faculty of Information Technologies at the University 'Džemal Bijediae' in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim was to anticipate students' grades based on the grades they obtained in previous semester's courses. This research should help educational institutions to evaluate the suitability of the sequence of courses within the curriculum in order to enable personalized learning paths, make the teaching processes more efficient, and promote a balanced curriculum. Namely, a good curriculum can attract new students, improve the success rate of enrolled students, and increase the quality and visibility of the institution. Since the genetic algorithm is search techniques for handling complex spaces, we can use it for the research at each stage of the educational process. Analyses of quantitative data using a genetic algorithm can help educational institutions improve the quality of teaching.