Tourism is an economic activity with great contribution for the development of many countries. To develop rural areas, tourism is especially important and need to be improved in these areas. The Government of Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina has decided to have tourism improvement as one of main objectives in their development strategy focusing on better conditions for development of tourism. Investments in tourism should be applied to the entire area of the Brčko District. Since Brčko District mainly consists of rural areas, it is necessary to invest in rural tourism. The first step of this study was to determine the tourist potential of rural areas. The determination of rural tourist potential in Brčko District was carried out with the assistance of the Brčko District Government. For this purpose, the method of expert decision-making was used, and three experts were selected who evaluated six rural settlements. To obtain results based on expert evaluation, two multi-criteria methods were used: the Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) for determining the importance of criteria and the fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to the COmpromise Solution (MARCOS) method to rank rural settlements in terms of their tourism potential. The results showed that the settlement of Bijela has the best rural tourist potential, while the settlement of Grbavica has the least potential. The results obtained by applying this model showed how rural tourism in Brčko District can be improved. The research model for testing the tourism potential has shown good results and can be applied in other branches of tourism with some adaptation to certain branches of tourism.

The choice of the appropriate variety of fruit is one of the most important factors in establishing new orchards. It is necessary to choose the variety that will give the best results in meeting the investment goals. This paper offered an innovative decision support model for plum variety selection, based on expert decision making and fuzzy logic. The fuzzy MARCOS (Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution) method was used. The research was conducted with the aim of improving plum production in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). To achieve this, the knowledge of experts from the Republic of Serbia was used, because this country is currently the third in the world in plum production and have branded many plum varieties. The results obtained using this model showed that two plum varieties stand out - Cacanska rodna and Stanley. These results were also confirmed by the performed sensitivity analysis. The worst results were obtained by the Sumadijka variety. These results will help in the selection of plum varieties when establishing new orchards in BiH to achieve the best results in Bosnian plum production.

Selection of Sustainable Suppliers is a key term in sustainable supply chain management. This is the reason to choose the supplier who will support the company to implement sustainability in its business, especially in the supply chain. The aim of this paper is to establish a new innovative model for decision-making based on a fuzzy approach. This decision-making problem is solved by applying multi-criteria decision-making since there are several criteria according to which a decision should be made: economic, social, and environmental. In order to make the final decision on the supply chain better and safer, the social criteria were modified in this paper, adding ethical criteria. The example with modified social criteria in this paper was shown on the example of the company "Voćar" Brčko, which deals with the production of food products. In this paper, the fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking, according to the Compromise Solution Method, was used. The findings have shown that supplier A1 has the best results, which were confirmed with the first sensitivity analysis. However, the second sensitivity analysis has shown that supplier A5 was better than supplier A1 in 14 scenarios. Due to these findings, no unanimous decision can be made about which supplier among the two, in this case, would contribute more. This paper has shown that the selection of sustainable suppliers is crucial for any company focused on the principles of sustainability in business. Moreover, this paper has shown that it is sometimes very difficult to select just one supplier.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) possess many natural resources that can be exploited for the development of medical tourism. The offer of medical tourism in B&H is focused on spa tourism. B&H has 16 registered spa-centers offering different types of services. This study provides a complete overview of the assessment of the current state of spa-centres using expert decision-making and methods of multi-criteria analysis. An innovative and novel MCDM model based on integration of the FUCOM (full consistency method) and fuzzy MARCOS (Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution) methods was used. The model consists of 16 alternatives and eight sustainable criteria. The results of this research have shown that the spa-centers of Ilidža near Sarajevo, Fojnica and Vrućica have the best assessments of the current situation and prerequisites for sustainable business. These spa-centers should be a benchmark to other spas providing direction on how to improve their business to be more sustainable and competitive in the market. These results were confirmed by a sensitivity analysis with two approaches used. The first approach was to compare the results obtained by the fuzzy MARCOS method with other fuzzy methods, and the second approach was to examine the influence of the application of different weights on the final ranking of the spa. The results of this study can serve spa-canter managers to understand the position of their spa-centers in order to exploit advantages they have and eliminate the shortcomings to improve their business.

Every organization needs to invest in order for it to grow, and investments are made through projects. Thus, investment management is performed by applying project management techniques. Different project management software programs are used to manage multiple projects. There is a lot of project management software on the market, and four pieces of the software were selected and analyzed. In this paper, the best management software rated by the beneficiaries of these projects in the United Arab Emirates are explored. The research required for this study was conducted in the United Arab Emirates. The MARCOS method was used to evaluate the program. The results showed that Smartsheet had been rated the best by users. This paper provides an overview of how multicriteria analysis methods can be used when ranking project management programs.

In this paper is presented a novel integrated fuzzy – rough Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model based on integration fuzzy and interval rough set theory. Model integrates Fuzzy PIvot Pairwise RElative Criteria Importance Assessment - fuzzy PIPRECIA and Interval rough Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) methods. An illustrative example for demonstration of the model is proposed that represents evaluation and supplier selection based on nine environmental criteria. Fuzzy PIPRECIA method is used for determining the significance of the following seven criteria: C1 - environmental image, C2 - recycling, C3 - pollution control, C4 - environmental management system, C5 – environmentally friendly products, C6 - resource consumption and C7 - green competencies. Iterval rough SAW method is applied for evaluation four alternatives. Results show that third criterion is most important while fourth alternative represents the best solution.

This paper explores ethno-villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina as an important element of rural and cultural tourism. The attractiveness of natural and cultural heritage is very important for sustainable rural tourism development. In order to improve the process of decision making to enable the sustainable development of ethno-villages, a multi-criteria assessment model has been developed. The methodology is based on qualitative modeling using a multi-criteria analysis via the DEXi software. The model is based on hierarchical relations consisting of three main criteria that are the basis of sustainable tourism development: economic, social, and environmental criteria. The ultimate goal of the model in this study was to evaluate ethno-villages, namely six ethno-villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results of the study show how ethno-villages contribute to sustainable development.

In order for a tourist to visit a location, it has to be attractive. Destination attractiveness can be examined in several ways. One of them is offered by this study, which has examined destination attractiveness based on resources available in certain rural settlements. Based on a case study carried out in the Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Brčko District), a model will be developed to test for rural tourism destination attractiveness. Examination of tourist destination attractiveness in the area of the Brčko District was conducted with a decision model based on the Decision EXpert method and expert decision-making. For that purpose, six rural settlements in the area of the Brčko District were examined with respect to destination attractiveness. Results obtained using this model showed that rural settlement Bijela has a “very good” attractiveness, rural settlements Brezik, Brezovo Polje, and Gornji Zovik have “good” attractiveness, while rural settlements Ražljevo and Maoča have “middle” attractiveness. The results obtained by applying this model have shown the need for improvement of touristic offer in order to make it more attractive. In order to improve attractiveness of a tourist destination, we need to strengthen human potential in this area and improve tourist infrastructure and make more effort to preserve the environment. The application of the used model has given good results in examination of tourist destination attractiveness and it should be applied for other branches of tourism in the future studies.

Abstract Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods are very useful tools for daily decision-making in different fields. In addition, determining an acceptable solution with respect to different factors is certainly a very demanding and difficult task. In this paper, a new Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution (MARCOS) method for a sustainable supplier selection in the healthcare industry (in a polyclinic) in Bosnia and Herzegovina is developed. The advantages of the developed method are: the consideration of an anti-ideal and ideal solution at the very beginning of the formation of an initial matrix, closer determination of utility degree in relation to both solutions, the proposal of a new way to determine utility functions and their aggregation, the possibility to consider a large set of criteria and alternatives while maintaining the stability of the method. Supplier selection is very important for organizations in the medical industry. Sustainability in the supplier selection process in the medical industry is a strategically important issue, and poorly implemented in the private medical sector. Therefore, the example explains how to use the MARCOS method to select sustainable suppliers in the private medical sector. A case study of a sustainable supplier selection for the healthcare industry (a polyclinic) includes ranking of eight alternatives with regard to 21 criteria for all aspects of sustainability. The results and verification of the new method are carried out throughout a comprehensive sensitivity analysis. 21 scenarios with changes in the weight values of criteria were established, the measurement scale from 1 to 9 was changed to 1–5, a comparison with six other MCDM methods was performed, and it was verified in dynamic conditions which implied a change of the elements of the initial decision-making matrix. All phases of the sensitivity analysis showed the validity of MARCOS method. The obtained results and all scenarios in sensitivity analysis show that A2 remains the best alternative.

ABSTRACT The goal of this study is to empirically examine the potential impact of supply chain practices on the supply chain performances of the agro-food industry. The constructs of interest are three-dimensional, including supplier partnerships, customer relationships and level and quality of information sharing, thus representing supply chain practices, flexibility, agility and innovation as the main characteristics of supply chain performance. To gain better understanding of the possible impact of the supply chain practices on the supply chain performances of the agro-food industry we use structural equation modelling. The analysis has revealed statistically significant positive impact of customers’ relationships as well as statistically significant negative impact of a supplier partnership on the supply chain performance. From a theoretical point of view, this study has indicated contribution of different supply chain practices on supply chain performances. The results obtained from this study provide practical implications that assist managers in improving supply chain performance and highlight limitations for implementation of supply chain practice for the improvement of business operations.