End-of-life vehicle (ELV) recycling is a process that spends energy and could be an energy source as well. This part of energy recovering depends on many different factors related to the broad and local aspects of ELV recycling. The ELV recycling process is consuming energy from different energy sources (electrical, fossil), however, this consumption is lower in relation to energy consumption during the production of new vehicle parts from the very beginning. This article attempts to promote an integrated approach in the analysis of the problem of energy recovery through ELV recycling. Authors aim to analyze the ELV recycling process as an energy generator and to present possibilities for its energy recovery. The research analyses are based on the empirical investigation of ELV recycling in the Republic of Serbia, as a developing country, and on defined statistical model presenting the impact of ELV recycling on energy generation, spending, and conservation during one-year intervals. Research results showed that the higher ELV generation rates may led to a higher energy recovery, and environmental and socio-economic sustainability.
The problem of sustainable business excellence has been investigated according to different aspects in different fields. For a more detailed analysis, it is necessary to develop an integrative sustainable business excellence model, respecting the baseline model of business excellence according to the European Foundation of Quality Management, with the possibility of defining the relationships and levels of significance of different variables. The primary goal of this paper is to present a developed integrative model to simulate the effects of information and communication technologies, and quality and effects of leadership improvement, as independent variables, on sustainable business excellence in higher education institutions, as a dependent variable. The model was developed by applying dynamic system techniques and evaluated by using statistical methods. In the sample of 17 Serbian and 21 Russian universities, the authors analyzed the information and communication support, leadership and quality, and their impact on sustainable business excellence. According to the simulation analysis, it was concluded that the EFQM model of self-assessment could help produce a more customer-oriented culture in HEIs, through ICT support, leadership and quality criteria enhancements.
The business environment is rapidly changing and puts pressure on enterprises to find effective ways to survive and develop. Since it is almost impossible to identify the multitude of complex conditions and business risks, an organization has to build its resilience in order to be able to overcome issues and achieve long term sustainability. This paper contributes by establishing a two-step model for assessment and enhancement of organizational resilience potential oriented towards Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the process industry. Using a dynamic modelling technique and statistical tools, a sample of 120 SMEs in Serbia has been developed as a testing base, and one randomly selected enterprise was used for model testing and verification. Uncertainties regarding the relative importance of organizational resilience potential factors (ORPFs) and their value at each level of business are described by pre-defined linguistic expressions. The calculation of the relative importance of ORPFs for each business level is stated as a fuzzy group decision making problem. First, the weighted ORPFs’ values and resilience potential at each business level are determined. In the second step, near optimal enhancement of ORPFs’ values is achieved by applying a genetic algorithm (GA).
As the whole world is going mobile, application of mobile devices in education, also known as m-learning, is becoming one of the most popular areas of educational research. This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness and students’ attitudes toward an adaptive mobile learning system based on personalized content and mobile web. Personalization of learning materials is based on the Felder-Silverman learning style model and the features of the accessing mobile device were identified using the device library. The results of the study confirm students’ positive attitudes toward mobile learning and the developed adaptive m-learning system. They also prove the effectiveness of the system and m-learning as an additional educational tool in terms of increasing students’ knowledge and scores.