The contemporary world becomes more and more volatile and unpredictable every year (dynamic development of technology—Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0, dynamic global changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic, great changes in consumer behavior, climate crisis, geopolitical disruptions). Individuals, companies, and supply chains face challenges emerging from economic, sociological, and political phenomena. These phenomena disrupt regular performance and limit the efficient functioning of companies and economies. Due to numerous relations and connections in the economy, disruptions in one area affect the others and spread, growing in range and severity. Hence, disruptions should be dealt with to provide continuity of supply chains and to ensure their efficient and effective performance. The study aims to identify crucial characteristics of disruptions to facilitate disruption minimization strategies. The characteristics of disruptions in supply chains are identified based on a literature review, synthesized and validated by the experts. A study is implemented to validate identified characteristics and to confront theoretical findings with the practical experience and observations of the experts. The results of the study are discussed and commented on. The conclusions from the study refer to the nature and characteristics of disruptions in the contemporary economy, equipping managers with useful knowledge when dealing with disruptions, and academics with observations that can stimulate further discussion on stability, flexibility, and resilience of companies and supply chains.

Passive knowledge procurement in face-to-face learning is no longer the way education is imparted in higher education these days. Instead, new and developing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are emerging as a promising paradigm for creating a profound change in digitizing education. It facilitates active learning with the enhancement in its delivery and how students grasp it by representing the shift from traditional desktop-as-a-platform towards the network-as-a-platform model. This paper proposes an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with ICT-based teaching and learning platform. TAM is the fundamental model to understand user perceptions and behavior towards potential acceptance or rejection of the technology. A mixed research methodology is adopted, comprising a series of survey questionnaires, evaluation of results, and the undergraduate student’s performance in the collection of quantitative and qualitative data to measure the acceptance of the proposed research model. For the practical implication of the proposed research model, four groups of 300 students each or two programming courses: C++ and Java, were analyzed in two consecutive academic sessions in a controlled environment for lecture and laboratory classes. Series of statistical result analyses were performed and examined with hypothesized relationships to measure the desired outcome. It measures the impact on the following constructs: student interest, motivation, understanding, satisfaction, class attention and interaction, attendance, improve grades, and perception of pedagogical effect. Results show positive effects for identified research questions and hypotheses, helping students with the knowledge, understanding, and deep learning programming and debugging skills. The novelty of this research lies in extending the findings using real-time monitoring facilities to track student activities and progress, including frequency use and intention to use a technologically driven learning style. This study also addresses two main issues in existing literature (i) analyses and compares perspectives of both students and instructors (ii) determines and measures the impact and its acceptance of user perception and intention for the entire semester, not for a single point in time.

Nowadays, due to a large number of changes in the external environment, as well as increased competition, organizations must actively support business processes. Internal management processes must be constantly improved. To understand whether a company is developing in the right direction, it is necessary to conduct a maturity assessment. The directions of changes in enterprises should be well designed and based on analysis of the gap between the present and expected state definition. The diagnosis for the present state definition should be holistic, reliable and for the expected state-based strategy and goal recognition. Hence, the goal of the paper is to present the methodology of a company’s self-assessment and definition of an individualized improvement strategy to strengthen the company’s ability to thrive and prosper. The paper includes a presentation of the diagnosis methodology based on maturity models and the resilience concept and its validation based on experts’ opinions and a case study. Companies need a diagnosis to know where they are, and guidance to move in the right direction, which makes the results of the research utilitarian. The methodology can be used for self-assessment, benchmarking and designing an improvement strategy.