ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion

Impact of Covid-19 and Non-performing Loan Determinants: Case Study Republic of Kosovo

2024-03-12T23:49:58+01:00

This paper explores the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the banking sector, focusing on the escalation of credit risk and its effects on non-performing loans (NPLs), loan loss provisions, and economic activity in the Republic of Kosovo. Amidst the global health crisis, the banking industry faced heightened risk, resulting in increased NPLs, heightened loan loss provisions, and diminished economic operations throughout 2020. Despite these challenges, the sector demonstrated resilience by adhering to governmental guidelines for credit provision, which offered mutual benefits to customers and banks alike. The study highlights the adverse impacts experienced during the peak of the pandemic, alongside the subsequent recovery and improvements in the banking and macroeconomic sectors by the end of 2021. Through the use of multiple linear regression analysis, incorporating a COVID-19 dummy variable, the paper investigates the pandemic's impact on the banking sector's stability and its correlation with economic activities. This analysis aims to provide insights into the dynamics between the pandemic crisis and its influence on financial stability through the lens of NPLs, offering valuable implications for policymakers and financial institutions in mitigating similar future risks.

Exploring the Potentials and Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence-Driven Decision-Making

2024-03-13T22:50:09+01:00

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more deeply implied in everyday life, it takes a more prominent role in decision-making in every industry. As Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, said: “Virtually every big company now has multiple AI systems and counts the deployment of AI as integral to their strategy.” Implicitly, decision-making capabilities are incorporated into their products; consequently, ethical concerns also gain importance. This paper presents some of the most critical issues of using AI in everyday decision-making. Starting from the three main concepts of AI, decision-making and ethics, it is a philosophical approach to the issues and biases raised by AI's overwhelming spread in everyday life.

Testing the Ability of ChatGPT to Categorise Urgent and Non-Urgent Patient Conditions: Who ya gonna call?

2024-03-13T23:07:28+01:00

This research explores the feasibility of utilising ChatGPT to categorise patient conditions as urgent and non-urgent. The primary objective is to assess the ChatGPT model's capacity to aid in the automation and digitalisation of healthcare processes, thereby alleviating the workload on healthcare professionals. The study employed a unique approach by presenting patient cases to the GPT and categorising the conditions based on urgency. In collaboration with an experienced hospital doctor, a set of questions was prepared and presented to a medical expert, along with the GPT model. Subsequently, the medical expert was consulted to assign urgency modalities for the same cases. The generated categorisations and the expert-assigned modalities were compared to evaluate the model's accuracy. The outcomes of this research have significant implications for healthcare management. Implementing AI to support triage processes and decisions could streamline patient care, ensuring appropriate and timely treatment allocation. By delegating specific tasks to AI, healthcare employees could focus on providing direct medical attention, leading to enhanced efficiency and improved patient outcomes. However, the results indicate that there is still uncertainty in using ChatGPT to provide medical advice. Ultimately, this study contributes to the broader exploration of AI's potential in healthcare decision-making, promoting the integration of advanced technologies to optimise medical services and enhance patient experiences.

Success Factors and Limitations Concerning LEAN Management in Austrian Companies

2024-03-25T00:12:42+01:00

The paper describes the research work about limitations, complications, weaknesses, and success factors that can occur through applying LEAN – a quality management system - in Austrian companies. Applying a quantitative research approach, a detailed questionnaire about the innovation status of the subject matter was sent to 1367 companies. Two hundred twenty-two thoroughly answered questionnaires provided sufficient feedback to demonstrate the statistical significance of the results. The statistical description of the findings unveils the following elements: (1) LEAN methods, (2) LEAN principles, (3) LEAN thinking, together with (4) smart integration of Industry 4.0/5.0 enables enormous advantages in the pursuit of success of any corporation in the survey. However, the complexity of business processes, the limitations in strategic scope, and the weak implementation of LEAN systems hinder companies from unfolding the full potential of LEAN management. Primarily, over-optimized utilisation of the concept and the persistent resistance of employees against any change are explained in detail and enriched with anecdotal descriptions. The research results are explained with bar charts and tables to provide a clear and coherent presentation: LEAN processes are the prerequisites for any sustainable digitalisation efforts in the future.

Testing Phillips Curve in Sweden

2024-03-11T23:39:14+01:00

The study aims to research the correlation between unemployment and inflation in Sweden between March 2020 - November 2021 to provide further insight into the validity of the Phillips curve. Previous research has found a contradictive relationship between unemployment and inflation. In addition, shifting market trends with lower globalization and higher inflation provide attention to evaluate the Philips curve. The focus is on Sweden because it is a small country with a high level of dependency on trade and technology. For that purpose, an econometric analysis has been applied to Swedish unemployment and inflation data between March 2020 - November 2021 to generate the correlation and examine the validity of the Phillips curve. The results indicate a weak linear relationship, suggesting that other variables than inflation have a more significant effect on unemployment than inflation. A possible explanation might be the inflation target that the Swedish Central Bank (Riksbanken) implemented in 1993, which contributed to a stable inflation level until 2021

Digital Skills Towards Competitiveness of Human Resources Efficiency: Comparative Approach

2024-03-12T21:30:32+01:00

Imagining people's functions in everyday life and work without ICT seems complicated. Since it substantially ensures the competitiveness of different systems at the micro and macro levels, its application is ubiquitous, regardless of the aspect from which it is observed. Numerous national and multinational strategies try to encourage educational systems, focusing on ICT to acquire skills, competencies and knowledge more effectively. This should represent added value to all future generations. This article emphasizes the structural approach to market divergence, and it analyzes the representation of the ICT development index (ICT) in European countries that compares a set of Scandinavian countries and other European Union countries. It is known that Scandinavian countries belong to those countries that have recognized the importance of involving ICT in educational programs, which improves the economy of a particular selected country. Considering this, the research reveals how ICT is essential in improving socio-economic development in many countries.

Relation of Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices in Croatia with Crude Oil Prices on World Markets

2024-03-12T19:24:37+01:00

According to many studies, the transmission of oil prices to retail fuel prices is asymmetric. Fuel prices react faster if oil prices rise and more slowly if oil prices fall. We use the simple and dynamic asymmetry models, error correction models, threshold autoregressive cointegration, and an approach based on the adjustment cost function in the linear-exponential form to verify the hypothesis of asymmetric reactions of gasoline and diesel prices in Croatia. The analysis uses a weekly time series of Croatian fuel prices obtained from the European Commission Weekly Oil Bulletin and BRENT oil prices from the US Energy Information Administration. Different standard econometric procedures lead to different results. Nevertheless, the approach based on the linear-exponential lost function confirmed the price asymmetries in the Croatian market.

A Classification Model for Predicting Road Accidents Using Web Data

2024-03-12T20:56:07+01:00

The increase in urbanisation and the use of vehicles in recent decades has also led to increased road accidents. The causes of road accidents can be various, including human error, weather conditions or even inadequate road infrastructure. Knowing the causes and areas of road accidents can help prevent them by state institutions taking necessary measures and citizens being informed about the areas of road accidents. The primary purpose of this study is to explore patterns in accident web data in Albania and to construct a classification model using data mining techniques and methods. These techniques have been applied to data obtained from several leading media portals in Albania, including about 30,000 articles from online portals and reports from the state authorities. The constructed classification model is expected to be utilised to predict the accident likelihood according to the locations, weather, and period of the year.

Towards Optimal Production of Graphene by Electrolysis in Molten Salts Using Machine Learning

2024-03-12T22:02:56+01:00

Graphene is very exciting and one of the best materials in the last decade. The interest in producing non-expensive and high-quality graphene is of great interest to many Departments of materials and researchers worldwide. The main goal of this research considers the design, development, and optimisation of new technology for producing graphene by electrolysis in molten salts using constant cell voltage, reversing cell voltage, and constant overpotential and reversing overpotential methods. Compared to other processes, the electrolysis process is simple, ecological, and economical. Furthermore, it offers possibilities to control various parameters: type of electrolyte, applied voltage, current density, temperature and type of graphite used as a row material for synthesis of graphene. The underlying relationship between the parameters and the quality of the graphene is obtained through an explainable tree-based Machine Learning (ML) model. We trained the model by using the production process parameters as input attributes and the quality of the produced graphene as a target variable. Domain experts provide labels regarding the quality of each experimental instance in our data set. We propose using the extracted rules from the model to serve as a blueprint for optimal graphene production by electrolysis in molten salts. Choosing the correct values for the process parameters results in high-yield graphene production, up to ten times cheaper than the one produced with other existing technologies.

Cybersecurity and Cyber Defense Insights: The Complementary Conceptual model of Cyber resilience

2023-10-17T21:25:10+02:00

Cybersecurity planning within a complex system and applying its principles aims to achieve system resilience in cyberspace. The purpose of a complex system is to carry out a mission as a set of abilities and preferences concerning the internal and external circumstances of the system. Achieving cyber resistance requires organizational, human, material, and financial resources to implement measures, activities, and procedures to reduce residual (remaining) security risk. This part of the security risk must be accepted within the system since it is impossible to achieve its further reduction. The research in this paper analyzes ways and means to achieve cyber resistance in the conditions of today's growing security risks. This research aims to create a new model of cyber resistance, which includes cyber and information security. This also considers that the methods of separating previously unseen threats and attacks of the past day are unknown today in a large number of business cases. To confront the challenges, there is a need to create "knowledge about ignorance" and the development of cyber capabilities based on the principles of cyber security and defense.

How University Students Use Internet Resources: Students' Self-Assessment Vs. Exams Results

2024-03-10T23:22:22+01:00

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.