Marko Kolaković

Value creation efficiency in the new economy

Firms, which have recognised the significance of Intellectual Capital as the key resource of modern business, aim at developing ways to manage and also measure this key resource in order to relate their Intellectual Capital performance and bottom line results. But it has become obvious that the traditional financial metrics do not reflect reality because the core of modern business is not cost but instead value creation. Traditional indicators such as revenue, cash flow or income are often misleading and, in our opinion, hinder managements ability to measure more accurately whether or not value is created or destroyed. It has become obvious that, if a firm aims to achieve a maximum result with its existing tangible and intangible resources, management must introduce new tools for monitoring and measuring how well the resources (physical, financial and intellectual capital) have been utilised and whether they create or destroy value. In this context, the ability of employees to transform their knowledge and skills into value creating action is of vital importance. Therefore, intellectual capital has gained in importance as a new knowledge management instrument for managing, measuring and improving a companys intangible assets. It can enable any firm to launch a renewal process and transform itself into a powerful strategic weapon for the new century. Focusing on monitoring and measuring intellectual capital performance, our research shows that Value Creation Efficiency Analysis (powered by the VAICTM model) may be utilised for better measuring business activity at the firm, regional or national level. In whatever follows, after we introduce the concept of Intellectual Capital and its comprising elements, we use Value Creation Efficiency Analysis to study Croatias banks and the countrys entire economy.

Economic Relationships Between the Members of Virtual Enterprise

One of the key elements of the operation and development of a virtual enterprise is the establishment of economic relationships between its members. The members of a virtual enterprise may be firms, parts of firms or individuals whose relationships are based on contracts.

A New Role for Design and Design Managers in the ‘Organizational Design’ of High Social Value-Creative Business Models

Sustainability at the global and local level constantly requires a contextual understanding of the premise of organizational behavior. We unravel that in fact that currently there is no veritable role for design, designers, or design methodology associated with ‘organizational design’. Rather, already practiced organizational designs are analyzed retrospectively through trial and error, for possible change, adaptation, optimization, mutation - in short ‘evolution’ - while the original creation of the system blueprint or architecture is not questioned. The application of such a system to produce sustainability requires reexamination. The design of an organization is a byproduct of tactics and management bureaucracy in postindustrial organizational entities. The role of design is subordinate and residual at best. In this admittedly abstractive albeit critical and empirically supported paper we want to demonstrate that (a) an entrepreneurial perspective on design in the premise of sustainable change is challenged by the paradigmatic and transformational effects of information and information technology in their most recent incarnations (especially with the advent of complex information technology-intensive firms); and (b) that the apparent problematic absence of a design theory and the existence of the firm can be reconciled via the involvement of design managers with their presumed design-methodological grounding. We advocate a tripartite system for designing, producing, and the adaptation of sustainable change: design managers design the firm, managers operate it, and strategists lead and govern it. Thus, in the pursuit of a sustainable world – but contrary to our energy dependent convictions for it - we propose to substitute the anachronistic evolutionary speciation of organizational design with a perspective based on ‘intelligent design’.