Background and Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to radical and unexpected changes in everyday life, and it is plausible that people’s psychophysical health has been affected. This study examined the relationship between COVID-19 related knowledge and mental health in a Croatian sample of participants.MethodsAn online survey was conducted from March 18 until March 23, 2020, and a total of 1244 participant responses were collected (85.5% were women and 58.4% completed secondary education). Measures included eight questions regarding biological features of the virus, symptoms, and prevention, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Optimism-Pessimism Scale. According to the answers given on the questions on COVID-19 related knowledge, participants were divided in two groups: (1) informed and (2) uninformed on each question. They were then compared in the expressed levels of anxiety, depression, pessimism, and optimism. Full vs. partial mediation models with optimism/pessimism as a mediator in the relationship between anxiety/depression and the accuracy of responses for questions about handwashing and ways of transmission were estimated.ResultsParticipants who responded correctly on the question about handwashing had higher levels of anxiety, depression, and pessimism than those participants whose answer was incorrect, while participants who answered correctly on the question about the percentage of patients who develop serious breathing problems had higher levels of depression than those who answered incorrectly. Lower levels of anxiety and pessimism were observed in the participants who answered correctly about ways of transmission. Higher levels of pessimism were found in participants who scored incorrectly on questions about the efficiency of antibiotics, most common symptoms, and the possibility of being infected by asymptomatic carriers. Higher levels of knowledge about handwashing were predicted by higher levels of anxiety and pessimism. Higher levels of knowledge about ways of transmission were predicted by lower levels of anxiety and lower levels of pessimism. The examined relationships between anxiety/depression and knowledge were mediated by pessimism.ConclusionThe findings of this study suggest that knowledge about COVID-19 may be useful to reduce anxiety and depression, but it must be directed to the promotion of health behaviors and to the recognition of fake news.

The emergence of coronavirus led to evident consequences for the global economy. During the previous financial crisis, organisations have already determined the elements of crisis management so they could met the new corona crisis readily. Global changes, like the current pandemic situation, provide a different view toward the future expectations. The pandemic has caused new way of functioning under special circumstances such as various restrictions in many European countries, restrictions on people’s mobility and other novelties that have encountered for the first time. Characteristics of this crisis include novelty and pressure in a business environment, which can reveal various vulnerabilities in organisations. Managers were affected by major business changes, and there appeared a need for rapid reorganisation of the current way of functioning. Management had to introduce new control systems that refer to their strategies for exchanging information and decision-making. In general, each crisis is a new opportunity for seeking modern and appropriate models and tools for business improvement. When business situations are challenging, managers are more oriented toward controlling. Therefore, organisations that focus on traditional management models are not very successful in normal circumstances, and even less so in a crisis. This study aims to examine the extent of the structure and function of management control systems in pandemic conditions in Croatian organisations. An overview of current systems in organizations was given, as well as management challenges of the pandemic situations. This study includes the analysis of management control system during the pandemic times. The research was conducted using survey method what referred to analyses of strategic plans, performance evaluation systems, and management controls for performance evaluation in Croatian organisations. The factor analysis of the main components was conducted in order to examine the contribution of predictor variables in explaining the broad-scope management control system. In order to examine the contribution of gender, age, work experience, education, company size, aggregation, timeliness, and integration for explaining of broad-scope the management control system hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. The results confirm that integration is significant predictor in the crisis controlling model, but at the same time, when the integration and timeliness should have positive connection, greater timeliness does not increase to the greater availability. This withdraws the conclusion that uncertainty of environment extents the speed of business processes. Despite of the equal integration during pandemic crises the remote working conditions caused the decrease of the promptness of reporting collected information, which requires new models of controlling in unpredictable situations.

Nowadays, management is challenging with various unpredicting economic, political, and technological changes. Management controlling facing unpredictable changes, which require major adaptability. Recently, there have been major changes in the world that have an impact on the overall market culture. This study aimed to investigate market culture orientation in the context of the diversity of product requirements and the diversity of competitor strategies. Cross-sectional research was performed, using an online self-administered questionnaire. This study included 68 adult working-age participants (63.2 % males). The web-based survey included market culture and environmental complexity scope. The main findings of this study showed that there are significant relations between various market culture orientations and environmental complexity. Diversity of product requirements is related to almost all market culture orientations, except manager leadership orientation. The greater the diversity of product requirements, the greater is orientation to competitiveness, goal accomplishment and achievement, leadership, and result-oriented market culture. However, diversity of competitor strategies is related only to market leadership orientation and result-oriented market culture. These findings give insight into the importance of market culture regarding the levels of environmental complexity, which could be crucial in planning effective models of a company’s market orientation.

The conducted research was induced by the lack of research into the motivation for choosing a maritime career in Croatia, which is a traditional maritime country. The main objective of the research was to examine the reasons for enrolling in secondary school programs and undergraduate studies related to two maritime orientations (nautical navigation and marine engineering) in Croatia. The survey involved 403 students from seven secondary schools and 264 students of undergraduate studies. The reasons for enrolling in maritime education are categorized into two groups; motivation related to choosing a maritime career and motivation unrelated to a maritime career. The analysis of the obtained data indicated that the choice of maritime education orientation was dominated by the motivation underlying the selection of the maritime profession (79 % in the secondary and 93 % in the higher education students' sample). The identified reasons (strong interest in the nature and dynamics of the maritime profession, employment opportunities, wage rates and tradition) were categorized according to the level of autonomous regulation in selection. The reasons for choosing a maritime course of education unrelated to the maritime profession are particularly prevalent in the sample of secondary school students.

Death is an infallible part of the human life, and what makes humandifferent from all other beings is fact that he knows that he isgoing to die. Knowing this, human beings are spending their wholelife knowing that the day of their end is going to come. It is clear thatdeath has its biological part, also as a huge event in the existenceof all life forms, including human, death has its philosophical pointof view, and finally, unlike some may disagree, death itself is a hugesocial phenomena as well, and as such, the social influence of deathdeserves close attention and its own part in the social science studies.This paper analyzes the presence of the death in human culture, includinginstitutions, rituals and beliefs following the discourse of lateZygmunt Bauman who left huge influence on this field of study. Sincethe earliest forms of communities, humans are trying to overcomethe death, the state of “after-life” and some form of immortality ofthe being is something that is common to all religions and beliefs everknown to mankind, which stands as a evidence that the final void ofnon-existence know to us as death is something that always presentedhorror in the mind of the humans.