Auditing firms are very important for business decision-makers and they have a large impact on business development, due to issued reports and competent opinions contained in such reports. The purpose of this paper is to present, to professional public, the current condition and changes of business results achieved by active auditing firms in the Republic to Serbia over the period of eleven years. The goal of the paper is an objective assessment of the state of play and operations of active auditing firms, as well as a determination of business trends and monitoring of the results achieved in the audit services market. The paper analyzes the changes in individual balance sheet items and profitability indicators, that is their average growth during the eleven years. The results indicate that the members of the "Big Four” had not acquired a leadership position in the market, observed according to the productivity indicators. Actually, the results indicate that the auditing firms with the largest growth of net results, in the observed period, are not the leaders according to the criterion of assets growth. At the same time, the firms with the greatest growth of business income in the observed period are not at the same time the most productive firms, measured by net result per employee. The results obtained in this paper contribute to the formation of a realistic view of the situation in the audit services market, as well as the perspectives and tendencies in the development of audit firms.

The quality of information presented in the financial statements of companies may be impaired due to fraudulent activities. One of the frequently used instruments that indicates that fraud has been committed in the financial statements is the Beneish M-score model. The purpose of the research is to examine the exposure of hotel companies in the Republic of Serbia to the risk of fraud in financial statements, as well as to determine whether there has been a change in that risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was conducted on a sample of 100 randomly selected hotel companies, and their financial reports for 2019 and 2020 were observed. There was a high risk of fraud based on the recognition of costs of sales, management and administration, and borrowing in both observed years, as well as a high risk of fraud based on the recognition of income and gross margin index in 2020. Further, it was determined that in the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in the risk of fraud in the financial statements based on the gross margin index and recognition of selling, management and administration costs. Microenterprises are exposed to a higher risk of fraud based on the recognition of costs of sales, management and administration compared to medium-sized ones. Limited liability companies are more exposed to risk based on the recognition of sales revenue, accrual item and total risk (measured by the 8-variable model) compared to joint-stock companies. On the other hand, joint-stock companies are more exposed to the risk of fraud based on gross margin and general risk of fraud (measured by the 5-variable model) compared to limited liability companies.

Human resources and innovation represent important elements of modern business processes. Business success depends primarily on human resources and business creativity in the current global business environment. In a competitive global economy, where other production factors (capital, technology, raw materials and information) can be copied, an organization's human resources become the only source of permanent competitive benefit. In that sense, business entities in a globalized environment have to do business differently. Those radically new conditions require innovation and special quality of human resources, and new knowledge and skills of all actors in the economic arena. Such a business environment requires inventiveness and creativity of the persons managing knowledge and information, who create entrepreneurial atmosphere and create organizations based on innovation and teamwork work to overcome problems that arise from fast organizational change and integration of countries into international economic environment. The primary goal is to provide a better understanding of the roles of human resources and innovation in the performance improvement and competitiveness of global organizations and be of practical use regarding the perception of the importance of human resources management and innovation in modern business.

The subject of research in this paper is control activities and monitoring as components of the internal control system in manufacturing companies in the Republic of Serbia. The aim of this paper is to determine not only interdependence of control activities and monitoring, but also the interdependence of these components of the internal control system with indicators of ROA and ROE of a company. An additional goal of this paper is to examine the existence of differences in the assessment of the importance of control activities and monitoring applicable in manufacturing companies of different sizes. The research included a sample of manufacturing companies operating in the Republic of Serbia. The analysis was performed in the SPSS statistical program, where a correlation analysis was performed using the Pearson Coefficient, as well as the Kruskal-Wallis H test and the Mann-Whitney U test. The obtained results showed the existence of a strong positive link between control activities and monitoring, as well as weak links between control activities and monitoring, on one hand, and ROA and ROE indicators of the company, on the other hand. In addition, the results confirmed that there is no difference in the importance of the application of internal control systems, i.e. control activities and monitoring, in manufacturing companies of different sizes.