EUROPE 2020 Society Built on Knowledge

8/7/2019 EUROPE 2020 Society Built on Knowledge

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Slobodan Radiev

Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Livia Di Stefano

Adjoint researcher at Department of Political Science,University of Bologna, Italy


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Similar objectives

Focuses on two main objectives:

improvement of higher education in Serbia

attraction of foreign direct investments

only with the help of foreign investmentsSerbia will be able to achieve the goals setby the strategy itself


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Focus on the foreign companies that operatein Serbia

Our survey consists of 11 questions

closed and open questions

We have focused on:

reasons why foreign companies establish businessin Serbia

how satisfied they are with workers whograduates from Serbian universities and

what they think about how we can improveuniversity education in Serbia


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The questionnaire was in English and Italianlanguages

The questionnaire was sent together with a

cover letter to 215 e-mail addresses offoreign companies operating in Serbia

113 were Italian

In total, we received 21 answers of which 6

came from Italian companies


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The list of foreign investors in Serbia wasretrieved from the websites of:

The American Chamber of Commerce in Serbia,

The Foreign Investors Council in Serbia, The Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) and

The Serbian Chamber of Commerce.

To validate list, weve checked information

on the ownership for each company throughthe web site of the Serbian Business RegistersAgency


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The answers ranged from 27 years, thecompany that operates the longest,to 4years, the company that operates the

shortest. The average time for all companiesfrom our research is about 9.5 years, ofwhich 71% started a business in the last 9years


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Assign values from 1-min to 5-max according to the importanceof each factor in determining the choice

Low labor costs average mark is 2.83

Availability of skilled labor average mark is 3.17

Market opportunities in the country averagemark is 4.57

Infrastructure and logistics average mark is 2.17

Low taxes average mark is 2.71

Free trade agreement with the RussianFederation and/or other advantageous tradeagreements average mark is 1.5

Policies to attract FDI, government incentivesand other facilities average mark is 2.5


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The answers ranged from 3 employees (thecompany that had the least employees) toabout 700 employees (the company that had

the most employees), and the averagenumber was about 180 employees


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The answers ranged from 3 employees (thecompany that had the least employees withuniversity degree) to 480 employees (the

company that had the most employees withuniversity degree), and on averagecompanies have 103 employees withuniversity degree


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The answers ranged from 3 employees (thecompany that had the least employees whograduated from Serbian universities) to 470

employees (the company that had the mostemployees who graduated from Serbianuniversities), and the average number was 99employees who graduated from Serbian

universities


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All companies rated the competence ofSerbian graduates as medium or high,

average mark is 3.57


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This question was open-ended so that thepeople who completed the questionnairefreestyle could fill in the field below the

questions. We analyzed and systematizedanswers and here are the most common: inthe first place is language skills includingsome foreign languages, after that coming

understanding of the local culture, attitudeat fast learning, etc


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This question was open-ended so that thepeople who completed the questionnairefreestyle could fill in the field below the

questions. We analyzed and systematizedanswers and here are the most common:almost everybody wrote no practicalexperience for fresh graduates. After that,

the next disadvantages were lack ofcommunication and relational skills,weakness in business writing, no experienceof team working, etc


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As some companies indicated more than oneprofile, we analyzed and systematized theanswers given, coming to the following

results: the most frequent response wasengineers and economists, with about 70% ofcompanies putting engineers as the mostneeded profile and 30% of companies

indicating economists. Only in the 15% ofcases companies also mentioned otherprofiles requiring a university degree


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As the question was open-ended, weanalyzed and systematized answers:according with the result of previous

question who pointed out the lack ofpractical experience for fresh graduates, allthe recommendations we received wererelated only in the way that students get as

much practical and informal knowledge aspossible prior to graduation


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more importance to the availability of skilledlabor than to the availability of cheap labor

no relevant differences are to be observed betweensectors of activity and/or size of company.

foreign companies rate the skills of Serbiangraduates very good, with knowledge oflanguages (Serbian, English and Italian) featuringamong the strong points

as we also analyzed answers according to thenames of the people who filled in thequestionnaire, we found foreign nationals to bemore satisfied with Serbian graduates then Serbs


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Italian investors seems to be more satisfiedwith Serbian graduates than other foreigninvestors

The frequent complain about lack ofpractical and informal knowledge amongSerbian graduates almost clearly highlight aweakness of the Serbian university system at

the same time identifying a well definedtarget for possible improvements


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Documents

EUROPE 2020 Society Built on Knowledge