The purpose of this paper is to study in-depth the impact of formal and informal factors on the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Kosovo, as one of the last countries in transition characterized by difficult social and economic conditions, is used as a case study in this paper. The main institutional obstacles faced by SMEs in Kosovo that are involved in international trade will be analyzed from the perspective of the institutional theory developed by North (1990). The case study is based on in-depth interviews of firms in Kosovo, using an unstructured questionnaire, conducted in 2010. The paper's key findings show that informal activities caused by low levels of professional and ethics of officials in respective institutions, as well as poor enforcement of regulations, have significant impact on increasing transaction costs, which in turn represents a major obstacle to the further growth of SMEs.
COVID-19 pandemic well-known worldwide for its serious health consequences is having a profound effect on every sphere of life. Taking into consideration that COVID-19 is harming the labor market and economic activity in general, we also consider that this situation is affecting the personal consumption expenditures in case of Kosovo (Ziberi, Rexha, & Gashi, 2021). The main aim of this paper is to analyze how the customers’ behavior will shift the traditional business to an online one in case of Western Balkan countries with special emphasis on Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania. The study considered the mixed methods using the questionnaire as a method for primary data collection in a random sample of citizens from countries in the analysis. The questionnaire was distributed online using social media in a sample of 1250 respondents. The paper uses the SPSS software for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The study comes to the conclusion that buying behavior is changing due to the imposed measures by governance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the confidence in online shopping has increased significantly which is a good base for further recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to start reworking selling strategies and to shift their activity from purely traditional to hybrid one — traditional and online — promoting so better the traditional business. Our findings also are in line with a study by Bytyçi (2020) who stated that the consumers in case of the Republic of Kosovo prefer online shopping for one main reason — time loss reduction.
One of the notable aspects of teacher performance evaluation is internal evaluation. This process is carried out through the cooperation of the leader of the educational institution and the staff of teachers and other school bodies to improve the quality and fulfilling the standards and competencies of the teachers' work. The educational institution uses the self-evaluation process for diagnostics or as a reference point for successful editing to become more effective in achieving its goals and the realism of its objectives. The successful implementation helps address corrective actions needed for better personal and institutional performance. In this scientific paper, with a particular focus, we will deal with some of the main aspects of the self-evaluation of teachers' performance. For the study to be as effective as possible, we surveyed 983 teachers. We obtained teachers' attitudes on the impact of self-assessment of performance on their commitment to the profession and their work with students. The findings show that over 52.1% think it affects 37% partly, 6.2% very little, and 4.8% not. Also, our focus has been to understand the attitude of teachers on the reasons why they do it and for whom they do the selfevaluation of their professional performance. The results of the study show that 10.7% of teachers do the selfevaluation "for themselves," 11.6," at the "school level," and 77.7% do the self-evaluation for the "Inspection Sector." Based on the study's findings, teachers do not do self-evaluation willingly but are necessarily obliged by the school directorate or inspection officials.
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