The Conference on Organizational Sciences Development, run by the Faculty of Organizational Sciences of the University of Maribor, was held from 22 to 24 March 2017 in Portorož, Slovenia. Fraport Aviation Academy, along with other partners, was invited to participate in this year’s exchange of knowledge, ideas and experiences.

The Conference on Organizational Sciences Development is an event with a long tradition at the University of Maribor. Students, researchers, business people and public administration representatives working in organization and management from all over Europe attend every year. More than 300 participants from different countries were involved in this year’s exchange of  knowledge from 35 different fields of work. The conference, which on this occasion brought the debate about responsible management of organizations into focus, commenced on 22 March 2017 with the opening ceremony and plenary session. The main speakers on the first day were the President of Domel Holding, d.d., Dr Jožica Rejec, and the CEO of Slovenia Control, Dr Franc Željko Županič. The second day of the conference was marked by the event ‘Business Excellence of Organizations’ and the annual Case Study Competition, while a speech by the Minister of Education, Science and Sport, Dr Maja Makovec Brenčič, was most definitely the highlight of the last day. 

Besides the lectures, the Case Study Competition is a permanent feature of the Conference. This year’s challenge was presented to the students by the Fraport Aviation Academy (AAC) team. After the presentation of this year’s international topic, on 21 March, the students had 48 hours to find appropriate solutions to the given problem. Nearly 30 of them contributed their ideas for the development of AAC's online learning platform. All the participants proposed interesting, useful, and user-friendly solutions, which will be utilized during the further development of this online tool. The best and most detailed solution was proposed by the Power Sales team from the Faculty of Organizational Sciences of Belgrade, Serbia. Second place went to their colleagues – the Bowtie team – and the third to a Slovenian team, Limonce. The three winning teams also received the awards, which will now accompany them should they decide to search for additional knowledge abroad.    

We would like to thank the Faculty of Organizational Sciences of the University of Maribor for the invitation, and all the case study participants for their effort and bright ideas. It was a true pleasure to work with so many talented young people, and we wish you all the best on your future career path!