At this year’s 45th International conference on the development of organizational sciences in Portorož, Slovenia, titled “Organization and the Longevity Society,” universities from the region strengthened their academic cooperation by signing a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The agreement was signed by the Dean of the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (University of Zagreb), Prof. Marina Klačmer Čalopa, PhD; the Dean of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (University of Maribor), Prof. Polona Šprajc, PhD; and the Dean of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (University of Belgrade), Prof. Marko Mihić, PhD.
A new five-year research project launched in Varaždin is pioneering an entirely new scientific field — algorithmic entrepreneurship — where quantum computing meets the art of starting a business.
The University of Zagreb Faculty of Organization and Informatics is the publisher of the international scientific journal Journal of Information and Organizational Sciences (JIOS), which has been published since 1977. The journal publishes original scientific papers in the field of social sciences, with a particular emphasis on information sciences and their application in organizations and society. JIOS is fully open access and available on its website (jios.foi.hr).
The current Rector of the University of Zagreb, Full Prof. Stjepan Lakušić, PhD, was re-elected as Rector at the Senate election session held on Tuesday, 10 March 2026. He will serve a new term covering the period from the academic year 2026/2027 to the academic year 2029/2030.
As part of the Erasmus mobility programme, the University of Zagreb Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) hosted Full Prof. Hanlie Smuts, PhD, from the University of Pretoria (South Africa) in March 2026. Prof. Smuts is a distinguished scholar in the fields of knowledge management, digital innovation, and sustainable digital transformation. Her visit to FOI was the result of previous collaboration with Full Prof. Blaženka Divjak, PhD, and Full Prof. Violeta Vidaček-Hainš, PhD, as well as joint activities aimed at strengthening international cooperation and knowledge exchange between the two institutions.
Assoc. Prof. Ivana Đunđek, PhD, from the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics, has received the Annual award for mentorship from the Croatian Academy of Management (HrAM) for 2025. The decision to grant the award was unanimously adopted by the Presidency of the Croatian Academy of Management at its session held on 5 February 2026. In the explanation of the decision, it was highlighted that through her mentorship work with students, Assoc. Prof. Đunđek achieved outstanding results at both national and international competitions, as well as in student projects that received international, national, and university awards.
Senior Assistant at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics, Nikolina Dreven, PhD won 3rd place at the EDAMBA Doctoral Thesis 2025 competition for her doctoral dissertation titled “Stewardship Climate in the Function of Increasing Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Small Croatian Companies.” The dissertation was completed under the supervision of Prof. Najla Podrug, PhD (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb) and Assoc. Prof. Ivan Malbašić, PhD (Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb).
On Wednesday, March 4, 2026, a kick-off meeting of the research project “Purpose-Driven Business: Harmonizing Personal and Organizational Purpose towards a New Management Theory” (SPOJ) was held at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Organization and Informatics. The project is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) under the project UIP-2025-02-5231. The project is led by Associate Professor Ivan Malbašić, PhD.
Students of the University of Zagreb Faculty of Organization and Informatics successfully completed an international virtual exchange within the Web Application Development (WAD) project, carried out in collaboration with the University of Łódź (Poland). The project was funded by the University of Zagreb through the UNIC VIP Fund, providing students with valuable international experience without the need for physical mobility.
The research and development team of the Laboratory for Advanced Educational Technologies at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI), a constituent of the University of Zagreb, in collaboration with the Austrian company GTN Solutions, has developed AIVA (AI Virtual Advisor) – the first AI advisor with pedagogically grounded functionalities that can be used within Moodle at almost all universities in Croatia and beyond.