Optimising the number of teaching and researching staff within Croatian higher education system

Abstract

. Human resources represent crucial resource and capital for any organization’s success, because they generate knowledge, skills, abilities and experience which distinguish organizations and emphasize their competitive advantage. Nowadays, managers are struggling in their competition in order to maximize performance results and other positive effects obtained by their crucial resource and in the same time minimizing production costs and other belonging losses. Although, higher education does not represent production in the true sense of the word, management leads the same battle, related to faculty teaching and researching staff workload, setting goals and various constrains. The main aim of this paper is optimization of human resource allocation within Croatian higher education system, according to several goals, related to their teaching and researching staff workload, minimizing deviation from set goals defined according to Croatian higher education regulations. The paper suggests the use of integer goal programming model in order to find optimal solution presented with the number of teachers and researchers within each department of chosen faculty. The model will be applied to the example of Croatian faculty, due to certain specificities of Croatian higher education system and will be applicable to any other Croatian faculty. Different optimal model solutions, obtained for different number of goals, will be compared within the paper. This model will secure optimal level of teaching and researching positions, considering multiple goals, with the emphasize of evolution and progression on individual level, simultaneously providing the best quality for students, as well as competitive and profitable work of the institution.