March 2011
A literature review of the characteristics of firms, communities and multiparty partnerships and challenges of firm-community partnerships with cases
Today's competitive business needs partnerships in different sectors like governmental, non-governmental, firms and communities. So providing the company or organization with the advantages and disadvantages of these partnerships will help them survive in this turbulent era. This paper aims at describing some types of partnerships between governments, communities, new social movements and...
March 2011
Financial development and economic growth: A review
The relationship between financial development and economic growth has been subject to the considerable debate in the literature of development and growth. While empirical studies often provide a direct relationship between financial development proxies and growth, much controversy remains about how these results should be interpreted. The study, therefore, discusses four main sources of controversy, namely:...
March 2011
Theorising human resource management in Africa: Beyond cultural relativism
This paper provides a critical review of the emerging literature on African management, which is dominated by cultural relativism. In particular, the weaknesses and limitations of the assumptions and arguments of this view are extensively examined. One of the key issues relate to the homogeneous conceptualization of “national” and African culture, which is inappropriate given the cultural...
March 2011
Representing corporate social responsibility. A case study of Romania’s top 100 companies
Tackling a field comparatively overlooked by sociological and marketing approaches in Romania, this article critically investigates the emerging corporate social responsibility discourse of Romania’s top companies through the lens of their corporate websites. We aim at revealing the particularities of corporate social responsibility in a post-socialist business climate which is slowly being infused with...
March 2011
The impact of myopic loss aversion on continuing a troubled research and development expenditure
Research and development (R&D) expenditure involve much risk and uncertainty. Failure of a research and development project is a common and dreaded question in innovation processes as a result of causing large losses to businesses. This study explored whether shortening evaluation periods could reduce the willingness of managers of research and development expenditure in continuing a troubled research and...
March 2011
Epistemological evolution of corporate social responsibility in management: An empirical analysis of 35 years of research
The epistemological evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the management literature is analyzed from 1972 to 2006 to update and extend previous state-of-the-art research by de Bakker, Groenewegen and Den Hond (2005 and 2006). Results of the content analysis of 1082 featured articles published in indexed journals reveal that, in the first place, CSR construct has evolved from vagueness to...
March 2011
Soft budget constraint and expropriation: Evidence from privately-owned firms in China
Using the data of privately-owned firms in China’s transition economy, the study examines the effects of soft budget constraint on the expropriation of minority shareholders. The study finds that, compared to small firms, large firms have higher bank loans and are more likely to get government subsidies. However, large firms show higher divergence between cash flow and control rights, more fund...
March 2011
Prevalence of entrepreneurial management practices in technology-based firms in Malaysia
It has been widely agreed that entrepreneurship leads to firms’ success. Since companies with a high level of entrepreneurial propensity are focussed on “the pursuit of opportunity regardless of resources currently controlled”, it can be expected that those companies will be highly leveraged, resulting in high performance and effectiveness and eventually will lead to business success....
March 2011
Public demands, environmental perceptions, and natural resource management in Mexico's tropical lowlands
The study was carried out to elicit the will of inhabitants of grazing areas in coastal lowlands of East Mexico regarding their values and preferences for actions of conservation or economic development. A comprehensive structured questionnaire was developed to collect data from 199 rural and urban inhabitants of lowlands in central Veracruz, Mexico. Several environmental policy scenarios were proposed and...
March 2011
An AHP study of survival factors for small-medium sized multinational firms in Taiwan
This study uses the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the resources needed, from a foreign subsidiary perspective, by small medium-sized multinational firms of financial service and high-technology manufacturing to successfully survive long-term in Taiwan. Results show that factors such as strategic assets, entrepreneurial management system, subsidiary autonomy, and the entrepreneurial...
March 2011
The importance of management training topics as rated by school managers in South Africa: Implications for training
Training is regarded as a key HRM function necessary for achievement of organisational goals. Continuous management training is important for management renewal, and even more so in today’s ever changing environment. Without it, even the most well resourced organisation may soon become like a “rudderless ship” in the waters where the tide is ever changing. The objectives of this study were...
March 2011
The relationship between ownership structure and firm performance: An empirical analysis of listed companies in Kenya
The study investigated the effects of ownership structure on performance of listed companies in Kenya using agency theory as an analytical framework. Ownership structure was operationalized in terms of ownership concentration (percentage of shares owned by the top five shareholders) and ownership identity (actual identity of shareholders). Measures of performance were return on assets, return on equity and...
March 2011
Factors affecting the farmer attitudes toward buying social security insurance: The case of Erzurum, Turkey
The aim of this study is to determine the factors which affect the attitudes of the farmers to buy social security insurance and to analyze them according to the kinds of social security policies. Binomial Probit Model was used for this purpose. According to the results of the study, farmers who deal with both animal husbandry and field crops are more inclined to make arrangement for social security scheme,...
March 2011
Impact of goal clarity on perceived benefits of performance measurement
This study investigates the role of goal clarity of public sector organizations on the perceived benefits of performance measurement. Basically middle managers (17 - 21 grades) of 12 public sector organizations involved in plan implementation and decision making executors were selected. For this study, goal clarity was termed as independent variable and perceived benefits of efficiency and effectiveness as...
March 2011
The relationship between team identification and service quality perceptions in professional football
In this study the relationship between team identification and service quality perceptions of football spectators is examined. 608 football spectators from 3 different teams who played their games at the same stadium participated in the study. Spectators completed a questionnaire packet containing a demographic form, the Sport Spectator Identification Scale (SSIS) and Scale of Perceived Service Quality in...
March 2011
The impact of understanding duties at the level of internal integration between logistics and marketing functions: Case of Slovene retailers
Duplication of tasks or activities in companies is a frequent occurrence. On one hand, this results in time lost, on the other hand it may cause disharmony between work results. Logisticians often define integration within the framework of the supply chain, yet they neglect the internal integration or the integration between individual departments or functions in a company. Defining internal integration and...
March 2011
Entrepreneurial competencies of agricultural students: The influence of entrepreneurship courses
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of entrepreneurship courses on entrepreneurial competencies of agricultural students. A survey was conducted among 90 students that included 30 students who participated in entrepreneurship courses, 30 students who were friends of entrepreneurship courses participants, and 30 students who were outside of this community. Data were collected by use of a...
March 2011
Approaches and practices of lean manufacturing: The case of electrical and electronics companies
Lean manufacturing is now one of the most powerful manufacturing systems in the world. Numerous plants around the world have attempted to implement or adopt it to enhance their efficiency. However, little studies regarding lean manufacturing have been done in Malaysia especially in the electrical and electronics industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate the approach of adopting lean, the tools and...
March 2011
Why choose South Africa? Insights from international undergraduate students
The South African government in conjunction with its institutions of higher education has taken many deliberate measures aimed at attracting international students. This study was aimed at investigating factors that influence international students’ choice of the country as their study destination. Data used in the analysis was collected using an online structure questionnaire from 88...
March 2011
Mediating effects of affective organizational commitment and psychological contract in the relationship between strategic training practices and knowledge sharing
This study contributes to the development of the knowledge management and strategic training literatures through developing the linkages between them. The study sample comprised 301 employees from universities of medical sciences in Iran. Multiple and simple linear regression and path analysis were used to test the direct and mediated relationships among the variables. The study considers how motivation to...
March 2011
Does corporate governance matter to technical, commercial and economic success?
This study examines how corporate governance influences the technical, commercial, and economic success of a firm’s R&D activity. We use a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms which made investments in R&D in the study period. We find that in the presence of innovation, corporate governance does not equally influence the technical, commercial and economic success of firms’ R&D...
March 2011
Evaluation of performance in manufacturing organization through productivity and quality
Enhancement of productivity in the field of manufacturing production is of very great importance to an organization’s ability to compete and make profits over time. An organization which fails to efficiently utilize its resources in creating value for its customers will not survive in the competitive business environment of today. Key performance indicators are found to affect the productivity of...
March 2011
Service failures identification: The involvement of the interrelation effect in service practices
The emergence of new information technologies (IT) changed the way organizations carried out their day-to-day operations. In view of the significant capital investments and expenditures with the IT service, organizations were concerned about what the impact of investment will be on the performance. Thus, drawing up a service failure recovery program with the consideration of cost-effectiveness was the primary...
March 2011
Integration of revised simultaneous importance performance analysis and decision making trial and evaluation laboratory: A study of the mobile telecommunication industry in Taiwan
Importance performance analysis (IPA) can help managers identify improvement strategies. However, taking subjective self statement as a measurement cannot reveal the actual importance of service attributes, especially when performance of competitors is not factored. A revised simultaneous importance performance analysis (SIPA) was used in this research and the implicit importance of service attributes with...
March 2011
A taxonomy of manufacturing strategies: A study of the Turkish automotive industry
The aim of this study is to explore the existence of different patterns of manufacturing strategies and the relationship between these patterns and firm performance in the Turkish automotive industry. Apart from the scarce taxonomic studies in the operations strategy literature, this research focuses on a single industry and examines the relationship between the firm ownership and strategic types. Three...
March 2011
New product development in multi-location R&D organization: A concurrent engineering approach
The urban- rural inequality in market, as well as customer characteristics bring a major difference in shopping behavior and consumption pattern of the two communities. In India, a sizeable number of persons migrate from rural to urban in search of job opportunities, work, education, marriage and personal reasons. From the marketing perspective, migration leads to new market opportunities. And so, marketers...
March 2011
Shopping behavior of rural consumer migrated to urban area in the Indian context: An emerging market
The urban- rural inequality in market, as well as customer characteristics bring a major difference in shopping behavior and consumption pattern of the two communities. In India, a sizeable number of persons migrate from rural to urban in search of job opportunities, work, education, marriage and personal reasons. From the marketing perspective, migration leads to new market opportunities. And so, marketers...
March 2011
Research on co-movement effects of conglomerate stock prices and derived investment strategies
This study investigated the co-movement in stock indices between Taiwan business group members to find investment arbitrage portfolios. Two investment strategies, called co-integration model and quasi-arbitrage model to arbitrage, were developed and thus allowed excess return in Taiwan capital market to be obtained.Finally, the proposed quasi-arbitrage strategy was compared with...
March 2011
Impact of continuous improvement on new product development within SMEs in the Western Cape, South Africa
Companies generally embrace Continuous Improvement (CI) in their quality improvement process over the last decades. The adoption of CI on New Product Development (NPD) has not been practically communized. In the current dynamic environment, many companies are focusing on innovation and NPD in order to be innovative and competitive. It has become an important issue on investigating the application of CI...
March 2011
Optimal strategy of performance creation: Evidence from audit firms in China
This study aims to investigate the performance determinants of audit firm in the People’s Republic of China. Path analysis is applied to examine the association among auditor size, auditor quality, and financial performance of the Top 100 Audit Firms in China for 2002 - 2004 and 2007. Empirical result indicates a positive association between auditor size and auditor quality for both public and...
March 2011
Impact of job involvement on employee satisfaction: A study based on medical doctors working at Riphah International University Teaching Hospitals in Pakistan
This study examines the relationship between job involvement and employee satisfaction with specific reference to medical doctors working at Teaching Hospitals of Riphah International University, Islamabad-Pakistan. Data was collected from 127 medical doctors. The results indicate that job involvement has a significant impact on medical doctors’ satisfaction working at Teaching Hospitals of Riphah...
March 2011
Empirical study on strategic transformation to supply chain service of FTCLCs under global financial crisis
Under the global financial crisis, changes in external environment have positive impacts on strategic transformation of Foreign Trade-based Chinese Logistics Corporations (FTCLCs) to supply chain service. The paper adopts a seven-point Likert Scale analysis method and conducts a survey with questionnaire, and then makes factor analysis method to find out a necessary enterprise capability combination. The...
March 2011
Discussion of arithmetic defuzzifications for fuzzy production inventory models
Inventory management is often very unreliable because of the variability of the demand and the uncertainty of the forecast. Taking human subjective into consideration, the collection of historical data and the inaccuracy of linguistic hedges, recently fuzzy theory has been applied to construct the uncertain factors in an inventory which was hard to describe before. This paper is an extension of the paper by...
March 2011
The dynamics of intellectual capital in organizational development
Extant research implies heterogeneity of resources is the foundation for firm-wise competitive advantage. However, accumulation of these resources is a continuous process. By taking an organizational life cycle perspective, this paper examines the dynamics of intellectual capital (IC) within Dynamic Random Access Memory companies in Taiwan. The results indicate that firms place relatively different weights on...
March 2011
The role of communication in promoting relationship marketing within the cellular industry in South Africa
Marketing relationship uses improved information technology to regularly communicate with the customers of a firm and base their product/service offerings on the customer’s buying behaviour. Computer linkages, advertising, personal sales, sales promotion, sponsorships, publicity, special events and exhibitions aid communication in creating a relationship between buyer and seller. Whilst research has...
March 2011
The forest products industry in Turkey
This study was conducted to analyze the structure of Turkey’s wood products industry and to suggest ways to improve the country’s competitive position in global markets. The 415 largest solid wood manufacturers were surveyed using questionnaires administered in personal interviews and by mail. Results reveal that forest product enterprises are geographically clustered in a few provinces....
March 2011
Internet users’ decision bias: Order effect in e-commerce
Most internet users were exposed to a large amount of information pieces when they were surfing the Internet. It is interesting to understand whether the same series of information presented in different order result in different judgments? Thus, the objective of this study is to examine the influence of information presentation order on the Internet users’ decision making (an order effect). Further,...
March 2011
An evaluation of critical success factors in oil and gas project portfolio in Nigeria
This study focuses on investigation of the critical success factors required for successful deepwater development in offshore Nigeria. Thirteen critical success factors were established along with project delivery schedule, project budget and portfolio management strategy as impacting on project success. A sample of 200 participants were identified and issued with a set of self developed items web based...
March 2011
An investigation of marketing strategy, business environment and performance of construction SMEs in China
The research investigates how construction SMEs in China competes for success via the use of marketing strategy in the post-WTO era. The research integrates the environmental management perspective, strategic choice approach and resourced-based view which have emerged in the literature related to marketing strategy. Atheoretical framework is developed to examine the relationship among marketing...
March 2011
Finding the right person for a project
Finding the right person for a project is challenging. To identify the right person, relevant qualification and work experience are considered as primary determinants. In literature, the third determinant of the right person is the assessment of personality for finding a match with the nature of the job. However, in practice, personality assessment is complex. This study observed that in the IT industry of...
March 2011
A study of structural breaks in Malaysian stock market
In recent years the study of regime shifts or structural breaks behaviour in time series has gained much attention. This is due to realization that many economic time series undergo episodes in which the behaviour of the series change quite dramatically as a result of financial crises or abrupt changes in the government policy. The paper use two difference approaches to capture the possibility of structural...
March 2011
A study of discrete - time multi server retrial queue with finite population and fuzzy parameters
Our aim in this work is to deal with the discrete-time multi server retrial queue with finite population and fuzzy parameters. First, we describe this system and mentioned its effective characteristics in a crisp case. Then, we apply the concepts of cuts and extension principle to construct membership functions of the system characteristics using paired NLP models in the fuzzy case. Key...
March 2011
Cause-effect relationships and the service quality evaluation criteria of portal sites
Evaluation of portal site service quality is relatively important for concurrent web services today. The practitioners and academicians are utilizing all kinds of tools to figure out what are the criteria presented as benchmark for portal website service quality. This study uses literature review to attribute the twenty-two portal site service quality evaluation criteria to compose the survey instrument. The...
March 2011
Assessing mechanism for pre-development stage of new product development by stage-gate model
The fast-paced changes in production technology and keen globalization competition have caused product life cycles to be shortened greatly and have appeared to highlight the role of new product development. New product development will not only promote the competitive advantage but will also keep the organization survival. This paper focuses on the pre-development stage of the new product development because...
March 2011
Are the foreign stores more valuable than the local? A regional survey on large-scale retailers in Taiwan
This paper examined the effects of consumer ethnocentrism on perceived service quality, perceived-value, and accordingly, loyalty in a context of large-scale retailstores. This research proposed that consumer ethnocentricity may have effects onperceived-value and loyalty in this particular service business. Consumers to the stores of...
March 2011
Different economic and policy perspectives in micro population for sustainable development: A study of the Haor livelihood in Bangladesh
Criteria of development approaches and their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. Interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. With the course of change of time and modernization, a number of development approaches have taken place especially in the context of developing nations. However,...
March 2011
Conventional banks and productivity level: The Malaysian perspective
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is specially adopted to assess the efficiency of conventional banks in Malaysia. Specifically, this paper investigates the productivity level of the conventional banks in Malaysia. The analysis is based on a data set of 20 banks over the period of 1998-2007. Results indicate that the conventional banks exhibit an improvement in their productivity index. While 14 banks register...
March 2011
Employee innovation, supervisory leadership, organizational justice, and organizational culture in Taiwan’s manufacturing industry
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the supervisor leadership on employee innovative behavior in manufacturing industry, the interference of the organizational justice in the relation between supervisor leadership, employee innovative behavior, and the interference of organizational culture in the relation between supervisor leadership and employee innovative behavior. Finding...
March 2011
Influence of CIO’S knowledge-sharing behavior on the quality of the IS/IT strategic planning (ISSP) process in Taiwan
According to related literatures, there are many empirical studies on the influence of organizational factors on the effect of ISSP. However, researches seldom concerned the influence of knowledge sharing behavior of chief information officer (CIO) on the quality of the ISSP process from the perspective of knowledge management. Based on literature review, this research aims to base on theory of reasoned...
March 2011
Analyzing the factors affecting civil cheese consumption: The case of Erzurum province in Turkey
This study was performed in Erzurum in 2009 to identify the factors affecting civil cheese consumption. The sample number was set to be 272 based on Proportional Sampling Method. Ordered Logit Analysis was used for detection of variables effective in consumption. It was concluded that there is a positive relationship between consumption of dairy products and birthplace, marital status,...
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