June 2011
Good governance enhance the efficiency and effectiveness public spending -Sub Saharan countries
Effective and efficient governance is integral to any country’s well being. Governance is the exercise of power or authority; political, economic, administrative or otherwise to manage a country's resources and affairs. It comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate...
June 2011
Middle east bank and their challenge operation in Malaysia: A case study on Kuwait finance house Malaysia Berhad
This research attempts to understand the history of first foreign Islamic bank that operate in Malaysia. The bank was Kuwait Finance House Malaysia Berhad (KFHMB). The focus is on how KFHMB implement musharakah mutanaqisah concept for home financing product. This paper will discus on how this syariah concept run on Islamic home financing product, their advantages, issues and challenges that was face by KFHMB....
June 2011
New business opportunities along the air tourism supply chain: The combination of identification technologies and just-in-time
The objective of this study was to address the possibilities of using radio-frequency identification technologies (RFID) in conjunction with just-in-time (JIT) philosophy in key stages of the tourist air transportation process to improve the perceived service and open new market possibilities. JIT called for simpler tasks for tourists with the corresponding reduction of waiting times at queues; automatic...
June 2011
Revisiting the Portuguese experience with public-private partnerships
Over the past decades, large investments have been made in energy, transportation, health, and water supply, among other public services, in order to foster economic growth and allow for better living conditions. Public budgets constraints and an inability to manage large and complex projects widened the private sector involvement in providing and managing public services, though few countries choose to...
June 2011
A new aggregation method for strategic decision making and its application in assignment theory
A new aggregation method for decision making is presented by using induced aggregation operators and the index of maximum and minimum level. Its main advantage is that it can assess complex reordering processes in the aggregation that represent complex attitudinal characters of the decision maker such as psychological or personal factors. A wide range of properties and particular cases of this new approach...
June 2011
The effects of Tukey’s control chart with asymmetrical control limits on monitoring of production processes
Tukey’s chart uses a single observation to monitor the process mean, and it is suitable for monitoring of destructive testing data. Tukey’s chart adopts symmetrical control limits to monitor process, and it is insensitive to signal mean shifts when the monitoring variable follows a skew distribution. This study proposes Tukey’s chart with asymmetrical control limits (ACL-Tukey’s chart)...
June 2011
Technology portfolio modeling in hybrid environment
Technology portfolio selection is one of the critical decision making process for any manager. This paper considers a fuzzy mixed portfolio selection with random fuzzy return and new hybrid algorithm approach for solving it. Fuzzy set theory is applied to model uncertain and flexible information. Since traditional technology evaluation methods is often unable to consider vague data gathered from environment,...
June 2011
The correlation between educator-turnover and the promotion of efficient management in public schools in Soweto, South Africa
Over three decades, the conditions under which teachers work have always been short of lending themselves to high quality education. Most of the present teachers in the townships do not have high quality education because the government at that time allocated minimal funds for the education of Black people. When the democratically elected government came to power in 1994 it was determined to make education...
June 2011
Cost optimization by genetic algorithm technique for Y-Oscillatory plant layout
Facility layout design generally refers to the location of different types of facilities and determination of the configuration of certain type of facilities. The purpose of the present work to minimize the cost incurred amongst the departments of a certain layout by considering the vertical flow pattern. There are varieties of choices available to implement the optimal layout so that the cost may be...
June 2011
The impact of perceived value dimension on satisfaction and behavior intention: Young-adult consumers in banking industry
The paper introduced new multidimensional perceived value and its impacts. This study aimed to analyze direct/indirect effect of perceived value dimensions (functional and relational value) on attitudinal and behavioral components of loyalty: satisfaction and behavior intentions to use retail bank services. Factor analysis indicated that functional service value, functional service quality, relational value...
June 2011
Business management of HIV/AIDS: Case study of a South African contract cleaning company
The aim of this paper was to outline the costs, options and scope for a company in the South African Contract Cleaning Industry to implement effective HIV/AIDS workplace programmes. Case study methodology is used. A cost model which estimates the costs associated with replacing an AIDS affected employee over time is used. The costs are not significant to the company as they are able to transfer most of the...
June 2011
Mining business failure predictive knowledge using two-step clustering
Despite increasing researches on business failure prediction by employing statistical techniques and intelligent ones, how to generate reasoning knowledge that can helps enterprise managers, investors, employees and governmental officials intuitively distinguish companies in distress from healthy ones has been only cursorily studied. The objective of this research is to fill this gap by utilizing the data...
June 2011
A field research on the determination of entrepreneurial characteristics of SMEs businesses in Turkey
Today, according to the conditions of competition and the new format of globalization, economic structuring of oriented private enterprise is being made mandatory. For this reason, global scale entrepreneurship has seen the importance for increasing academic interest. In this context, entrepreneurial capabilities of Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey and 599 entrepreneurs that participated in...
June 2011
The economic determinants of firms issuing employee stock options: Evidence from Taiwan
This paper examines the economic determinants of firms issuing employee stock options (ESOs) for Taiwan listed companies. For the sample of 3,943 firm-year observations over the year 2001 to 2007, probit regression model shows that the companies with higher leverage, higher proportion of independent directors, more investment opportunities, in the “new economy” industries and larger firms tend to...
June 2011
The impact of corporate governance mechanisms on earnings management
The role of corporate governance is to reduce the divergence of interests between shareholders’ and managers. The role of corporate governance is more useful when managers have an incentive to deviate from shareholders’’ interests. One example of management’s deviation from shareholders’’ interests is the management of earnings through the use of accounting accruals. The...
June 2011
Consumers' automotive purchase decisions: The significance of vehicle-based infotainment systems
A car infotainment system (CIS) is an information system supporting driving behaviour and providing entertainment activities, it can enrich the basic functions of a car, and is a valuable product. This paper investigates which CIS value factors affect consumers' car purchase intentions. A questionnaire survey collected responses from a sample of 319 consumers, and a structure equation model was used as...
June 2011
The role of ICT in business ethics courses: Evident from Bangladesh
Business education is one of the growing phenomena both in the developed and developing world. Global argument in many contexts from the areas that are more connected to profit and loss (that is marketing, accounting, finance and management) activities of business have been heavily given emphasis recently. As a result, motivation of academics in teaching and students’ motivation in learning the course...
June 2011
Using projects in teaching introductory business statistics: The case of Tshwane University of Technology Business School
Statistics is an essential subject in Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes. It equips students with much needed ‘data analysis’ skills useful for successful completion of MBA research projects and, more importantly, in management decision-making. All the same, teaching or learning statistics is frustrating and stressful, to both instructors and students. Recent literature proposes...
June 2011
An overview of the operations/products offered by Islamic banks in Pakistan
Islamic banks are striving to capture the maximum number of customers to compete with conventional banks by providing a large number of products as an alternative for interest based products. There is a clear difference between operations/products offered by Islamic and conventional banks. Islamic banks are offering interest free products according to Shariah principles to promote business and trade in the...
June 2011
Tourism industry for poverty reduction in Iran
This article attempts to illustrate the status of tourism and its barriers to poverty reduction in Parseh, Iran. Tourism is certainly a major contributor to poverty reduction in many countries. But, there are significant numbers of barriers to effectively using tourism industry as a tool for poverty reduction in developing countries. The findings through focus group discussion indicated that there negative...
June 2011
Knowledge articulation and dynamic capabilities in firm collaborations: An empirical comparison of Taiwanese and South Korean Enterprises
This empirical investigation demonstrates the gateways of knowledge articulation (KA) and dynamic capabilities (DCs) upgrading in inter- and intra-firm collaborations. Researchers investigated 363 Taiwanese inter-firm collaborations and 210 South Korean intra-firm collaborations to determine the role of dynamic learning drivers (DLDs) in upgrading KA and DCs. Manager integration power, external linkages,...
June 2011
A lot size model with random yields for investing to setup cost reduction under a limited capital budget
In this paper, the study attempts to determine the optimal capital investment in setup cost reduction and optimal lot sizing policies for an economic order quantity (EOQ) model with random yields. The setup cost is treated as the function of capital expenditure in technology. The study shows that the expected total annual cost functions with capital investment is convex and develop a solution procedure to...
June 2011
South African postgraduate consumer’s attitude towards global warming
The article explored postgraduate consumers’ attitude towards global warming in South Africa. This is relevant in a world where the negative impact of global warming is already felt in some countries and there is a great deal of discussion by stakeholders around the mitigation of greenhouse gases. The data used in this article was collected using a specially designed questionnaire which incorporated...
June 2011
The creation of pharmacists’ core competence assessment scale
With the trend towards in the creation of people’s income and consumers’ awareness of their rights as, pharmacists’ service attitude and competence become one of the reasons that lead people to pharmacies to take medicine. The study aims at discussing pharmacists’ competence and working out pharmacists’ core competence assessment scale. The investigation data are...
June 2011
Key mixes service quality in online purchases on Raja Company
Nowadays in competitive markets, marketing strategies, trading and development platforms for building and improvement of online trading in customer, and oriented organizations are important for managers located in strategic companies. Developed countries compared with developing ones have made remarkable growth of from to create beds business to customer (B2C) e-commerce. Therefore, appropriate and targeted...
June 2011
Customer complaints and complaint behaviours in Turkish hotel restaurants: An application in Lara and Kundu areas of Antalya
The aim of this study is to investigate the level of relationship between the complaints and complaint behaviours of the customers who benefit from the services offered by hotel restaurants and to determine if the complaint behaviours show a difference according to the nationalities. The data necessary for the determination of differences or similarities between the main complaints gathered as a result of...
June 2011
Evaluating capacity utilization of human resources in science and technology
The human resources in science and technology (HRST) plays an important role in national economic development in countries, which is why so much resources is put into HRST. Evaluating the capacity of human resources in science and technology (HRST) of each nation provides key information which guides national resources allocations and resources utilization. The utility maximization of substantiation resources...
June 2011
A model to evaluate supply chain performance and flexibility
In present day’s global competitive environment, enterprises have to focus on their supply chain performance to have a competitive advantage. Improving the effectiveness of the system is the only way to do so and, for this purpose, ongoing supply chain activities have to be inspected in pursuant of some performance measurements and metrics to cover the concept. There is a lack of effective mathematical...
June 2011
The dyadic effect of leadership and conflict management on trust in the context of life insurance companies in Taiwan
In this study, we discuss the main and dyadic (interconnected) effects oftransformational leadership, organizational conflict management on organizational trust in the life insurance industry. We analyze two samples (sales managers and sales employees) and carry out an empirical study using a multiple interaction regression approach to obtain significant...
June 2011
Opinions of the academic and management staff concerning administrational expectations: Sampling of Aegean Region of Turkey
The academic and management staff while dealing with activities to perform the functions of the university also wishes their administrational expectations to be filled out by the university itself since such awareness of the university to consider the academic staff’s expectations are assumed to surely maximize the staff’s performance and contribution of institutional targets and duties of the...
June 2011
Corporate perceptions of climate change in Malaysia
The paper discusses how corporate managers in Malaysia view climate change which would provide an insight of the level of awareness and perception regarding climate change in this sector. It also attempts to make a comparison between outcomes of the survey to that of past studies in other countries. The survey reflects that corporate managers in Malaysia are concerned about climate change, demonstrating a...
June 2011
Institutions, macroeconomic policy and foreign direct investment: South Asian countries case
Recent economic literature suggests that institutional quality factors exert positive effect on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. The main focus of this study is to examine the role of institutional factors and macro economic policy factors on FDI inflows in a panel data of seven South Asian countries over the period of 12 years since 1996 to 2007. This study implies that a good institutional quality...
June 2011
Determinants of technological innovation and its effect on hospital performance
The medical industry faces rapid changes and more competitive environment in recent years, so innovation has become the key element to improve competitive advantage for hospitals. We investigated the determinants of technological innovation and its influence on hospital performance through samples in Taiwan. We conducted a cross-sectional study and the data were obtained from four secondary databases:...
June 2011
Tea industry development and land utilization along the China-Laos border: A case study of Komen Village in Laos
Existing problems in the developing countries include not only the lagging economic development but also those social instability and environmental degradation problems, such as the phenomenon of poppy cultivation and deforestation in the Golden Triangle region due to economic backwardness. It is of great research significance if the local natural resources can be effectively and efficiently employed in order...
June 2011
Comparison between oil and gas companies and contractors against cost, time, quality and scope for project success in Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia
The oil and gas industry is a multi-million dollar industry, which operates both onshore and offshore. The industry is one of the largest high cost industries that require high cost of maintenance and projects. It is also one of the highest paying industries in the market. However, less is known about its compliance to the Project Management Triangle (PMT) concept and their focus. This research has...
June 2011
Preference analysis of sea-air multimodal logistic system using the fuzzy multicriteria q-analysis procedure
This paper concerns two important issues regarding the criteria that multinational corporations (MNCs) consider important, the competitive preference of location developing sea-air multimodal logistic system (SA-M-LS) in Pacific-Asian region. To deal with the imprecision or vagueness nature of the linguistic evaluation, the objectives have been accomplished in this paper by employing two complementary...
June 2011
Successful business strategy practices in the supply chain
The purpose of this study is to examine alignment influences among business strategy, integration strategy generated from Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and e-business construction, as well as operational performance in the supply chain. This study is based on the global International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) database; the data are explored using Structure Equation Modelling (SEM). Using...
June 2011
The macroeconomic effects of IMF programs in MENA countries
Using panel data for six Middle East and North African (MENA) countries over the period of 1975 to 2004, this paper analyzes macroeconomic effects of IMF programs. Consistent with the results of previous studies, it is shown that IMF programs have positive effect on balance of payments. However, these programs have negative impacts on investment, inflation and consumption. It is also found that these programs...
June 2011
Drivers of organizational knowledge management
Most of knowledge management documents use a single dimension or individual case study as the foundation to carry out studies into management performance and the studies into how knowledge management performance influence knowledge management driver are very few. Consequently, this study integrated the theories from different studies to propose three individual drivers of knowledge management, and the...
June 2011
Effects of promotion on relationship quality and customer loyalty in the airline industry: The relationship marketing approach
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of relationship-orientated promotion on customer loyalty after subsuming the intermediate factors – relationship quality. Questionnaires are used to measure customers’ attitudes and opinions, and a descriptive statistical analysis, a correlation analysis, reliability, a regression analysis and a factor analysis are used to analyze the data....
June 2011
Costs and efficacy of operating coffee hand pulpers in Ethiopia: A cost- benefit analysis
In Ethiopia coffee quality suffers as a result of less care being taken for the trees and during harvesting and processing. About 40% of the quality of coffee is determined by primary processing, while the other 20% and 40% is attributed to secondary processing and field practices respectively. Thus, primary processing is crucial in enhancing the quality and subsequent value of coffee. The methods of coffee...
June 2011
A novel sensemaking model of effective knowledge management within SMEs
Many organizations that are adept in leveraging and capitalizing their knowledge resources have been convinced to obtain performance improvement and business success. But despite dedicated attempts to follow the prescribed knowledge management guides and success path, SMEs are still encountering uncertainties and face the threat of potential failure or unmet expected results, which are little known and seldom...
June 2011
The asymmetric adjustment between lending-deposit rates in G8 countries: Evidence from rank test
Using the non-parametric rank tests proposed by Breitung (2001), we set out in this study to determine whether any non-linear long-run equilibrium relationship exists between the lending and deposit rates of G8 countries. We go on to adopt the Threshold Error-Correction Model (TECM) to determine whether a similar relationship is discernible possibly non-linear functions of the lending and deposit rates. These...
June 2011
Customer credit quality assessments using data mining methods for banking industries
Personal credit scoring on credit cards has been a critical issue in the banking industry. The bank with the most accurate estimation of its customer credit quality will be the most profitable. The study aims to compare quality prediction models from data mining methods, and improve traditional models by using boosting and genetic algorithms (GA). The predicting models used are instant-based classifiers (such...
June 2011
Value creation for the growth of contract manufacturers by technological competence leveraging
Applying existing competence to different end products is an easy and low risk way, vis-à-vis building new competence, for a contract manufacturer (CM) to pursue growth. As such, a CM in effect adopts competence-related diversification. However, there is a strong concentration on value of competence building and neglecting that value is also created by competence leveraging for CMs’ growth. Two...
June 2011
The influence of structural changes in a local commercial district on local consumer consumption behavior in South Korea: Using the multinomial logit model
This research determined how structural changes in local commercial districts influence local consumer behaviors. First and foremost, to investigate structural changes to commercial districts around South Korean traditional markets, we conducted a correlation analysis by examining changes in population and in employee numbers, by market type. We then analyzed local consumers’ consumption behaviors by...
June 2011
Perceived values on hospital services: A fuzzy logic application
Loyal patients can bring substantial benefits to a hospital. Service quality of a hospital was one of the driving forces to patients’ satisfaction and loyalty, but it was a necessary but not a sufficient factor. Recent studies in consumer behavior had proven that the perceived value was the primary determinant of loyal behavior for services. This research focused on identifying the patients’...
June 2011
Effects of servicescape, waiting experiences and price rationality on consumers’ behavioral intentions in scenery restaurants
In the past, relatively little is known about which factors influence consumers’ behavioral intentions in restaurant services industry. In this extremely attractive and growing restaurant services industry, academics, as well as practitioners, would benefit from investigating the relationships between the servicescape and several other key service constructs on consumers’ behavioral intentions. In...
June 2011
The sociolinguistics study of caste-stereotypes in the language of Punjabi Society
Punjabi Society is full of various social groups which are further divided into several castes or clans living together for centuries. Although they speak Punjabi language, no matter how much different their dialects are, yet their prejudice, bias and social status have created stereotypes on basis of their social experience. This research is aimed at analysing the caste-stereotypes and their role in the...
June 2011
Services quality model for online banking services by behavioral adoption theories and comparative study
The rapid spread of technology has made the internet the best channel to provide banking services and products to customers. Banks now consider the internet as part of their strategic plan. It will revolutionize the way banks operate, deliver, and compete, especially because the competitive advantages of traditional branch networks are eroding rapidly. This paper provides a model, based on different service...
June 2011
Ethics in electronic commerce: An exploration of its consequences
Ethics plays an important role in the formation and maintenance of long-term buyer-seller relationship. Yet there is little research on ethics in electronic commerce (EC) contexts. The purpose of this study was to examine the consequences of consumers’ perception regarding a transaction-process based approach for measuring ethics of EC websites. This study developed a model, in which the consequences of...
June 2011
An integrated method of quality function deployment, Kano's model and hierarchical decision making for improving e-service of brokerage in Iran
To achieve customer satisfaction effectively, service providing firms should not only know exactly what customers want but also need to know how much effort is needed to invest on every single attribute that customer expects the service to benefit from. Hence, this research tries to identify customers' required services and determine their priorities to be considered when planning for internet based...
June 2011
Effects of personality trait, motivation factors on performance of customer service personnel (CSP): A case of MPH bookstores
Staff performance has been discussed widely and endlessly. Several theories have been used in order to measure performance. Previous research found that personality and motivation showed a significant relationship towards staff performance. The objective of this study is to investigate which type of personality among Big 5 personality traits could be a predictor of staff performance and also which level of...
June 2011
Insiders’ subscription and the earnings management behavior of private equity offerings
This paper investigated the earning management behavior of private equity offering firms. We founded that firms have incentives to engage in earnings management before the announcement date of private equity offerings. The manipulation direction may be upward or downward according to the types of placement. Our empirical results indicated that management tended to manage reported earnings upward when the...
June 2011
A study of the desirable aspects of audit firms from clients viewpoints’: Some evidences of Iran
Certainly for those companies that are free to select their auditor, there are some characteristics and criteria for selecting an auditing institution. It is evident that such characteristics and criteria can be different in any society. This study aims to identify criterion used by Iranian Companies. So, in this study we want to find some characteristics of desirable audit institution from the view...
June 2011
Market research – base of business decision making (company examples from Serbia)
Market research in developed countries is condition sine qua none business of successful companies. On the other hand, market orientation as the key mechanism of allocation of limited economic resources in the countries of transition is still in the implementation phase. This paper deals with the issues of market research in the function of business decisions, on the example of companies in the South Backa...
June 2011
How to diminish the investment systematic risk?
Starting in the 21st century and the challenges of the global economy, investors need to take vigorous tactics to face the competition for globalization. Financial investment environment changes with each passing day, investors’ satisfaction are more and more discerning, and market demands can fluctuate unpredictably. While facing the constant changes of the global financial markets, it is...
June 2011
Entrepreneurship in the banking sector: Empirical evidence of Iranian own-state banks
This study addresses the themes of factors affecting on entrepreneurship in Iranian own-state banks in 2009. Questionnaire based on previous were designed and developed among 650 participants. The results of this study confirm that management support, reward system, time management, up-to-date technology, work process and clerks’ evaluation has effect on degree of entrepreneurship in banking sector in...
June 2011
Online shoppers’ decision biases: The effect of response mode
The transaction under electronic commerce context is full of uncertainty where the information collected by buyers is limited (that is, they can only obtain the information such as product pictures but cannot touch the products). The way how the information was presented to the consumers will influence people’s decision. Framing effect and anchoring effect are both the human judgment decision biases...
June 2011
Performance evaluation of the Serbian Credit Bureau model
This paper discusses key functional characteristics of the Serbian Credit Bureau (SCB) model and analyses its performances using the methodology of International Finance Corporation, the member of World Bank group. The results show high level of SCB business performances which are preconditioned by its unique technological-organisational structure. These results point out the fact that creditors in Serbia...
June 2011
Evaluating airline’s service quality performance in uncertainty
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a multi-criteria evaluation concept that highlights the importance of performance measurement criteria. Although there is an abundance of literature on the BSC framework, there is not much literature on how the framework should be implemented with interdependent relationships and linguistic preferences. To deal with these issues, this study proposes an original approach:...
June 2011
The impact of organizational culture on economic indices – A study in Serbian companies
This paper presents research results whose aim was to examine and define the dependences and impact of organizational culture on the effects of business performance. The research was carried out on Serbian companies and was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, 72 parameters of organizational culture were defined and 30 experts were polled about the significance of these parameters. This was followed...
June 2011
Comments on preservation technology investment for deteriorating inventory
Recently, in the Preservation technology investment for deteriorating inventory, by the International Journal of Production Economics, Hsu et al. (2010) in a press proposed a deteriorating inventory with time-dependent partial backlogging rate. In addition, the retailer is allowed to invest on the preservation technology to reduce the rate of product deterioration. However, the property of the retailer's...
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