Hamilton Pozo   Aurimar França Barcelos   and Getulio Kazue Akabane   

The main proposal of this research is to examine the existing literature on quality management systems and food safety management systems, and group, sort and prioritize the critical success factors that affect these systems in a global context, to help researchers and food industry managers in decision making and prioritization of actions in research and projects related to the topic. We conducted a quali-quantitative research based on a review of published papers about the subject in the last 23 years. The data were treated statistically, grouped and analyzed by the Nihans classification technique. The result led to the selection and prioritization of 14 critical factors of success for quality and food safety management systems.

Zeleke Kiros   Wondmeneh Mamo   and Workineh Tesema   

Knowledge is an organizational asset that enables the industry to develop rapidly and sustainable competitive advantage in real environments. The emphasis on knowledge in today’s industry is based on the assumption that the transfer and replication of knowledge have a great role with strategic importance. In the current rising global economy, a knowledge management System has become a basic activity for any competitive advantage of organizations. Industries are accommodating integrated approaches to identify, manage, share and capitalize on the know-how, experience and intellectual capital of employees within their own organization. A wise management of the intellectual capital (knowledge asset) of an organization is one of the most important activities used to enhance organizational productivity. Although knowledge management system serves as critical enablers of business processes in industries, which is used as a bridge between industries performance and businesses. However, as the finding of the study has been shown that the status of knowledge management system in Ethiopian industry is low level and a little available with knowledge management systems. Currently, the knowledge sharing system is a lot of preferable in Ethiopia, however; it is influencing by different constraints such as lack of trust of technological advancements, and inadequate knowledge in the industries.

Aydin Teymourifar   Ozan Bahadir   and Gurkan Ozturk   

In this paper, a new approach has been suggested for solving the multi-objective job shop scheduling problem, in which, simple priority rules are used dynamically, according to the varied state of the scheduling environment. The rules assign priority to the jobs that waiting in queues based on their features and/or the scheduling environment. Since the real scheduling environments are generally dynamic, it is better to use different rules during the scheduling according to the state of the shop floor at each decision time. Based on this approach, a new algorithm is designed, which uses different rules over the scheduling time. This approach can be easily applied to solve the real scheduling problems of the manufacturing systems. The algorithm has been compared with some classic rules from the literature. The results show that the proposed approach is more effective than using a fixed priority rule.

Mercedes Montero   Ann-Christine Schmalenberg   Olman Quirós   and Reiner Doluschitz   

Background: coffee production is one of the most important agricultural products for Costa Rica, especially because of the large proportion of small and medium farmers involved. This research intends to provide the identification of performance indicators for coffee production using the Asociación de Productores Agropecuarios de las Comunidades de Acosta y Aserrí (ASOPROAAA), as case of study. Methods: 21 expert surveys were conducted, based on ASOPROAAA and its farmers. Results: indicators of performance were measured in each of the sustainability dimensions. Farmers' record keeping was a problem; however, data was collected and double checked by participants. Conclusion: the identification of supply chain performance indicators was possible in all the sustainability dimensions, benchmarking of these results with other Costa Rican companies would require further research. The identified indicators can be used as a first approach for sustainable performance in coffee, since they were adapted to the production system and its specific characteristic.

Albina Amin   

This study aims to review the analysis of social constructivism approach and entrepreneurial activity of women entrepreneurs in global business market. The emergence of women entrepreneurship is not a new phenomenon all over the world. This paper measures the differences in the level of entrepreneurial activity analysis between countries from secondary data namely GEM 2007 report on women and entrepreneurship. The findings of this research are that when women are in action as business owners, it has direct association with social and economic development of a nation. It also shows how women entrepreneurship matters in global development. This paper is a combination of data analysis and creates two theoretical frameworks. Moreover, GEM 2016 report uses to analysis the SME contribution to nation's GDP.

Manisha Sharma   and Monika Bhati   

Studies show that positive feelings and perception of the employees about the various aspects of their job and employment lead to higher organizational commitment which indicates that it is the psychological capability of an employee that is related to the intrinsic Employees' empowerment, recognized as an effective management technique which can universally be adopted by business organizations to improve organizational relationship, identification, performance and productivity. Researchers have conducted numerous studies to understand the nature and dimensions of empowerment. In this context this article aims to investigate the role of organizational empowerment and motivation factors in enhancing the employees' commitment as measured by affective, continuous and normative commitment in the automotive industry in India. A random sample size of 242 employees from Indian Automotive Industry consisting of two automobile and two auto-component companies was taken to participate in data collection from NCR (National Capital Region), India. Data analyzed using linear regression analysis showed positive relationship between organizational factors of empowerment & motivation and employees' commitment.

Shihan Lin   

This paper concerns the analysis of the development of The Big Issue magazine and its founder called John Bird. Discussing why and how The Big Issue succeeds from the internal and exterior factors in terms of the personality of John Bird, the supporting power, and how John Bird fits with the traditional notion of entrepreneurship. What is more, the aim of analyzing the development of The Big Issue is to give entrepreneurs inspiration on starting a new business.

Sormas Asterios   

Deindustrialization, a developed countries phenomenon, is a process where the industrial activity in a region or in an industrial sector is reduced due to economic or social change. Usually occurs because an industrial activity is no longer economically viable. Economists have made enormous efforts to understand the process of developing markets, but only a few studies have been published for the opposite. This research deals with the disinvestment, the decision making process ending to the market exit. The life cycle law applies in industries as the birth of an idea, to the development and peak and finally the death. Entries and exits in declining industries are interesting; approaching the determinants they dominate the economic decisions. In the introduction, the data derived from official authorities related to the Greek manufacturing industry for a period of twenty (20) years. The classification of all manufacturing sectors, based on certain criteria, leads to the sectors suffering the most from deindustrialization. The study is focusing in the 87 firms (almost all population) of the Textile Dyeing and Finishing sub-sector. An econometric model is built to test three (3) hypotheses and arrive into the conclusions of the determinants affecting entries and exits in the declining industry.

Sarbjit Singh   

Once the vision and mission of any organization is finalized the next step for them to formulate the road map to achieve that vision and mission. One of the ways is to derive strategic objectives which aid the organization to achieve its vision and mission. Generally these strategic objectives are for short term in comparison to the laid vision and mission. This study shows how projects help to achieve these strategic objectives. It also provides some examples where financial feasibility might not be the only criteria for selection of projects.

Zafrullah Khan   Abdul Sattar Khan   and Irfanullah Khan   

The study focuses on the association between performance evaluation and employees' performance and motivation as a moderator. The results demonstrate that there is critical association between performance evaluation and performance of employees of commercial banks of Dera Ismail Khan. A total of one hundred and fifty (150) employees of banks were studied in Dera Ismail khan, it was concluded that the motivation which is the moderating variable can change the performance of employees' and was considered as a deciding variable in employee performance. The results are given in a table where we can observe that although Model 2 with the interaction between performance appraisal and employees motivation accounted for more variance than just performance appraisal and employees' motivation level by themselves, R² change = .006 however it is insignificant with p = .168, indicating that there are no moderation effects of employees motivation on the relationship between performance appraisal and employees performance.

Mohammad Majedul Islam   

Bangladesh is one of the highest mobile phone users' countries among ten in the world where mobile payment service is becoming a promising area with the speedy rise of mobile internet. Conversely, various researches on mobile phone users acceptance of mobile payment has not reveal clearly to a definite assumption for Bangladesh context considering technology acceptance model (TAM). A survey has conducted to collect data from 260 consumers of Bangladesh and then hypothesized model based on data analysis in SPSS. It has found that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are the drivers in the acceptance of mobile payment where subjective norms mediate them. Alternatively, perceived risk and perceived costs are treated as barriers toward behavioral intention to use mobile payment. This study explores new results in the TAM model in Bangladesh context and provided managerial insights to the mobile payment service providers to develop strategies in Bangladesh.

P. Uma Maheswari Devi   and B. Sankara Rao   

With the advancement in technology, education and the impact of globalization, consumers are enjoying high privileges. They have access to everything at the click of a button; they are using more electronic gadgets and are dependent on online purchases. On the other side it is unfortunate to know that consumers are becoming the main target of exploitation. They are the worst victims of unfair trade practices. Government has implemented new laws and measures to protect the consumers. In spite of government's efforts the consumers are still being exploited mainly because of lack of awareness of Consumer rights. In this scenario an attempt was made to understand the level of awareness among educated and uneducated consumers about Consumer rights. A Sample of 1000 consumers from Andhra Pradesh was selected through purposive sampling method. SPSS 20.0 was used. Exploratory factor analysis, correlation and regression tests were applied. The study found that education did not create much difference in the level of awareness, majority of consumers do not have knowledge of Consumer Rights and laws. A positive correlation was found between Consumer Perceptions, buying Practices and Problems. The study identified three critical factors of Consumer Protection namely Government Initiatives, Consumer Awareness and Accessibility

Sangeeta Arora   and Neha Chaudhary   

Purpose: The biggest challenge for the banking industry is to tangibilize the intangible banking experience. One way of overcoming this challenge is creation of strong brands. It has been well recognized that Brands are regarded as most important corporate asset but recently serious attempts have been made by various organizations in order to estimate their brand value (Farquhar, 1989). Academic literature has revealed that high brand value resulted in increased financial returns and shareholder value, which leads to superior financial performance. This research focuses on the investigating the impact of brand value on various financial indicators on of banks. Design/ Methodology/Approach: The investigation is designed as a quantitative study and is based on the brand value of Indian banks. The sampling frame constituted Top 10 banks listed by Brand Finance, a leading brand valuation agency. Five banks were selected on the basis of highest brand values reported in Brand Finance Banking 500, (2014) from Public sector as well as Private sector banks. In public sector banks, State Bank of India, Punjab national bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Canara bank were selected. Amongst private sector banks, ICICI, HDFC, Axis, Kotak Mahindra and Yes bank form the sample of the study. The data of Brand values were collected from the report of Brand Finance Banking 500 published during 2009-2014. Multiple Regression analysis has been applied in order to analyze the impact of Brand value on various financial indicators such as Return on Assets (ROA), Return on equity (ROE), Return on Investments (ROI), Stock Prices and Earnings Per share (EPS). Findings: The findings revealed that Brand value has significant impact on the financial performance of banks. Brand value has significant negative impact on ROA, ROI and ROE. This negative phenomenon indicates the marginal diminishing returns of the bank's brand advantage, ceteris paribus (Tsai and Chang, 2012) whereas brand value has significant positive impact on Stock Prices and EPS. Originality/Value: This is the most comprehensive quantitative study in the field of branding and financial performance of the banking sector. There has been limited research on the impact of brand value on the financial performance of banks. This study provides new insights for marketing managers and brand valuation agencies.

Purwanto   and Chelsea Risa Bina   

This research aims to identify the influence of working capital to total asset, debt to equity ratio, total asset turnover, and net profit margin predicting the earning growth. Population of this research is the mining industry companies listing in Indonesia Stock Exchange. The writer gets 60 samples from 20 companies in period 2010 until 2012. The method that is used in collecting data is documentation method and done by taking financial data in IDX corner. The result of regression shows that variable of working capital to total asset and debt to equity ratio partially having negative but significant influence on the predicting earning growth. The variable of total asset turnover and net profit margin, partially having positive and significance influence. Simultaneously, four variables have significant influence on earning growth with the predictive capabilities of 37.2% and the remaining 62.8% is influenced by other factors that are not included in this regression model.

Jean-François Tremblay   

This research paper presents a portrait both descriptive and analytical of the knowledge associated with so-called integrative bargaining methods. After justifying the choice of the term "interest-based bargaining" (IBB) to designate the different methods of integrative negotiations, an analysis of the theoretical foundations of IBB with regards to the sub-processes of the collective bargaining was done. In addition, an explanation of the theoretical premises and methodological application of IBB as described [5] was proposed. After explaining the factors that facilitate the implementation of IBB, an analysis of the results of some empirical studies on the impacts of IBB was also carried out. Finally, some reflections on the method itself, the state of knowledge on the subject as well as various avenues of research that could be considered are suggested.

K. P Najeemudeen   and N. Panchanatham   

Information is an important aspect in our life. Information or knowledge about the product he intends to purchase is very important for a customer. Similarly, knowledge about the sources from where the customers are getting information is very vital for a marketer for channelizing his marketing communications in such a way that it will reach his target customers in the right way at minimal cost. In that context, the present study is intended to investigate and identify the information sources through which customers are gathering information on two-wheelers and the relative importance of these sources on their purchase decision. This study also tends to analyze the effects of the socio-economic characteristics of consumers on these information sources. This study is based on a questionnaire survey conducted among 681 Two-wheeler users in Malappuram district of Kerala. Statistical tools like Chi-square analysis, ANOVA, Z-Test, Multiple Correlation, Multiple Regression and Friedman Test has been used for the meaningful analysis and interpretation of data. This study will be a ready reckoner for the two-wheeler manufacturing companies and dealers to identify the sources of information which the customers consider to be the most reliable and highly influential in their selection of two-wheeler brands/models. The findings of this study will equip them to make their marketing efforts to be more customers centric and will also facilitate them in the selection of the right medium for communicating with the customers.

Diljeetkaur G. Makhija   and Pawan K. Chugan   

RFID technology is a real time tracking system, which does not require line of sight. The technology is trending in the organizations, due to various benefits that it can reap. Every organization wants to increase its efficiency, i.e., get more output with same or less input. The implementation of RFID technology can be done by integrating it with the ERP of the organization for various practices or applications. The organizations can decide the practice/application they want to adopt according to their requirement. The efficiency of the process is affected by this application. Manufacturing Organizations have wide applications of RFID technology and henceforth this sector is considered in the study. The paper focuses on various RFID practices in manufacturing organizations and its effect on the improvement in the efficiency of the organizations. It is found that implementing RFID either for Inventory Management, Work in Progress Management, Logistics Management, In-Process Logistics Management or Warehouse Management; it will lead to improvement in efficiency of the organization.

Abdul Rahoof TK   and P. G. Arul   

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has been the growth engine of many developing countries around the world for the last few decades. The SEZ Scheme was introduced to provide a special area to expertise in international trade by providing an attractive fiscal package both in central and state government level with little regulations. SEZs have made Indian economy compatible with the global economy. The SEZ Act 2005 was passed with a view to increase the pace of economic growth. So far the Government of India (GOI) has given formal approval to 491 SEZs in which 199 SEZs already started exporting, out of which majority are from IT/ITES, pharmaceuticals and chemical sectors. GOI came forward with a lot of incentives for attracting investors to the scheme. The newly elected NDA government is seriously looking for the development of SEZs. The performance of Indian SEZs in the post-SEZ Act era has been gaining attention; it shows a tremendous increase in export, investment and employment. This paper is an attempt to study the performance of SEZ in India and its impact on India's export, investment and employment. In addition to this, the recent government initiatives in terms of privileges, tax exemptions, rebates, policy initiatives to improve the performance of SEZ are also addressed in this paper. For the extensive analysis of this study, data were collected from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Finance, Reserve Bank of India and from various websites and newspapers.

D. Raja Nandan   and K. Siva Rama Krishna   

The present study aims at analyzing Job stress of faculty relating to management education in Andhra Pradesh State. Stress adversely impacts performance on the Job. The magnitude of Job stress differed across institutions with the highest score being in the AICTE (standalone) Institutes and declining in descending order among Deemed universities, Central universities, affiliated colleges, autonomous colleges and State Universities. Job stress exhibited variation by various factors.

Muhammad Hassaan Khan   Ibrahim hassan   Muhammad Nasir Khan   Nouman Ahmad   and Zarnab Qadeer   

An emerging knowledge economy creates major challenges for human resource development (HRD) in organisations. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of these challenges and explore their implications for HRD professionals. The paper takes the form of a literature review to contribute to the ongoing debate about HRD's changing role and tasks. Having set the organisational process of HRD in the context of a knowledge economy and of macro-level socio-economic policy, we explore notions of strategy, structure and knowledge and their implications for those with HRD responsibilities in organisations. We identify and discuss four major challenges that confront the HRD function, and conclude that a knowledge economy invites HRD professionals to play a crucial role in the transformation of organisations. As working, learning and knowing are closely related processes, HRD could become the integrating vehicle for generating human and social capital: primary driving forces in a knowledge society.

Thanawatdech Thirapatsakun   

The current issue, contractors had been confirmed what mostly low productivity was: Thai construction industries had been suffered from a chronic disease as the lack of competitive advantage and improve slim profit margins. Symptoms have long been recognized in several construction projects. In any given geographical area, contractor's finance difficulties, incomplete design, labor shortage, poor skill worker, material shortage, equipment and tool shortage, and poor project management as well as construction mistake and defective work trail to reworks are essentially the same characteristic. One of the few opportunities to improve the identifying current a key element effect is to increase productivity. The papers had been doing to identify different points to increase productivity at the construction projects in Thailand. The owner, consultant, contractor, subcontractor, and suppliers were discussions and data collected. In addition, that was concluded to the key element make practice specifically and management tool would be increase productivity. Perhaps most important, the project management could considered continuous improvement under a key element affecting the productivity by the owner implement aspect, employees implement and social, occupational safety and health implement aspect. Meanwhile, the supervisor and crew with close the communication with all crews and review work method or work instruction as well as the training that had been able to yield the greatest productivity improvement.

Syed Mehmood Shah   Muhammad Adeel   Faisal Hanif   and Mohsin Khan   

During the past couple of decades, brand equity has emerged as one of the key concepts in marketing. Literature concerned with consumer brand relationship is calling for more studies in order to increase understanding of brand equity dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by investigates the impact of brand equity, on consumers' brand purchase intention. We propose that subjective norms play a moderating role in this relationship. The data were gathered from 197 respondents from the twin cities of Pakistan: Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Results make known that subjective norms are found to positively moderate the relationship between brand equity and consumers' brand purchase intention. The study findings support for the hypotheses. Some managerial implications for retailer were also discussed.

Kwesi Korsa Aggrey   

The study was initiated to explore the difficulties that frequently appear to plague the relationship between the NHS and the Voluntary Sector as regards mental health service delivery. It was found that the performance of the mental healthcare delivery system is subject to a number of criticisms. The latter could be attributed to low levels of collaboration and communication between social actors involved. Based on interviews, focus group discussions and results from the literature a number of possible ways to improve the system were identified. The results of the study are expected to contribute to the improved designed of health care systems and of performance management concerning the mental health services. Various attempts to improve performance in the past were explored and criticised. One important obstacle to success was identified as a lack of understanding in the NHS and in the Voluntary Sector - of the implications of the use of externally generated performance criteria versus the use of internally generated self-organised criteria. A conceptual model was developed to help clarify these notions as management tool. It includes the idea of a spiral development and of ‘complete collective satisfaction'.

Megat Zuhairy Megat Tajuddin   Hadijah Iberahim   and Noraini Ismail   

This paper aims to discuss the relationship between innovation and organizational performance in the construction industry. In Malaysia, the construction industry is known to be one of the industries that contribute significantly towards her economic growth. This contribution, more often than not is associated with the amount of innovation invested by organizations in the industry. The industry’s innovation performance currently is reported to be amongst the lowest as compared to the others, which inspired this study to unveil the extent influence of innovation on performance. The instruments in measuring innovation and organizational performance specific to the construction industry were developed by adapting measures introduced by several scholars in these fields. While innovation is represented by innovative design solution, innovative project practices and advanced technology utilization, organizational performance is represented by project and business performance. Contractors and consulting companies were the sampling frame of this study and the samples were selected based on a stratified sampling method to gauge representation of the different groups in the population. The results revealed that principally innovation is significantly positive in influencing organizational performance. Nevertheless, innovative design solution and advanced technology dimensions were insignificant in influencing project performance and business performance respectively.

Anuar Sanusi   

This study attempted to assess the application of quantitative approaches and hypothesis testing using 'Path Analysis' technique as an alternative approach to the performance of managerial leadership that can be used to achieve the goals in finding and determine the factors that influence and support the managerial performance. Analysis of the data that is used in this study consisted of descriptive analysis to look at the characteristics of the population that is netted in the study and path analysis. The sample of technique in this study is using proportionate stratified random sampling technique. The number of samples that is used as the respondent in the unit of analysis of this study is 130 head of private universities around KOPERTIS (Private College Coordination) in southern Sumatra region II. The results of data analysis shows that (1) the Information Systems Strategy of a significant and positive impact on performance managerial, (2) empowerment of human resources directly affects on performance managerial, (3) governance directly affects managerial performance.

Kathak Mehta   and Pawan Kumar Chugan   

Environmental sustainability is generating increased concern among business executives, governments, consumers, and management scholars. Amidst the stakeholders' struggle and the challenges and opportunities from environmental concerns, HRM function joins the ongoing discussions and debates. The business domain sees the genesis of Green HRM with the expanding role of the HRM function in pursuit of environmentally sustainable business. Are HRM (or simply, HR) policies and practices getting transformed to incorporate a new way of work for people? The ‘green' way? In view of this, the paper intends to explain the concept of Green Human Resource Management, the companies' approach towards green HRM, its advantages, policies and practices. The paper discusses the current trends of green HRM practices in companies based on findings from a few studies, survey reports and secondary data from companies' web resources. It also brings out the role of HRM function towards creating a ‘green' culture in companies.

Rasoul Azadi   Bahram Yousefi   and Hossein Eydi   

The present study aimed to investigate the conducted effects of the Brand Country-of-Origin Image on The Formation of Brand Equity in the sports apparel industry. Method of this study is descriptive-correlative. The study investigated the effects among the research variables using structural equation model (SEM) with Lisrel software. The population of the study was the whole country's physical education students, alumni, which 805 subjects were selected based on the purposive sampling, using in person, and online questionnaires were collected from Iran. The results showed that the image of the country of origin has a positive relation to the brand equity dimension including brand loyalty, Perceived quality, and brand Awareness/associations, and there is a significant positive relation between brand equity dimensions and brand equity. Therefore, it is recommended to manufacturers in the apparel and sports equipment to try to promote brand's country of origin image to increase brand image in markets by using advertisements and other combined components such as personal sales and public relations.

Amna Niazi   and Muhammad Ali   

Corporate accounting fraud is not a new thing in this world after the debacle of Enron, which proved to be a stimulus for others to fancy their own Enron in their respective organizations. This started a series of events related to corporate financial crimes. With increasing trend in financial crimes across the globe, investors lost their confidence, the credibility of financial disclosures were being questioned and companies were facing huge financial losses. Satyam Computers Ltd was just another case featuring almost same causes like that of Enron and others including WorldCom. Satyam computers were once the crown jewel of Indian IT industry, but were brought to the ground by its founders in 2009 as a result of financial crime. The debacle of Satyam raised a debate about the role of CEO in driving an organization to the heights of success and its relation with the board members and core committees. The scam at Satyam brought to the light the role of corporate governance in shaping the protocols related to the working of audit committee and duties of board members. Thus, an in depth study is conducted to analyze the financial scam from a management's perspective.

Krishna Regmi   Syed Adeel Ahmed   and Mark Quinn   

The startup accelerators help nascent startups grow by providing funding and resources. This paper summarizes a data driven analysis of startup accelerators success and presents their growth trends. The goal of this paper was to assess the effectiveness of accelerators. The methodology was to use data to compare US startups that went through the accelerator program with the startups many of which according to Kauffman Foundation failed within 5-6 years, and the businesses that went through accelerator program outside of the US. Data for accelerators was collected from seed-db.com and was filtered for those that were established from 2005-2014. The data shows that the number of accelerators in the US is in the rise, although the growth has slowed down significantly after a very high rise in 2012. Startups that graduated from accelerator programs have approximately 23% higher survival rate than other new businesses.

Ahmed Islam   Syed Adeel Ahmed   and Brandon Taravella   

“The Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is an electronic unit which records angular velocity and linear acceleration data which is fed into a central processing unit for data interpreting and logging. The unit constitutes of two independent sensors. The first sensor is the 3-axis gyroscope and second sensor is the 3-axis accelerometer. The IMU should also have a data interpreter that can draw the track it went through. This should enable the engineers to calculate the co-ordinates, based on longitude and latitude measures. To improve the effectiveness of the device, the device could possibly be designed to transfer the data wirelessly using Bluetooth technology to the nearby data logging machine, which can simultaneously calculate the algorithms to figure the correct of the vessel piping system.

Ibrahim Baba   and Mustapha Abubakar   

The actual point where slavery ends, there freedom is expected to begin. The state of facilities in the north eastern region of Nigeria which is sympathetic and subjecting the lives of citizens to severe hardship is not only a serious and urgent matter that demands government attention. It is also another form of slavery which people in this region are suffering from. This work examines the decaying nature of public facilities across the six states in the north-east geo-political zone of the country. It also assesses the impacts of this infrastructural decomposition on the lives of the people of the region. The work examines the needs for infrastructural development in the region. Secondary and primary sources of data collection were utilized in the study. Library based documentation analysis like textbooks, journals, newspapers, magazines and other electronic as well as print materials were consulted in the work. Personal observation visits to practically assessed facilities in the area chosen for the study within the north-east region were also embarked by the researchers. Primary source of data collection like the close ended type of questionnaire was utilized in the study. Percentage was used as the statistical tool of analysis with which data collected for this study were analyzed. The work discovered that facilities in the education, health, water, electricity and other sectors are seriously collapsing in the region. Population is growing, state efforts towards infrastructural development in the north-east are minimal and the living conditions of the people of the region are in severe state of agonies. These are some of the reasons and needs for the development of infrastructure in the north-eastern region of Nigeria.

Sarbjit Singh   

Transportation algorithm minimizes the cost of transporting goods from m origins to n destinations along m*n direct routes from origin to destination. There are three methods to solve transportation problem and their solution can be further improved using Modified Distribution Method (MODI Method). This method not only checks that the solution obtained by three methods is optimal but also modify the distribution to make it optimal. The only hiccup with this method is the case of degeneracy i.e. when number of allocations less than m+n-1. In this case, we have to make the number of allocations equal to m+n-1. To remove degeneracy we allocate some cells with dummy allocations, whose value is nearly equal to zero. But, till now there is no specific rule for allocating these cells. In this study, specific method has been proposed to remove this problem of degeneracy. Thus this study helps to remove major bottle neck from transportation algorithm.

Hasanzadeh.M.   and Amirhesari .S.   

The most important concern every marketing mental sport to find the audience and finally preserving and creating loyalty in sports audience discussion is attracting and keeping viewers and users by presenting electronic services through web sites. One method of establishing relations with the audience and most important priorities student sports organizations are considered. Web sites effectiveness student sports organizations in order to establish relations with the students and addresses are very important. Undoubtedly the situation of sport organizations has been changed all over the world, especially in Iran. In fact internet and E-commerce has become a tool for sport organizations to attract and keep the audience, also to communicate with fans and sport students. Therefore student sports organizations need to know the information in connection with their website which makes it able to their effectiveness and capability in communications and information and selling electronic services to evaluate. The aim of this investigation and identification of variables effective on the Internet services provided by Iran Student sports organizations .Given the necessary investigation of audiences student sports organizations active in Iran that electronic services through web site. Estimate by a questionnaire made based on a scale 5 option likert narrative that after you and the problem behaviors ankle bracelet polls model with the volume of 140 people had not have an accident in a separate distribution and has been collected. Method analysis test for this research, our analysis and Variance Friedman’s and to study the connection between the investigation of variables test excluded solidarity and manuscripts diagnosing analysis has been used based on the results of the site users graphic variables, the contents site, ability, technical variables and reviewing the site purchases of Internet services web sites by the other conversional technical and other function” there was a meaningful relationship. Also the research priority each of the function” to attract audiences and keep respectively following has specified: reliability, technical varier, site investigations, and the façade site content site.

Ehsan Fattahi   and Mahta Khodadad   

Subject to competition markets, continues change in expectations, customer requisition and decrease of accessible production resource, the production system of make to order is the appropriate selection for response to today's markets specifications and in order to provide the large spectrum of customer's orders. In this research expend the control and planning production system (work load control) in make to order production system to manage the delivery time. For this, we recommend the hierarchical production planning structure. The major target is managing the activity in make to order system in order to achieve the short released time and entrance orders competition fee. To achieve this target we present the appropriate decision models with attention to restriction of production system. Finally due to consequent below: Present the expended release model to plain the production line and decrease the delivery time; Present the orders timing method in various stations. This method do subject to existences of previous level. Synchronistic performed the two methods state better performance in compare to others researches.

Katarína Krpálková Krelová   and Pavel Krpálek   

Development of entrepreneurship and stable institution environment are today understood as key elements of sustainable economic development. Many experts in the field of economics and politics anticipate a dynamic increase in entrepreneurship in the 21 century. Realizing that entrepreneurship is crucial for the companies who want to be competitive worldwide, the European Commission pays special attention to support entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial skills have been included into key competencies in the field of education and training and should therefore be acquired continuously within all stages of education, starting from primary through secondary up to the university institutions, including lifelong learning. Only well trained teachers are able to support the important attributes such as responsibility, creativity, initiative, sense for team work and others. These attributes with knowledge and skills from the area of entrepreneurship are one of the main presumptions that students will be successful at the job market. This is one of the reasons for the change in education system. Teaching process should be focused on entrepreneurship skills. The paper mentions examples of good practice in the form of research results which dealt with development of students' entrepreneurship skills at secondary schools and universities. Surveys were conducted at secondary schools and universities in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Particular training of future teachers of specific subjects (economic and technical) seems to be very important.

Giuseppe Tardivo   Milena Viassone   and Gian Luigi Gola   

The issue of innovation technology is acquiring an increasing importance in the banking sector and in particular in its channels, like the mobile one. Despite services offered by M-banking are always more studied by researchers, most studies focus their attention on perceived services and they aren't directed towards their main users (i.e. young people). Hence, the aim of this study is to understand the diffusion of M-banking among young people, to measure their satisfaction throughout the SERVPERF questionnaire (able to overcome the disadvantage of SERVPERF model) proposed to 144 young customers and to verify the emerging of new needs in order to draw future strategies. Results show a good level of customer satisfaction by young people towards M-banking services that prevalently comes from reliability and the possibility of saving time offered by these services. Finally, the paper provides new directions to researchers of M-banking service quality.

Pawan Kumar Chugan   and Shivangi Singh   

Exporting is crucial to a country's trade performance in terms of increasing its foreign exchange reserves and improving the terms of trade. At the firm-level too, exporting serves significant purpose by enhancing sustainability, profitability, and competitive position of firms in long-run. Hence, it is crucial to access the impact of exporting on the performance of such firms. Several measures, most of them multi-dimensional in nature, have been used to capture the construct of firm-level export performance. Past studies have used both absolute numbers as well as performance ratings as a part of measuring firms' export performance. It is also revealed that export performance being a multi-dimensional phenomenon is best represented by the use of certain key dimensions explaining the firms' performance in international markets. Research in this field is still evolving and paving way for further enrichment of its theoretical background. Assimilating the important work in this field, the paper highlights some key trends in measurement of firm-level export performance.

Sirivan Serirat   and Nongluck Popichit   

To develop the sustainability, organizations and companies strive to achieve the social and economic progress while the environmental issue also needs to be regarded with an aim to conserve the natural resources. Thus, these three inseparable and interdependent components should be included in any development of sustainability. Furthermore, the successful development of sustainability cannot be achieved regardless of the participation and cooperation from related stakeholders. Thus, the managerial competency of stakeholders is of importance as the major determinant in managing and achieving the sustainability. Consequently, this research was aimed to explore and develop the stakeholders' managerial competency in sustainably managing Kaeng Krachan National Park in Thailand. The qualitative research by conducting in-depth interview and focus group was employed to collect data from stakeholders. In addition, the content analysis was also incorporated in this study to analyze the data. The informants included 20 management executives and staffs, 10 related governmental officers, 5 individuals from communities and 5tourists which were accounted for 40 individuals. The research findings revealed that the development of sustainability required the cooperation of governmental, private and community sectors in implementing the activities of both tourism promotion and forest conservation. The utmost participation and contribution of local communities and agencies as the committee member played an important role in the participative management of this national park. Moreover, the successful sustainability of this national park required the continuous cooperation of stakeholders in balancing the three components of sustainability including social, economic and environmental issues. Implications derived from the findings are discussed.

Sirote Pholpuntin   Sirivan Serirat   Jirawat Anuwichanont   and Panisa Mechinda   

To date, the ASEAN community has been regarded as the fastest economic-growing countries with enormous purchasing powers of billions of consumers. Moreover, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) comprising 10 member countries was formed to develop this economic community as a highly competitive economic region in the global markets. As Thai foods are rated and recognized as the most favorite choice, therefore, Thai food businesses have won successes in expanding the business in many foreign countries. Thanks to the Thai government's policy of promoting "Thai Kitchen to the World", both governmental and private sectors gave more emphasis on conducting researches with an aim to expand Thai food business into the neighboring countries and global markets. Thus, this study was aimed to investigate the market situation of Lao People's Democratic Republic and Kingdom of Cambodia and developed the marketing strategies accordingly for promoting Thai kitchens into these ASEAN markets. Both quantitative and qualitative researches were incorporated to assess the market environments of these two markets. 60 Thai restaurant entrepreneurs in these two countries were recruited for data collection and depth interview by employing the purposive sampling. The SWOT analysis was implemented to assess both internal and external environmental factors of market situation. Subsequently, the TOWS matrix analysis was conducted to match the business's internal strength/weakness with the external opportunity/threat towards Thai food business. The research findings revealed that Thai food business in these two countries was found to be in the position of SO (strength/opportunity), indicating that Thai food business possessed both favorable strength and opportunity in running future business. According to the SO strategy, companies or business units are recommended to utilize their strengths to take advantage of opportunities. Thus, the appropriate strategy relevant to this position is growth strategy. According to the qualitative findings, the appropriate investment of Thai food business was recommended to be either wholly owned or joint venture which will allow the Thai restaurant entrepreneurs to manage and sustain their own food quality and business images. The marketing implications of the results are discussed.

Jirawat Anuwichanont   and Panisa Mechinda   

The importance of brand equity and value proposition has long been acknowledged by both academic scholars and marketing practitioners. Considerable researches in consumer products have supported brand equity and value proposition as the major predictors of loyalty. Despite the widespread recognition that the associations between brand equity, value proposition and loyalty are well documented, little understanding of how they influences loyalty in the eco-tourism context. Thus, this research was aimed to explore the impact of brand equity and value proposition of ecological destination on eco-tourists' loyalty towards Kaeng Krachan National Park. This study employed the questionnaires as the means in collecting data with the prospect samples of 419 Thai tourists. The samples were recruited by purposive sampling and quota sampling by specifying two destinations of Kaeng Krachan National Park including Kaeng Krachan dam and Praneun Trung hill. The eco-tourists' attitudes towards brand equity (brand awareness and brand image of ecological destination) and value proposition (functional, emotional and self-expressive benefits) as well as the impact of these mentioned variables on loyalty were investigated. The empirical findings supported brand image, brand awareness, functional benefits and emotional benefits as the determinants of future revisit intention as hypothesized. Furthermore, brand awareness, functional value and emotional benefits were found to be the prerequisite of word of mouth recommendation. Discussions of the findings are also included.

Shih-ChangWang   and Ming-Feng Yeh   

Differential evolution (DE) has become a popular and promising technique in the recent decade. There are many successful applications implemented DE in scientific and engineering fields. However, we rarely found it applying to the field of highly constrained aggregate production planning (APP) problems. Besides, in the course of solving the APP problem, we discover that the most often used DE strategies have unsatisfactory performance to the problem. For alleviating the deficiency, in this paper, we propose an improved DE strategy and a constraint handling mechanism, called the winner-based constraint handling mechanism, for solving the highly constrained APP problem. In the computational study, some instances of the problem are experimented and analyzed to evaluate the performance of the approach with the most often used DE strategies. The experimental results show that the improved DE strategy with the winner-based constraint handling mechanism can provide particular performance for solving the APP problem than other DE strategies.

Supada Sirikudta   

The objective of this research is to find guidelines for sustainable development and value creation of processed tamarind with the participation of processed tamarind community enterprises in Petchabun. This research is a participatory action research (PAR) with the participation of 8 community enterprises of processed tamarind in Petchabun, and this quantitative research has been conducted by collecting data from 420 customers who have bought/consumed the processed tamarind products of the sweet tamarind community enterprises in Petchabun by using purposive sampling focusing on markets/stores that sold processed tamarind products of the processed tamarind community enterprises in Petchabun and also convenience sampling. The findings are as follows. Community enterprises, add more value to the tamarind product by producing new products such as dried seedless tamarind (three pieces per package), herb-mixed tamarind, buns with tamarind filling, ready-to-drink tamarind juice, tamarind jam, chocolate-covered tamarind, and tamarind chili paste. The packaging of seasoning tamarind and dried seedless tamarind are improved, and processed tamarind community enterprises brand are created. Moreover, the community enterprises must consider value creation by creating differences in service, image, and feature, for these variables influence the consumers' willingness to buy high-price processed tamarind products at 3.9% with is statistically significance. In addition, community enterprises must consider creating varieties of product features, distribution channels, service, and expectation, for these variables influence the consumers' intention to buy processed tamarind products at 12.2% with statistically significance. The guidelines for sustainable development are (1) developing product quality of processed tamarind and creating new types of processed tamarind in order to increase sales outside the community, (2) raising both new and existing product standards in order to assure consumers by using accreditation of standardizing organizations, (3) administrators should offer training for group members to gain knowledge and understanding in administration, including observing other successful community enterprises or other businesses, (4) in marketing management, community enterprises should keep the processed tamarind products positioning clean and safe, determine marketing goals, and create website introducing the product network. Moreover, in order for community enterprises to be sustainable, there must be economic environment sustainability.

Chatree Preedaananthasuk   

General crisis management concept focused only on reactive crisis management process and forgot to learn from the crisis experience; as a result, crises recurred. Flooding is regarded as one of crisis types. This study focused on flood management of municipalities in Thailand in the year 2011 because the floods in the year 2011 caused large-scale damage to many areas beyond expectation. Although, municipalities along the Chao Phraya River attempted to prevent flooding in their cities by applying their knowledge from previous crisis experience, Pakkret Municipality could save most of their areas from flooding whereas Nakhon Sawan Municipality failed to prevent flooding in their city. This study is descriptive research and conducted interviews of key informants of both Pakkret Municipality and Nakhon Sawan Municipality. They were interviewed to explain why flood prevention models of both municipalities came out with different results even though both of them experienced the same flood in the past. Research results shed light on the importance of learning from crisis experience and cooperation among crisis stakeholders.

Kwesi Korsa Aggrey   

A welfare state has a responsibility to provide health and social services to the citizenry. The state delegates that responsibility to a number of actors, each of which has its own performance management criteria. To ensure coherence, it is important to manage their performances collectively taking into consideration all the actors inputs rather than only that of government or its agent, the NHS. This turns out to be a difficult task especially that of the mental health care services. The author will be looking at a possible solution to this problem based on the assumption that it is possible to change the way the actors present their stories by bringing them together to share their purposes and common action through the notion of dialogism as way of maintaining plurality of logics: different voices (polyphonic), styles (stylistic), space-time conception (chronotopic), inter-animating discourse (architectonics) and the dynamic interplay of these different dialogisms (polypi). It is this process of plurality of logic that the researcher termed, the Third Cybernetics Evolution, as a way of sequential processes from the First Cybernetics through the Second Cybernetics to the Third Cybernetics. It is argued that implementing these, allows for improved communication among actors, as a way of achieving high quality service. It is suggested that implementation of these concepts and processes implies the use of storytelling as a facilitatory system. It is shown that all actors in the mental health care services delivery make use of this system, albeit often inefficiently. Therefore this may lead to dissipation of the system in the future. To prevent such dissipation, the existing structure needs to be improved through spiral relationships via communication and collaboration through dialogism. The paper aims at flagging the important role played by the weaker actors in collaboration with stronger actors in improving performance management of the NHS's mental healthcare service delivery through Actors-dialogism-system. The paper also focuses on proposition of a system to address issues affecting collaboration among the actors of the mental healthcare service in England.

Yamini Meduri   

Exponentially increased number of disasters and continuous failure of humanitarian aid lead to increase in attention towards humanitarian logistics. This paper aims at understanding the conceptual framework of humanitarian logistics with a special focus on the human resources involved in the disaster relief operations. The study used a conceptual research methodology through an extensive literature review from both academic and practitioner journals. The study attempts to identify the challenges for planning and managing human resources for a humanitarian-aid organization considering the uncertainty of disaster location and intensity. The study also tried to indicate the scope for further research in the area. The paper is conceptual in nature and empirical research is required to validate the findings. The study sets an agenda for academic research. The findings of the study will help the academia to establish a framework for studying the humanitarian organizations which are different from the general business organizations. The study also provides a tool for the practitioners to understand the challenges, plan, hire and retain the human resources accordingly. Research focus from academia in the area of humanitarian logistics is less compared to practitioner’s research. Also, not much research concentrated on the human resources aspect of disaster management which is different when compared to the business organizations.

Muhammad Obeidat   Sarah North   Max North   and Vebol Rattanak   

Faced with the challenge of organizing massive, diverse collections of data, Enterprises look to Business Intelligence to transform this data into useful information, allowing more effective and efficient production. As a result, Business Intelligence theories and technologies are the focus of an increasing amount of substantial investment from Enterprises seeking to maintain a competitive advantage. This paper explores recent literature of the Business Intelligence domain and provides a few stimulating and innovate theories and practices. The authors explore several state-of-the-art studies related to the future trends and challenges of Business Intelligence as well as the surrounding technologies, such as data warehousing and cloud computing, that drive it.

Sung Woo Cho   

Knowledge transfer is regarded as a critical element for successful business. Cohen and Levinthal initially proposed the concept of absorptive capacity in 1989. Absorptive capacity is the ability to transfer and exploit external knowledge and it has become one of the most critical theories for two decades. The main purpose of the study is to identify the most appropriate model of absorptive capacity via statistical analyses. The three major models of absorptive capacity will be examined through the three core reconceptualization papers performed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990), Zahra and George (2002), and Todorova and Durisin (2007) in order to highlight a need for greater clarity about the construct of absorptive capacity. As a result, model3 proposed by Todorova and Durisin (2007) was the most reasonable in this study.

Oleg S. Sukharev   

The problem of economic growth and the impact on him of institutional change is considered in the paper. In the institutional change framework the mechanism of how a change of rules influences on the agents welfare is shown. An aggregated economic model of the system development depending on the initial standard of living, rates of consumption and resources depletion is represented. The model of economic growth, taking into account the institutional changes of the system shows the impact of these changes on the welfare of agents on the example circuit of chess. Example with the game of chess is a scheme to study the impact of institutional changes on the overall dynamics of the economic system, the interaction of agents and distribution of wealth. Basic mathematical equations are obtained based on a graphical representation of the reactions of agents in the game for a variety of options for their interaction. Such "game" schemes are usually not reflected in the classical models of aggregate economic growth is not taken into account the impact of these institutions. In the proposed scheme, the economic changes in the game model, as well as in the aggregate model of economic growth, representing a theoretical model shows the influence of institutional settings on the growth of the economic system.

Alessio Gerardo Maugeri   and Gabriele Arcidiacono   

We propose a simple method for the determination of minimum efficacious sampling rate and sample size in Shewhart-like control charts, a controversial topic both in the academic and industrial fields dealing with Statistical Process Control (SPC). By modeling the control procedure as the sampling of a stochastic process and analyzing data in the frequency realm, it is possible to identify meaningful system time scales and apply the well-known Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem in order to define conditions for an efficient quality control practice. Such conditions express the minimal requirements for an efficacious monitoring of quality indices, indicating the minimal efficacious sampling rate and the minimal effective size of rational subgroups in Xbar and R (or S) charts, which are useful both in the set-up phase and in the on-line control phase of the Shewhart’s control charts. Results can be applied also to I-MR charts. No statistical assumptions are made on the monitored data; in particular neither statistical independence nor Gaussianity is assumed in the derivation of the results. We focus on continuous processes like those typical in, but not limited to, e.g. refining, chemical processing and mining.

Semiu Babatunde Adeyemi   Ajape Kayode Mohammed   Mathias Gboyega Ogundeji   and Oladipupo, Muhrtala Tijani   

The purpose of this paper is to assess the perception of compliance personnel over audit technology tools implementation in Nigeria. The study provides an empirical analysis of input supplied by a sample of 173 professional auditors across 67 companies from 5 major sectors of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Subjects were tested of their perception on the application of audit technology tools in automated controls monitoring of financial transactions processing and assurance reporting. Although audit technology tools have been accessible for over a decade, the outcome of the study suggested that internal auditors and audit departments in Nigerian companies are not making substantial use of available tools. Internal auditors mostly have adopted audit software on an ad hoc basis with some repetitive use. In addition, most internal audit departments and units do not have formal strategies and plans for integrating technology in their internal audit processes with the exclusion of the financial services sector. The study also discovered that the most significant factors inhibiting the use of technology tools in other sectors were audit software inaccessibility and training costs alongside lack of senior management support from additional comments obtained from survey instrument. Respondents relatively share inconsistent views about the applicability and reliance on the underlying tools.

Alessio Fontani  and Luca Vitali  

During 90’s, the Italian banking system faced a new competitive environment both widening the dimensional scale and pursuing a rationalization process. Some insights could be drawn through efficiency analysis by estimation of a stochastic cost frontier for the period 1993-2004. Benchmark analysis not only highlights the contribution of the main factors that affect efficiency, but also allows evaluation of efficiency dynamics through time, determining the existence of technical progress and scale economies. However, such measure is significant if the sample of firms is homogeneous hence, accounting for heterogeneity of the units involved is then a goal of our analysis.

Dr Armand St-Pierre   

Several business companies implement electronic processes to do business online and to exchange with their clients. These electronic businesses affect the ways that small firms exchange goods and services with suppliers and clients. Digital markets are multiplying every day and small companies need to implement a supply chain model to do cost-effective business with their partners. Using models from the literature, this study will highlight that a virtual value chain performance model integrated to open business systems is needed to provide effective services to business partners. In this paper, the author of this research will demonstrate that a virtual value chain performance model is needed to achieve operational effectiveness and efficiency for small businesses.

Akram Pishevar   and Reza Tavakkoi-Moghaddam   

Uncertainty is a main characteristic of many real-world scheduling problems, and scheduling solutions should be robust against changes. In this paper, we consider parallel machines that the processing time of each task follows a normal distribution and total completion times as main optimization criterion. We propose a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model to minimize the risk of the completion time exceeding a fixed value. The objective is to find a β-robust schedule. Additionally, we use a proper approximation to convert the MINLP model to an integer programming one. The computational results on a small example are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Furthermore, we compare and analyze the associated results of these models. Finally, the conclusion is provided.

Nasim Nahavandi   

Critical WIP Loop II (CWIPL II) is a control mechanism previously proposed for unbalance flow line. The purpose of this paper is show how to apply CWIPL II in job shop and then comparing it with Theory of Constraint (TOC), Dedicated CONWIP (DCONWIP) and Shared CONWIP (SCONWIP). The Performance measures considered are average throughput, average lead time, average tardiness time and percent of tardy. Two set of examples are simulated. At First set, each job has a bottleneck that is not bottleneck for other jobs. Simulation results and statistical tests demonstrates that CWIPL II has better lead time and throughput compared to TOC and CWIPL II has better or the same due date compared to TOC. TOC works better than DCONWIP for all performance measures and DCONWIP is better than SCONWIP for average throughput lead time and tardiness time while DCONWIP and SCONWIP are the same for percent of tardy. At second set, single machine is bottleneck for all jobs. So the Job shop has one bottleneck. In this set, TOC has better lead time, tardiness and percent of tardy compared to CWIPLII, DCONWIP and SCONWIP with the same throughput.

Angelo Corallo   Mariangela Lazoi   Serena Lettera   Manuela Marra   and Sabrina Verardi   

Recently, the tendency of companies to adopt a PLM (product lifecycle management) strategy is increasing and asks for guidelines and reference frameworks to which screen the own organizational situation and drive improvements. Several scholars and managers have argued about PLM using a business and a technological view. Based on the need of Finmeccanica corporate to provide its companies with a reference guideline on PLM addressing organizational and technological elements, the paper systematically analyzes models and frameworks available in literature and web-sites. The aim is to provide a set of structured key components useful to guide an exploitation of a corporate associates PLM. Models and frameworks have been organized in three categories (Academic Models, Commercial Models and Enterprise Architecture Frameworks) and fully analyzed. A four-sections PLM model has been specified supported by the evidences coming from literature. The paper provides insights for companies working in complex environment and for theoreticians.

Valentina Pavlovna Shelomentseva   and Lyudmila Mikhailovna Davidenko   

This paper summarizes the best practices in corporate management, law and integration management based on merger and acquisition transactions. The analysis of modern integration policy and investment policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan from the perspective of expanding economic ties with Europe has been carried out. A retrospective and contemporary assessment of the integration processes in the most attractive sectors of Kazakhstani economy has been given. The recommendations on the formation of process-oriented concept of the company's growth based on merger and acquisition transactions have been developed.

Müge ÖRS   and F. Özge BARUONU LATIF   

Today rapidly evolving of Internet technologies enable the companies to carry their business activities to Internet. This situation provides firms to serve a wide range of customers and cost effectively. In the first part of this study, the definition of e- commerce, its pros and cons and classifications are examined briefly. Secondly, the concept of e-retailing and e-retailing business models are tried to be investigated in B2C business models. Afterwards private shopping clubs which are one of the famous virtual retailers are examined in the frame of e-retailing business models. Finally, Turkey’s leading private shopping club, Markafoni and its business implications are included as a case study. An indepth interview is used as a qualitative research method with the Director of Brand Management of Markafoni

Neven Šerić   Ante Rozga   and Ante Luetić   

The companies that apply the concept of business intelligence in their marketing decisions in some of the following ways were included in this study: at the level of the entire system or specific marketing strategy of companies (e.g. marketing department, research development, commercial, etc.), apply business intelligence only in certain marketing processes or projects, used in business from the technology and platform for data warehouse, data mining, OLAP tools, using advanced analytical techniques of simulation and visualization applications. Variables examined were categorized into four groups: business intelligence, supply chain management, information visibility and integration. Factor analysis was used to facilitate the connection of these groups of variables, i.e. reduction of number of variables. Then, we tested the correlation between the newly formed variables. There was a significant statistical correlation between business intelligence, supply chain management, information visibility and integration among the partners in the production chain. ANOVA was conducted to compare differences in the mean values of variables in relation to the activity, size and legal form. This paper will analyze the relationship between business intelligence and supply chain management for strategic and tactic marketing decisions.

Amin Amid   and Ali kohansal   

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs)are described as computer-based information systems designed to process an organization’s transactions and facilitate integrated and real-time planning, production, and customer response [23]. These systems are designed to address the problem of fragmentation Implementation of ERPs. ERP systems are complex and costly processes. In spite of ERP systems have provided many tangible and intangible advantages and capabilities, some of them result in serious failures. Many studies and research projects have been conducted in identifying ERP Critical Success Factor and challenges in ERP implementation projects. Still, there are a little studies which investigated on the effective implementation ERP systems. In this research, a model is developed from the strategy and objectives hierarchy in corresponding with organizational levels. While doing this research, for participation, cooperation and support in developing this model by TUGA Company, we’ve named this model TUGA. The results of this study have provided a very useful reference and framwork for scholars and managers to measure the effectiveness of ERP system.

Audrius Bitinas   and Alessandro Fiori Maccioni   

The aim of this article is to describe the Lithuanian pension system, its reform process and its long-term financial sustainability. We define therefore the current reforms in the public pension system, influenced by the last economic crisis and social challenges. Also, we forecast the financial dynamics of the public pension system, in the light of raising social expenses (due to second pillar pension reforms) and of demographic trends (like ageing society and low fertility). Results reveal the long-term sustainability of the system, albeit at a cost of initial negative balances to be covered with public budget. Policy solutions could improve sustainability by encouraging and extending employment (especially for the disadvantaged) and by building trust in both public and private pension systems.

Pawan Kumar Chugan   and Shivangi Singh   

Exporting plays a crucial role in accelerating the growth and profitability of firms. It enables them to achieve sustained competitive advantages. Interest in exporting is driven by the changing global economic scenario, liberalization, and emerging global competition. These reasons have contributed to the recent growth in research interest in the field of firm-level export performance and the major factor determining it. Existing research has certainly enhanced the understanding of firms’ export performance, however, work in this field is still evolving. Given the amount of export performance research over the years, the paper presents a review of literature to highlight the key advances in this field

Mira Asmida Mohd Sah   Nurul Fadly Habidin   Nor Azrin Md Latip   and Mad Ithnin Salleh   

Nowadays, in international business dynamic, supply chain management has become a critical strategic initiative in a global competitive environment. In consequence of increased competition in both domestic and international market, firm can no longer effectively compete in isolation of the suppliers and other entities in the supply chain. Supply Chain Management (SCM) practices have mostly been analyzed in manufacturing business. The SCM has been recognized as a strategy that could lead companies to gain competitive advantage, other than to achieve greater business performance. The SCM seeks to enhance competitive performance by closely integrating internal functions within a company and effectively linking them with external operations of suppliers, customers, and other channel members. There are several elements that can be selected to support SCM practices and organizational performance in the automotive industries. The purpose of this study is to propose a structural relationship of supply chain management practices and organizational performance model for Malaysian automotive industries. Since this study is a concept paper, most of the previous study taken as a basic guided for this research. Therefore, the conceptual model using Structural Equation Model (SEM) has been proposed and research hypothesis are also being developed. The paper culminates with suggested future research.

Cristina Mihaela Gheorghe   Mircea Covrig   and Mihai Virgil Popescu   

Based on both the manufacturer's perspective (an engineering approach) and the customer’s point of view (a marketing approach), the Value Analysis Method can determine both directions to reduce production cost and technological change to a product. The method allows the analysis of the possibilities to reduce manufacturing costs based on a detailed investigation of the current cost of a product. The present paper tackles the implementation of the Value Analysis Method in the manufacturing of electrical motors, with application for the flameproof motors. The authors identified four categories of flameproof motor functions: (a) strong undervalued functions, (b) strong overvalued functions, (c) slightly under / over-valued and (d) proportionately valued functions (by the manufacturer). Hence, the data on the production costs are provided by a domestic (Romanian) producer. It examines the method’s potential to create solutions to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the studied motors.

Nita H. Shah   Digeshkumar B. Shah   and Dushyantkumar G. Patel   

In general, researchers analyzing inventory models under two-part trade credit considered that the buyer either pays full purchase cost during the pre-specified credit period and take the advantage of cash discount or settles the account within a longer allowable credit period at the regular purchase price. In this paper, we model decision policies when buyer may pay part of purchase cost within a permissible shorter credit period and gets a cash discount in purchase cost and then the remaining account is settled within the longer permissible credit period. The demand rate is considered to be price-sensitive trapezoidal and units in inventory are subject to constant rate of deterioration. An algorithm is proposed to compute the optimal retail price, cycle time and biddable fraction of payments to be paid which maximizes the decision maker’s profit per unit time. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed problem. It is observed that the buyer is beneficial under biddable two-part trade credit scenario as compared to either not paying anything within shorter credit period or paying in full within longer permissible credit period.

Andrew Smith   

Productivity gains lead to competitive advantages. To achieve success, managers need to know if they are making the most effective use of resources. Understanding how well a business is performing compared to other firms in an industry is vital. Efficiency and Utilization are two measures that can be used to answer the question “How are we doing?” Once you have defined key variables and established benchmarks, programs like Microsoft Excel make it easy to set up the necessary calculations and track performance over time. A spreadsheet application is demonstrated that illustrates the concepts discussed. Formulas are included and explained.

Geetu Gupta   and Amandeep Kaur   

The paper makes an attempt to analyze the productivity performance of public sector banks in India on the basis of Employee Productivity and Branch Productivity. The variables selected for the study is based on secondary data published by Indian Banks Association (IBA) for the period 1991-2010. Mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation have been used to analyze the productivity. Based on the findings the banks are divided into four categories i.e. excellent, good, fair and poor for the period under study. Finally, appropriate policy suggestions are made for improvement of productivity in public sector banks in India.

Laurence SAGLIETTO 

Over just a few years, the outsourcing of logistic functions to various types of logistics services providers (LSPs) has become central to the organization of companies and markets. In this connection, both theorists and practitioners usually present LSPs in terms of classifications, describing their development with the help of representative statistics. However, one may reasonably wonder about the origin of these classifications and the credibility of the statistics, since LSP are not clearly identified in the nomenclatures of economic activities. Then, how to characterize the fourth party logistics (4PL) community? Our aim is to propose a complete analysis of the 4PLs community based on an empirical study on all logistic service providers operating in France. Our methodology consists in the triangulation of information obtained from three studies (based on data contained in the DIANE database, and on data extracted from selected businesses websites).The results we found for the French 4PL community are also representative of the global 4PL, because our methodology is based on three studies which are therefore representative, reproducible and transferable to other countries. We propose a taxonomy and a new definition that differs from the traditional definition of Accenture.

Brian Fitzpatrick Paul Herrington and Syed Adeel Ahmed 

The expectation of the Coast Guard from a mission execution standpoint is that the Coast Guard is “Semper Paratus-Always Ready” meaning that the physical asset and crew are ready to launch on a mission at any given time. The meaning for the mission support infrastructure and the greater engineering and logistics organization of the Coast Guard is that no matter how the boat, ship, or aircraft were acquired, it must be supported to the same degree of operational readiness. Therefore the same level of support is required for the helicopter as the ship it lands on, and the small boat that is used to transport a boarding party. While the helicopter and the ship are both major systems acquisitions and follow a strict process and generally garner high levels of support and oversight, the small boat that delivers the boarding party to another vessel most likely was procured through the non-major acquisitions process classified as a procurement action. Even though the acquisition strategies used to procure each asset was very different, each asset is expected to reach the same level of engineering, logistics, and supply support.

Kuo-Hsien Wang Che-Tsung Tung and Yuan-Chih Huang 

The objective of this study is to optimize an overall expected profit in a two-period newsvendor setting by jointly determining these two items’ order sizes and selling prices. The item in the second period is a product extension of the item in the first period. An inadequate inventory is intentionally placed in the first period in order to stimulate more sales in the second period. The first item’s unsatisfied demand is assumed to be transferred to the second selling period with a certain shifting demand rate. The two items’ stochastic demand is assumed to be in a linear-additive form consisting of a deterministic demand and an error demand that is exponentially distributed. Including the classical newsvendor model as a special case, we first propose a pertinent model that overshadows the classical newsvendor setting in terms of profit performances, and surprisingly find that the first item’s error demand should be completely sacrificed when facing a high shifting demand rate. Afterwards, we modify the model to identify that our inadequate stock strategy is indeed practicable, and then extend the model to predetermine the two items’ selling prices that ensure the existence of maximum of the expected profit. Possible triggered effects, such as an increasing primary demand, an increasing error demand and a cheaper purchasing cost in the second period, are also illustrated by examples.

Sobia Shahid Sibi Chacko and C M Shukla 

In this paper, a paint company is taken into consideration and using lean manufacturing techniques, energy conservation is achieved in its different manufacturing processes. There are several ways in which manufacturing organizations can decrease their waste while increasing productivity; one of it is by implementing lean. Several techniques for lean manufacturing such as Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Overall Effectiveness of the Equipment (OEE), Process Mapping and Value Stream Mapping are discussed throughout this paper, while Overall Effectiveness of the Equipment (OEE) for the dissolvers and the filling lines are also calculated. After going through the process map, value added and non-value added activities were identified. This helped to reduce energy.

Sukharev O. S. and Kurmanov N.V. 

This research is devoted to the methods and models of decision-making in marketing, substantiation of mathematical similarity theory application in factor analysis of market situation (demand for production) while selling via Internet. Russian timber industry enterprises were the object of the research. Demand function was obtained empirically at these enterprises. Factor analysis methods within the Internet marketing system at the enterprises are suggested. The review of decision-making methods and models in marketing, their comparative analysis is made. Modification of Danaher-Rust model applied to quality estimation of advertising on the company’s site is carried out.

Amita Maxwell and Sarita Lal 

The primary objective of supply chain management is to fulfill customer demands through the most efficient use of resources, including distribution capacity, inventory and labor. In theory, a supply chain seeks to match demand with supply and do so with the minimal inventory. Efficient management of supply chain/value chain remains a challenge for most firms, organizations in order to be competitive need to cut down on the transaction cost related with supply chain and there by increase efficiency or bring about differentiation in product or service line. In the context of an economic slowdown, Business Intelligence solutions become a desirable implementation that can help enterprise top managements get deeper insights into business dynamics and add value to the supply chain in order to synergise business process and gain competitive advantage. Although in a nascent stage for most firms in India the technological breakthrough by way of Radio-frequency identification (RFID) better management of all activities of supply chain is becoming a reality. Technology has immensely brought about sweeping changes in the way businesses function. The present paper aims at understanding supply chain function and the use of RFID technology in reshaping it and the usage of RFID technology in industry with special reference to the retail sector. Future challenges of RFID are also discussed and the way it is able to substitute human function in managing all aspects and thereby reducing inefficiency.

Jones P. C. Chuang 

Recently, Chung published a paper in Expert Systems with Applications providing a correct solution procedure to the inventory system for the replenishment run time problem with machine breakdown and failure in rework in Lin and Chiu 〔2〕. In this short note, we provide a detailed discussion for the convex property in Chiu et al.〔1〕, Lin and Chiu〔2〕and Chung〔3〕. Moreover, we will put forth an exact expression for the concave up and concave down sub-intervals to clearly solve the non-convex phenomenon. Our results will help researchers realize the importance of the findings of Chiu et al.〔1〕, Lin and Chiu 〔2〕and Chung〔3〕.

Ibrahim Keles and Turdukan Bekimbetova 

The Theory of Planned Behavior, based on the value – attitude – behavior hierarchy, is a reliable instrument for measuring green purchasing behavior in different cultural settings. This study examines the application of a sub-section of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), namely the measurement of Attitudes Towards Green Purchases (AGP) of university students in Kyrgyzstan. Among American and Chinese consumers, Ecological Affect (EA) has a greater impact on their attitude formation than does Ecological Knowledge (EK). To see if this is also true for Kyrgyz consumers, university students (n = 230) were surveyed to measure their ecological affect, ecological knowledge and attitudes towards green purchases. And also try to analyses whether gender plays a role in AGP. The results of the study did not prove any of the hypotheses. More studies must be done the understand Kyrgyz consumers.

Roberto Panizzolo 

Most of the Western Companies, in the last years, have been facing a tough competition against manufacturers based in developing countries, especially in China. How to face the Chinese competition is an open and relevant issue. This paper aims at giving a contribution to the on-going debate proposing an operational model which might help many SMEs to gain a stronger competitive position. The proposed model can be considered as a rationalization and generalization of an approach to change successfully applied by the author in the last fifteen years in over 30 small and medium enterprises. As to the target, this model has been designed primarily around those SMEs characterized by one or more of the following characteristics: no strong brands, operating in price-driven markets and with products/processes which cannot benefit significantly from investments in R&D. The proposed operational model is based mainly on three distinct leverages: minimization of the order lead time, elimination of constraints about the minimum order quantity and ability to manage customized, ad-hoc products. In the paper, much attention is devoted to the complex topic of the feasibility of the proposed model. In doing this we make use of a case study. Such a case study is paradigmatic under two remarkably important standpoints: first it backs the applicability of the operational; second, it allows to evaluate what, in practice, has proved to be particularly crucial for the firm and to analyse critically the most relevant lessons learned casting light on the critical success factor for the implementation of the proposed model.

Yi-Shyan Goh Muhammad Latif and Mian Awais 

This paper attempts to describe the simulation of the lift call strategy used by a passenger lift within a university building. The purpose of this study is to devise and develop strategies to enhance the current lift operations by reducing the average waiting time of passengers. A base model was developed to mimic the actual lift system and different approaches were carried out to meet the project aims. The simulation was done by using WITNESS software. The lift is in high demand during the interchange of classes and also at lunch time. It was observed that the lift experienced heavier traffic in the time between 9:00AM and 1:00PM of the day. Passenger’s traffic data was collected manually in that period. After analysing the data, four new lift call strategies were devised. All of the strategies were simulated and results were compared to base model. Among the strategies, the strategy that incorporated the car to wait at the unloaded floor appeared to produce the best results as it reduced the average waiting time by 4.4%.

Parastoo Niroumand-Bahramnia Hamed Fazlollahtabar Iraj Mahdavi and Zeinolabedin Rahmani 

Applying the electronic marketing has led to enhance the relationship between customer and seller by understanding requirements of the customer and making it dependent to the goods and services of the seller. Considering the importance and increasing growth of the role of internet and information technology in today's marketing, this work intends to propose marketing operations for companies presenting products via internet and design the website. Employing a web mining technique, the visiting time of the viewer is used to estimate the number of demand for products. Whereas, profit making is the main objective in marketing, the research examines how to calculate the profit. The focal element in determining profit is price. Thus, pricing based on the obtained data from the proposed marketing website is designated. Due to electronic concepts applied in designing protocols and extracting data, risks are unavoidable. So, risks are defined and inserted in computations to obtain a more reliable result.

Sanaz Shahri Hamed Fazlollahtabar Iraj Mahdavi and Zeinolabedin Rahmani 

This study is a strategic planning improvement Model in framework of Earned Value using mathematical clustering. For this purpose, providing methods and strategies used in the mathematical clustering techniques to provide better and more effective organizational strategies which are the main objective of this research are examined. Specific research question includes the possibility to improve the strategic planning framework for business value by using the clustering approach. A case study is conducted to validate the proposed methodology. The data collected through interviews with experts and managers in the organization and documents were used to prepare the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats factors. For analysis and comparison of the results the earned value techniques was performed.

Julie Wijaya and Purwanto   

In the manufacturing, purchasing is one of the important departments due to upwards of 60 % of cost comes from parts and material purchasing. Reliable and trustworthy suppliers are a vital link in an effective purchasing process. Beside quality and price, timely deliveries of goods or services are one which can be contributed by supplier for the effective operations, especially in raw materials. This research is conducted to investigate the relationship between price, lead time, and delay toward the order quantity in steel manufacturer at PT. Chunpao Steel Indonesia (CPS), Karawang, West Java, Indonesia. By analyzing the relationship, the researcher will gain enough information for the most factor which influencing the decision in raw material purchasing for PT. CPS. The study adopted the theory of purchasing and business buyer behavior, using a quantitative method for investigate and analysis the relationship between three independent variables : price, lead time, delay toward the dependent variables, order quantity. The research samples are consisting of 42 incoming shipments from period of May 2009 until June 2012. Data were tested with classic assumption test, and analyzed by the multiple linear regressions, which the statistical hypothesis is tested using t-test and F-test with the level of significance is set at 5%. Based on the analysis result, it be found that only price has a significant relationship to the order quantity. The coefficient of determination of this research is 0.191, which mean that 19.1% of order quantity can be explained by price, lead time, and delay, while the rest for 80.9% is explained by other factors that not examined.