Abstract: In highly competitive environments, a growing
number of companies must regularly launch new products speedily
and successfully. A company-s success is based on the systematic,
conscious product designing method which meets the market
requirements and takes risks as well as resources into consideration.
Research has found that developing and launching new products are
inherently risky endeavors. Hence in this research, we aim at
introducing a risk evaluation framework for the new product
innovation process. Our framework is based on the fuzzy analytical
hierarchy process (FAHP) methodology. We have applied all the
stages of the framework on the risk evaluation process of a
pharmaceuticals company.
Abstract: Arguments on a popular microblogging site were analysed by means of a methodological approach to business rhetoric focusing on the logos communication technique. The focus of the analysis was the 100 day countdown to the 2011 Rugby World Cup as advanced by the organisers. Big sporting events provide an attractive medium for sport event marketers in that they have become important strategic communication tools directed at sport consumers. Sport event marketing is understood in the sense of using a microblogging site as a communication tool whose purpose it is to disseminate a company-s marketing messages by involving the target audience in experiential activities. Sport creates a universal language in that it excites and increases the spread of information by word of mouth and other means. The findings highlight the limitations of a microblogging site in terms of marketing messages which can assist in better practices. This study can also serve as a heuristic tool for other researchers analysing sports marketing messages in social network environments.
Abstract: Economic crime (i.e. corporate fraud) has a
significant impact on business. This study analyzes the fraud cases
reported by the Malaysian Securities Commission. Frauds involving
market manipulation and/or illegal share trading are the most
common types of fraud reported over the 6 years analyzed. The
highest number of frauds reported involved investment and fund
holding companies. Alarmingly the results indicate quite a high
number of frauds cases are committed by management. The higher
number of Chinese perpetrators may be due to fact that they are the
dominant group in Malaysian business. The result also shows that
more than half of companies involved with fraud are privately held
companies in the investment/fund/finance sector. The results of this
study highlight general characteristic of perpetrators (person and
company) that commit fraud which could help the regulators in their
monitoring and enforcement activities. To investors, this would help
in analyzing their business investment or portfolio risk.
Abstract: Compliance requires an effective communication
within an enterprise as well as towards a company-s external
environment. This requirement commences with the
implementation of compliance within large scale compliance
projects and still persists in the compliance reporting within
standard operations. On the one hand the understanding of
compliance necessities within the organization is promoted.
On the other hand reduction of asymmetric information with
compliance stakeholders is achieved. To reach this goal, a
central reporting must provide a consolidated view of different
compliance efforts- statuses. A concept which could be
adapted for this purpose is the balanced scorecard by Kaplan /
Norton. This concept has not been analyzed in detail
concerning its adequacy for a holistic compliance reporting
starting in compliance projects until later usage in regularly
compliance operations.
At first, this paper evaluates if a holistic compliance
reporting can be designed by using the balanced scorecard
concept. The current status of compliance reporting clearly
shows that scorecards are generally accepted as a compliance
reporting tool and are already used for corporate governance
reporting. Additional specialized compliance IT - solutions
exist in the market. After the scorecard-s adequacy is
thoroughly examined and proofed, an example strategy map as
the basis to derive a compliance balanced scorecard is defined.
This definition answers the question on proceeding in
designing a compliance reporting tool.
Abstract: This paper presents the determination of the proper
quality costs parameters which provide the optimum return. The
system dynamics simulation was applied. The simulation model was
constructed by the real data from a case of the electronic devices
manufacturer in Thailand. The Steepest Descent algorithm was
employed to optimise. The experimental results show that the
company should spend on prevention and appraisal activities for 850
and 10 Baht/day respectively. It provides minimum cumulative total
quality cost, which is 258,000 Baht in twelve months. The effect of
the step size in the stage of improving the variables to the optimum
was also investigated. It can be stated that the smaller step size
provided a better result with more experimental runs. However, the
different yield in this case is not significant in practice. Therefore, the
greater step size is recommended because the region of optima could
be reached more easily and rapidly.
Abstract: Construction projects can be implemented under various contractual and organizational systems. They can be divided into two groups: systems without the managing company where the Client manages the process, and systems with the managing company, where management is entrusted to an external company. In the public sector of the Polish market there are two ways of delivery of construction projects with the participation of the manager: one is to assign operations to another party, the so called Project Supervisor, whilst the other results from the application of FIDIC conditions of contract, which entail appointment of the Engineer. The decision is to be made by the Client and depends on various factors. On the public procurement market in Poland the selection of construction project manager boils down to awarding the contract for such a service. The selection can be done by one of eight public procurement procedures identified by the procurement law. The paper provides the analysis of 96 contracts for services awarded in 2011, which employed construction management. The study aimed to investigate the methods and criteria for selecting managers, applied in practice by the Polish public Clients.
Abstract: Nowadays companies in all sectors are looking for the
sources of competitive advantages. Holistic marketing approach
searches for their emergence based on the integration of all
components and elements across the organization. Modern marketing
sees the sources of competitive advantage in implementing the latest
managerial practices, motivation, intelligent project management,
knowledge management, collaborative marketing, CSR and, in the
recent years, also in the business process optimization. With the use
of modern tools including business process management and business
process modelling the company can markedly increase its internal
efficiency which can lead not only to lowering the costs but to
creating the environment for optimal customer care, positive
corporate culture and for origination of innovations as well. In the
article the authors analyze the recent trend in this area and introduce
suggestions to companies to identify and optimize the key processes
that have a significant impact of the company´s competitiveness.
Abstract: In today-s highly globalised and competitive world
access to information plays key role in having an upper hand between
business rivals. Hence, proper protection of such crucial resource is
core to any modern business. Implementing a successful information
security system is basically centered around three pillars; technical
solution involving both software and hardware, information security
controls to translate the policies and procedure in the system and the
people to implement. This paper shows that a lot needs to be done for
countries adapting information technology to process, store and
distribute information to secure adequately such core resource.
Abstract: People from different cultures favor web pages
characterized by the values of their culture and, therefore, tend to
prefer different characteristics of a website according to their cultural
values in terms of navigation, security, product information, customer
service, shopping and design tools. For a company aiming to
globalize its market it is useful to implement country specific cultural
interfaces and different web sites for countries with different cultures.
This paper, following the conclusions proposed by two models of
Hall and Hofstede, and the studies of Marcus and Gould, defines,
through an empirical analysis, the guidelines of web design for both
the Scandinavian countries and Malaysia.
Abstract: REY area has been located in Tehran Province and several archaeological ruins of this area indicate that the settlement in this area has been started since several thousand years ago. In this paper, the main investigation items consist of analysis of oil components and groundwater quality inside the wells. By finding the contents of oil in the well, it is possible to find out the pollution source by comparing the oil contents of well with other oil products that are used inside and outside of the oil farm. Investigation items consist of analysis of BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl-benzene, Xylene), Gas chromatographic distillation characteristics, Water content, Density, Sulfur content, Lead content, Atmospheric distillation, MTBE(Methyl tertiary butyl ether). Analysis of polluting oil components showed that except MW(Monitoring Well)10 and MW 15 that oil with slightly heavy components was detected in them; with a high possibility the polluting oil is light oil.
Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to establish a
methodology for testing and optimizing GPRS performance over
Libya GSM network as well as to propose a suitable optimization
technique to improve performance. Some measurements of
download, upload, throughput, round-trip time, reliability, handover,
security enhancement and packet loss over a GPRS access network
were carried out. Measured values are compared to the theoretical
values that could be calculated beforehand. This data should be
processed and delivered by the server across the wireless network to
the client. The client on the fly takes those pieces of the data and
process immediately. Also, we illustrate the results by describing the
main parameters that affect the quality of service. Finally, Libya-s
two mobile operators, Libyana Mobile Phone and Al-Madar al-
Jadeed Company are selected as a case study to validate our
methodology.
Abstract: Developing a supply chain management (SCM) system is costly, but important. However, because of its complicated nature, not many of such projects are considered successful. Few research publications directly relate to key success factors (KSFs) for implementing a SCM system. Motivated by the above, this research proposes a hierarchy of KSFs for SCM system implementation in the semiconductor industry by using a two-step approach. First, the literature review indicates the initial hierarchy. The second step includes a focus group approach to finalize the proposed KSF hierarchy by extracting valuable experiences from executives and managers that actively participated in a project, which successfully establish a seamless SCM integration between the world's largest semiconductor foundry manufacturing company and the world's largest assembly and testing company. Future project executives may refer the resulting KSF hierarchy as a checklist for SCM system implementation in semiconductor or related industries.
Abstract: Knowledge capabilities are increasingly important for
the innovative technology enterprises to enhance the business
performance in terms of product competitiveness, innovation and
sales. Recognition of the company capability by auditing allows them
to further pursue advancement, strategic planning and hence gain
competitive advantages. This paper attempts to develop an
Organizations- Knowledge Capabilities Assessment (OKCA) method
to assess the knowledge capabilities of technology companies. The
OKCA is a questionnaire-based assessment tool which has been
developed to uncover the impact of various knowledge capabilities on
different organizational performance. The collected data is then
analyzed to find out the crucial elements for different technological
companies. Based on the results, innovative technology enterprises are
able to recognize the direction for further improvement on business
performance and future development plan. External environmental
factors affecting organization performance can be found through the
further analysis of some selected reference companies.
Abstract: Because of its global reach, reduction of time
restraints, and ability to reduce costs and increase sales, use of the
Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), and related technologies
can be a competitive tool in the arsenal of small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs). Countries the world over are interested in the
successful adoption of the Internet by SMEs. Because a vast
majority of jobs come from that sector, greater financial success of
SMEs translates into greater job growth and, subsequently, higher
tax revenue to the government. This research investigated the level
of Internet usage for business solutions by small and medium
enterprises in Jordan. Through the survey of a random sample of
100 firms with less than 500 employees and from data obtained
from this survey that formed the basis for our study, we found that
a majority of respondents use the Internet in business activities ,
the adoption of the Internet as a business tool is limited to a
brochure where Web site which primarily provides one way. As
such, there wasn't interactive information about the company and
its products and services.
Abstract: This paper presents the impact study of apparent
reactance injected by series Flexible AC Transmission System
(FACTS) i.e. Thyristor Controlled Series Reactor (TCSR) on the
measured impedance of a 400 kV single electrical transmission line
in the presence of phase to earth fault with fault resistance. The study
deals with an electrical transmission line of Eastern Algerian
transmission networks at Group Sonelgaz (Algerian Company of
Electrical and Gas) compensated by TCSR connected at midpoint of
the line. This compensator used to inject active and reactive powers
is controlled by three TCSR-s. The simulations results investigate the
impacts of the TCSR on the parameters of short circuit calculation
and parameters of measured impedance by distance relay in the
presence of earth fault for three cases study.
Abstract: Today-s business has inevitably been set in the global supply chain management environment. International transportation has never played such an important role in the global supply chain network, because movement of shipments from one country to another tends to be more frequent than ever before. This paper studies international transportation problems experienced by an international transportation company. Because of the limited fleet capacity, the transportation company has to hire additional trucks from two countries in advance. However, customer-s shipment information is uncertain, and decisions have to be made before accurate information can be obtained. This paper proposes a stochastic mixed 0-1 programming model to solve the international transportation problems under uncertain demand. A series of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed stochastic model.
Abstract: The aim of the article is extending and developing
econometrics and network structure based methods which are able to
distinguish price manipulation in Tehran stock exchange. The
principal goal of the present study is to offer model for
approximating price manipulation in Tehran stock exchange. In order
to do so by applying separation method a sample consisting of 397
companies accepted at Tehran stock exchange were selected and
information related to their price and volume of trades during years
2001 until 2009 were collected and then through performing runs
test, skewness test and duration correlative test the selected
companies were divided into 2 sets of manipulated and non
manipulated companies. In the next stage by investigating
cumulative return process and volume of trades in manipulated
companies, the date of starting price manipulation was specified and
in this way the logit model, artificial neural network, multiple
discriminant analysis and by using information related to size of
company, clarity of information, ratio of P/E and liquidity of stock
one year prior price manipulation; a model for forecasting price
manipulation of stocks of companies present in Tehran stock
exchange were designed. At the end the power of forecasting models
were studied by using data of test set. Whereas the power of
forecasting logit model for test set was 92.1%, for artificial neural
network was 94.1% and multi audit analysis model was 90.2%;
therefore all of the 3 aforesaid models has high power to forecast
price manipulation and there is no considerable difference among
forecasting power of these 3 models.
Abstract: This study suggests how an order-receiving company
can avoid disclosing schedule information on unit tasks to the
order-placing company when carrying out a collaborative project on
the value chain in an order-oriented industry. Specifically, it suggests
methods for keeping schedule information confidential, and
categorizes potential situations by inter-task dependency. Lastly, an
approach to select the most optimal non-disclosure method is
discussed. With the methods for not disclosing work-related
information suggested in the study, order-receiving companies can
logically deal with political issues relating to the question of whether
or not to disclose information upon the execution of a collaborative
project in cooperation with an order-placing firm. Moreover,
order-placing companies can monitor undistorted information, while
respecting the legitimate rights of an order-receiving company.
Therefore, it is fair to say that the suggestions made in this study will
contribute to the smooth operation of collaborative intercompany
projects.
Abstract: This paper evaluates the dividend payments for general
claim size distributions in the presence of a dividend barrier. The
surplus of a company is modeled using the classical risk process
perturbed by diffusion, and in addition, it is assumed to accrue interest
at a constant rate. After presenting the integro-differential equation
with initial conditions that dividend payments satisfies, the paper
derives a useful expression of the dividend payments by employing
the theory of Volterra equation. Furthermore, the optimal value of
dividend barrier is found. Finally, numerical examples illustrate the
optimality of optimal dividend barrier and the effects of parameters
on dividend payments.
Abstract: A specially designed flat plate was mounted vertically
over the axial line in the wind tunnel of the Aerospace Department of
the Pusan National University. The plate is 2 m long, 0.8 m high and 8
cm thick. The measurements were performed in velocity range from
15 to 60 m/s. A sand paper turbulizer was placed close to the plate nose
to provide fully developed turbulent boundary layer over the most part
of the plate. Strain balances were mounted in the trailing part of the
plate to measure the skin friction drag over removable insertions of
0.55×0.25m2 size. A set of the insertions was designed and
manufactured: 3mm thick polished metal surface and three compliant
surfaces. The compliant surfaces were manufactured of a silicone
rubber Silastic® S2 (Dow Corning company). To modify the
viscoelastic properties of the rubber, its composition was varied: 90%
of the rubber + 10% catalyst (standard), 92.5% + 7.5% (weak), 85% +
15% (strong). Modulus of elasticity and the loss tangent were
measured accurately for these materials in the frequency range from
40 Hz to 3 KHz using the unique proposed technique.