Abstract: This study aims to establish function point process
based on stochastic distribution. In order to demonstrate effectiveness
of the study we present a case study that it applies suggested method
on an automotive electrical and electronics system software
development based on Monte Carlo Simulation. It is expected that the
result of this paper is used as guidance for establishing function point
process in organizations and tools for helping project managers make
decisions correctly.
Abstract: Frozen shrimp industry plays an important role in the
development of production industry of the country. There has been a
continuing development to response the increasing demand; however,
there have been some problems in running the enterprises. The
purposes of this study are to: 1) investigate problems related to basic
factors in operating frozen shrimp industry based on the
entrepreneurs’ points of view. The enterprises involved in this study
were small and medium industry receiving Thai Frozen Foods
Association. 2) Compare the problems of the frozen shrimp industry
according to their sizes of operation in 3 provinces of the central
region Thailand. Population in this study consisted of 148 managers
from 148 frozen shrimp enterprises Thai Frozen Foods Association
which 77 were small size and 71 were medium size. The data were
analyzed to find percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, and
independent sample T-test with the significant hypothesis at .05. The
results revealed that the problems of the frozen shrimp industries of
both size were in high level. The needs for government supporting
were in high level. The comparison of the problems and the basic
factors between the small and medium size enterprises showed no
statistically significant level. The problems that they mentioned
included raw materials, labors, production, marketing, and the need
for academic supporting from the government sector.
Abstract: Agricultural machinery industry plays an important
role in the industrial development especially the production industry
of the country. There has been continuing development responding to
the higher demand of the production. However, the problem in
agricultural machinery production still exists. Thus, the purpose of
this research is to investigate problems on fundamental factors of
industry based on the entrepreneurs’ point of view. The focus was on
the small and medium size industry receiving factory license type
number 0660 from the Department of Industrial Works. The
investigation was on the comparison between the management of the
small and medium size agricultural industry in 3 provinces in the
central region of Thailand. Population in this study consisted of 189
company managers or managing directors, of which 101 were from
the small size and 88 were from the medium size industry. The data
were analyzed to find percentage, arithmetic mean, and standard
deviation with independent sample T-test at the statistical
significance .05. The results showed that the small and medium size
agricultural machinery manufacturers in the central region of
Thailand reported high problems in every aspect. When compared the
problems on basic factors in running the business, it was found that
there was no statistically difference at .05 in managing of the small
and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers. However,
there was a statistically significant difference between the small and
medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers on the aspect of
policy and services of the government. The problems reported by the
small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers were
the services on public tap water and the problem on politic and
stability of the country.
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the relationships
between human resource management and entrepreneurship in the
view of owner-managers and employees, and among employees with
in the SME in Thailand. The research method used qualitative
method to confirm the phenomenology interest with top management
position which women are regarding their career path by using
purposive sampling method. The results showed that human
resources management has positive relate with the corporate
entrepreneurship are including the recruitment process, training
worker, professional career development and reward system impact
to entrepreneur’s knowledge and innovation of corporate
entrepreneurship in respectively to bring a very reliable way. Then,
the key informant suggested that women’s career experiences
predisposed them to find an alternative route for entrepreneurship,
despite having achieved top management. The understanding factors
that successfully contribute to the development of women
entrepreneurs from career development perspective are critical
endeavour for any type of organization as well.
Abstract: Economic development and growth are significantly
linked to the consistent and sustainable sector of small and medium
enterprises (SMEs). Banks are the frontrunners in financing and
advising SMEs. The main objective of the study is to assess the
tendency of SMEs to use the Islamic bank. Model was developed
using quantitative method with a hypothetical-deductive testing
approach. Model (N = 364) used primary data on the tendency of
SMEs to use Islamic banks gathered from questionnaire. It is found
by Mann-Whitney test that the tendency to use Islamic bank varies
between those firms which consider formal financing with the ones
relying on informal financing with the latter tends more to use
Islamic bank. This study can serve academic researchers, policy
makers, and developing countries as a model of SMEs’ desirability to
Islamic banking.
Abstract: The goal of this paper is proposing a supply chain
value dashboard in home appliance manufacturing firms to create
more value for all stakeholders via balanced scorecard approach.
Balanced scorecard is an effective approach that managers have used
to evaluate supply chain performance in many fields but there is a
lack of enough attention to all supply chain stakeholders, improving
value creation and, defining correlation between value indicators and
performance measuring quantitatively. In this research the key
stakeholders in home appliance supply chain, value indicators with
respect to create more value for stakeholders and the most important
metrics to evaluate supply chain value performance based on
balanced scorecard approach have been selected via literature review.
The most important indicators based on expert’s judgment acquired
by in survey focused on creating more value for. Structural equation
modelling has been used to disclose relations between value
indicators and balanced scorecard metrics. The important result of
this research is identifying effective value dashboard to create more
value for all stakeholders in supply chain via balanced scorecard
approach and based on an empirical study covering ten home
appliance manufacturing firms in Iran. Home appliance
manufacturing firms can increase their stakeholder's satisfaction by
using this value dashboard.
Abstract: Revenue leakages are one of the major challenges
manufacturers face in production processes, as most of the input
materials that should emanate as products from the lines are lost as
waste. Rather than generating income from material input which is
meant to end-up as products, losses are further incurred as costs in
order to manage waste generated. In addition, due to the lack of a
clear view of the flow of resources on the lines from input to output
stage, acquiring information on the true cost of waste generated have
become a challenge. This has therefore given birth to the
conceptualization and implementation of waste minimization
strategies by several manufacturing industries. This paper reviews the
principles and applications of three environmental management
accounting tools namely Activity-based Costing (ABC), Life-Cycle
Assessment (LCA) and Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) in
the manufacturing industry and their effectiveness in curbing revenue
leakages. The paper unveils the strengths and limitations of each of
the tools; beaming a searchlight on the tool that could allow for
optimal resource utilization, transparency in production process as
well as improved cost efficiency. Findings from this review reveal
that MFCA may offer superior advantages with regards to the
provision of more detailed information (both in physical and
monetary terms) on the flow of material inputs throughout the
production process compared to the other environmental accounting
tools. This paper therefore makes a case for the adoption of MFCA as
a viable technique for the identification and reduction of waste in
production processes, and also for effective decision making by
production managers, financial advisors and other relevant
stakeholders.
Abstract: The market competition is moving from the single
firm to the whole supply chain because of increasing competition and
growing need for operational efficiencies and customer orientation.
Supply chain management allows companies to look beyond their
organizational boundaries to develop and leverage resources and
capabilities of their supply chain partners. This creates competitive
advantages in the marketplace and because of this SCM has acquired
strategic importance. Lean Approach is a management strategy that focuses on reducing
every type of waste present in an organization. This approach is
becoming more and more popular among supply chain managers. The supply chain application of lean approach is not frequent. In
particular, it is not well studied which are the impacts of lean
approach principles in a supply chain context. In literature there are
only few studies aimed at understanding the qualitative impact of the
lean approach in supply chains. Therefore, the goal of this research
work is to study the impacts of lean principles implementation along
a supply chain. To achieve this, a simulation model of a threeechelon
multi-product supply chain has been built. Kanban system (and several priority policies) and setup time
reduction degrees are implemented in the lean-configured supply
chain to apply pull and lot-sizing decrease principles respectively. To
evaluate the benefits of lean approach, lean supply chain is compared
with an EOQ-configured supply chain. The simulation results show
that Kanban system and setup-time reduction improve inventory
stock level. They also show that logistics efforts are affected to lean
implementation degree. The paper concludes describing
performances of lean supply chain in different contexts.
Abstract: The authors conducted a study for the sample size of
75 HR managers from an Indian IT company through systematic
sampling method. This study identifies that the female employees are
facing lesser conflict than the male employees against their managers
within the organization. There is a positive correlation between
gender and conflict management with the superior towards the work.
There is a significant variance between age and response towards
appraisal system, succession planning and employee engagement.
The education qualification plays a major role in determining the
compensation factor for the employees working in the organization.
The study determines the impact of demographic profile on strategic
HRM practices and its challenges faced by HR managers in IT firm,
India.
Abstract: Predicting earnings management is vital for the capital
market participants, financial analysts and managers. The aim of this
research is attempting to respond to this query: Is there a significant
difference between the regression model and neural networks’
models in predicting earnings management, and which one leads to a
superior prediction of it? In approaching this question, a Linear
Regression (LR) model was compared with two neural networks
including Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), and Generalized
Regression Neural Network (GRNN). The population of this study
includes 94 listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE)
market from 2003 to 2011. After the results of all models were
acquired, ANOVA was exerted to test the hypotheses. In general, the
summary of statistical results showed that the precision of GRNN did
not exhibit a significant difference in comparison with MLP. In
addition, the mean square error of the MLP and GRNN showed a
significant difference with the multi variable LR model. These
findings support the notion of nonlinear behavior of the earnings
management. Therefore, it is more appropriate for capital market
participants to analyze earnings management based upon neural
networks techniques, and not to adopt linear regression models.
Abstract: In many countries, governments have been promoting the involvement of private sector entities to enter into long-term agreements for the development and delivery of large infrastructure projects, with a focus on overcoming the limitations upon public fund of the traditional approach. The involvement of private sector through public private partnerships (PPP) brings in new capital investments, value for money and additional risks to handle. Worldwide research studies have shown that an objective, systematic, reliable and useroriented risk assessment process and an optimal allocation mechanism among different stakeholders is crucial to the successful completion. In this framework, this paper, which is the first stage of a research study, aims to identify the main risks for the delivery of PPP projects. A review of cross-countries research projects and case studies was performed to map the key risks affecting PPP infrastructure delivery. The matrix of mapping offers a summary of the frequency of factors, clustered in eleven categories: construction, design, economic, legal, market, natural, operation, political, project finance, project selection and relationship. Results will highlight the most critical risk factors, and will hopefully assist the project managers in directing the managerial attention in the further stages of risk allocation.
Abstract: The research aims to study the association between
job satisfaction, motivation and the five factors of organizational
citizenship behavior (i.e. Altruism, Conscientiousness,
Sportsmanship, Courtesy and Civic virtue) among Public Sector
Employees in Pakistan. In this research Structure Equation Modeling
with confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the relationship
between two independent and five dependent variables. Data was
collected through questionnaire survey from 152 Public Servants
Working in Gujrat District-Pakistan in different capacities. Stratified
Random Sampling Technique was used to conduct this survey. The
results of the study indicate that five factors of OCB have positive
significant relation with both motivation and job satisfaction except
the relationship of Civic Virtue with Motivation. The research
findings implicate that factors other than motivation and job
satisfaction may also affect OCB. Likewise, all the five factors of
OCB may not be present in all populations. Thus, Managers must
concentrate on increasing motivation and job satisfaction to increase
OCB. Furthermore, the present research gives a direction to future
researchers to use more independent variables (e.g. Culture,
leadership, workplace environment, various job attitudes, types of
motivation, etc.) on different types of populations with larger sample
size in order to find the reasons behind insignificant relationship of
civic virtue with Motivation in the research in hand and to generalize
the tested model.
Abstract: Significant attention has recently been paid to the
cross-cultural negotiations due to the growth of international
businesses. Despite the substantial body of literature examining the
influence of National Culture (NC) dimensions on negotiations, there
is a lack of studies comparing the influence of NC in Latin America
with a Western European countries, In particular, an extensive review
of the literature revealed that a contribution to knowledge would be
derived from the comparison of the influence of NC dimensions on
negotiations in UK and Venezuela. The primary data was collected
through qualitative interviews, to obtain an insight about the
perceptions and beliefs of Venezuelan and British business managers
about their negotiating styles. The findings of this study indicated
that NC has a great influence on the negotiating styles. In particular,
Venezuelan and British managers demonstrated to have opposed
negotiating styles, affecting the way they communicate, approach
people and their willingness to take risks.
Abstract: The study is in application and analysis of two tourism
management tools that can contribute to making public managers
decision: the Barometer of Tourism Sustainability (BTS) and the
Ecological Footprint (EF). The results have shown that BTS allows
you to have an integrated view of the tourism system, awakening to
the need for planning of appropriate actions so that it can achieve the
positive scale proposed (potentially sustainable). Already the
methodology of ecological tourism footprint is an important tool to
measure potential impacts generated by tourism to tourist reality.
Abstract: Cyberspace has become a more viable arena for
budding artists to share musical acts through digital forms. The
increasing relevance of online communities has attracted scholars
from various fields demonstrating its influence on social capital. This
paper extends this understanding of social capital among Filipino
music artists belonging to the SoundCloud Philippines Facebook
Group.
The study makes use of various qualitative data obtained from
key-informant interviews and participant observation of online and
physical encounters, analyzed using the case study approach.
Soundcloud Philippines has over seven-hundred members and is
composed of Filipino singers, instrumentalists, composers, arrangers,
producers, multimedia artists and event managers. Group interactions
are a mix of online encounters based on Facebook and SoundCloud
and physical encounters through meet-ups and events. Benefits
reaped from the community are informational, technical,
instrumental, promotional, motivational and social support. Under the
guidance of online group administrators, collaborative activities such
as music productions, concerts and events transpire. Most conflicts
and problems arising are resolved peacefully. Social capital in
SoundCloud Philippines is mobilized through recognition, respect
and reciprocity.
Abstract: Given the limited research on Small and Mediumsized
Enterprises’ (SMEs) contribution to Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) and even scarcer research on Swiss SMEs, this
paper helps to fill these gaps by enabling the identification of supranational
SME parameters. Thus, the paper investigates the current
state of SME practices in Switzerland and across 15 other countries.
Combining the degree to which SMEs demonstrate an explicit (or
business case) approach or see CSR as an implicit moral activity with
the assessment of their attributes for “variety of capitalism” defines
the framework of this comparative analysis. To outline Swiss small
business CSR patterns in particular, 40 SME owner-managers were
interviewed. A secondary data analysis of studies from different
countries laid groundwork for this comparative overview of small
business CSR. The paper identifies Swiss small business CSR as
driven by norms, values, and by the aspiration to contribute to
society, thus, as an implicit part of the day-to-day business. Similar to
most Central European, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Asian countries,
explicit CSR is still very rare in Swiss SMEs. Astonishingly, also
British and American SMEs follow this pattern in spite of their strong
and distinctly liberal market economies. Though other findings show
that nationality matters this research concludes that SME culture and
an informal CSR agenda are strongly formative and superseding even
forces of market economies, nationally cultural patterns, and
language. Hence, classifications of countries by their market system,
as found in the comparative capitalism literature, do not match the
CSR practices in SMEs as they do not mirror the peculiarities of their
business. This raises questions on the universality and
generalisability of unmediated, explicit management concepts,
especially in the context of small firms.
Abstract: Total Quality Management (TQM) is a managerial
approach that improves the competitiveness of the industry,
meanwhile Information technology (IT) was introduced with TQM
for handling the technical issues which is supported by quality
experts for fulfilling the customers’ requirement. Present paper aims
to utilise AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) methodology to
priorities and rank the hierarchy levels of TQM enablers and IT
resource together for its successful implementation in the Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. A total of 17 TQM
enablers (nine) and IT resources (eight) were identified and
partitioned into 3 categories and were prioritised by AHP approach.
The finding indicates that the 17 sub-criteria can be grouped into
three main categories namely organizing, tools and techniques, and
culture and people. Further, out of 17 sub-criteria, three sub-criteria:
top management commitment and support, total employee
involvement, and continuous improvement got highest priority
whereas three sub-criteria such as structural equation modelling,
culture change, and customer satisfaction got lowest priority. The
result suggests a hierarchy model for ICT industry to prioritise the
enablers and resources as well as to improve the TQM and IT
performance in the ICT industry. This paper has some managerial
implication which suggests the managers of ICT industry to
implement TQM and IT together in their organizations to get
maximum benefits and how to utilize available resources. At the end,
conclusions, limitation, future scope of the study are presented.
Abstract: The substantial development of the construction
industry has forced the cement industry, its major support, to focus
on achieving maximum productivity to meet the growing demand for
this material. This means that the reliability of a cement production
system needs to be at the highest level that can be achieved by good
maintenance. This paper studies the extent to which the
implementation of RCM is needed as a strategy for increasing the
reliability of the production systems component can be increased,
thus ensuring continuous productivity. In a case study of four Libyan
cement factories, 80 employees were surveyed and 12 top and middle
managers interviewed. It is evident that these factories usually
breakdown more often than once per month which has led to a
decline in productivity. In many times they cannot achieve the
minimum level of production amount. This has resulted from the
poor reliability of their production systems as a result of poor or
insufficient maintenance. It has been found that most of the factories’
employees misunderstand maintenance and its importance. The main
cause of this problem is the lack of qualified and trained staff, but in
addition it has been found that most employees are not found to be
motivated as a result of a lack of management support and interest. In
response to these findings, it has been suggested that the RCM
strategy should be implemented in the four factories. The results
show the importance of the development of maintenance strategies
through the implementation of RCM in these factories. The purpose
of it would be to overcome the problems that could secure the
reliability of the production systems. This study could be a useful
source of information for academic researchers and the industrial
organizations which are still experiencing problems in maintenance
practices.
Abstract: The aim of this exploratory research is to understand
further how organisations can evaluate their activities, which
generate knowledge creation, to meet changing stakeholder
expectations. A Scale of Knowledge (SoK) Framework is proposed
which links knowledge management and organisational activities to
changing stakeholder expectations. The framework was informed by
the knowledge management literature, as well as empirical work
conducted via a single case study of a multi-site hospital organisation
in Saudi Arabia. Eight in-depth semi-structured interviews were
conducted with managers from across the organisation regarding
current and future stakeholder expectations, organisational
strategy/activities and knowledge management. Data were analysed
using thematic analysis and a hierarchical value map technique to
identify activities that can produce further knowledge and
consequently impact on how stakeholder expectations are met.
The SoK Framework developed may be useful to practitioners as
an analytical aid to determine if current organisational activities
produce organisational knowledge which helps them meet
(increasingly higher levels of) stakeholder expectations. The
limitations of the research and avenues for future development of the
proposed framework are discussed.
Abstract: ABC classification is widely used by managers for
inventory control. The classical ABC classification is based on Pareto
principle and according to the criterion of the annual use value only.
Single criterion classification is often insufficient for a closely
inventory control. Multi-criteria inventory classification models have
been proposed by researchers in order to consider other important
criteria. From these models, we will consider a specific model in
order to make a sensitive analysis on the composite score calculated
for each item. In fact, this score, based on a normalized average
between a good and a bad optimized index, can affect the ABC-item
classification. We will focus on items differently assigned to classes
and then propose a classification compromise.