December 2010
Enhancing global competitiveness of the Nigerian economy: Implications for multilateral trade
Trade is a vehicle of globalisation and an enhancer of global competitiveness. This paper has examined Nigeria’s global competiveness ranking between 2001 and 2007, which has confirmed the country’s backbench position. The country’s global enabling trade index has also been reviewed. The paper observes that there is a strong link between Nigeria’s global enabling trade and global...
December 2010
Convergence to international financial reporting standards (IFRS): The need to tighten the rule on divisible profit
The issue of convergence with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been a subject of increasing academic debate. One of the issues raised is that the IFRS are fair value based, and in some instances, recognizes unrealized gains and thus, include them in the income statement. Despite resistance, it is a foregone conclusion that the IFRS convergence exercise will continue to gain momentum....
December 2010
The effectiveness of online employment background screening systems
This research assessed the effectiveness of online background screening. It also looks at the problems encountered in the use of online background screening and the proposed solution to these problems in order to improve the usage of online background screening systems. Statistical analysis of quantitative information obtained from an e-mail survey questionnaire, illustrates the effectiveness of online...
December 2010
How to manage knowledge well? Evidence from the life insurance industry
As using knowledge management and performance effectively to gain competitive advantage is becoming critical in today’s knowledge-based economy, an increasing number of industries are trying to explore optimal methods of managing knowledge-based assets, so-called intellectual capital (IC) in both visible and invisible forms and evaluate their performance in this regard. In Taiwan, the life insurance...
December 2010
Investment timing and financing decisions: A signaling equilibrium
This paper examines the impact of asymmetric information on firms’ investment and financing decisions when firms issue equity or debt to cover the capital outlay. The study assumes that firm insiders exactly know the firms’ growth prospects, but outside investors do not know. The analysis shows that, under equity or debt financing, there exists a costly signaling equilibrium, in which firm...
December 2010
Optimal marketing and production planning with reliability consideration
December 2010
An analysis of technology market from the perspective of technology life cycle
In many ways, technology policy as a ‘visible hand’ in the technology market often exerts significant economic effects on firms’ investing behaviors regarding research and development (R&D) and technology transaction. In addition, proper management of technology is critical to the foundation of national and organizational competitiveness. With the ongoing rivalry between mainland China...
December 2010
Implementation of regulation-based e-procurement in the Eastern Cape provincial administration
The study focuses on e-procurement as government is currently in the process of transforming procurement practices in line with national economic strategy. In order to address various socio-economic challenges, government is turning to technology to address issues such as outdated procurement practices. E-procurement promises the introduction of internationally accepted best practices to help government...
December 2010
Application of VaR in emerging markets: A case of selected Central and Eastern European Countries
December 2010
The moderating effects of employee personality characteristics on organizational commitment during periods of organizational change
The process of organizational reform often damages employee organizational commitment. Therefore, methods able to maintain or enhance such commitment are of value to organizations undergoing reform. The main objective of this research was to consolidate theories on work characteristic change and organizational commitment in work characteristic models, and to propose a research framework to interpret how...
December 2010
The constraints SMMES experience whilst attempting to recover skills levies from the W&RSETA in South Africa
This paper adds to the current database factors that impacts Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa, by exploring the specific barriers or constraints that the SMME may experience whilst attempting to recover their skills levies from the Wholesale and Retail Sector Education and Training Authority (W&RSETA). In 2007 it is estimated that 4,005 of the 8,269 levy paying SMMEs put...
December 2010
Component and process commonalities in production system under various uncertain factors
In this paper, the authors studied the effects of process and component/part commonality and uncertain factors (viz. lead time, machine breakdown etc.) on deliverable parameters of a multi product, multi-period and multistage dependent demand manufacturing environment. The throughput of finished products and average production time of the system are examined for various experimental scenarios on the basis of...
December 2010
The multi-attribute group decision making method based on the interval grey linguistic variables
The extended TOPSIS method is proposed to solve multi-attribute group decision-making problems which the attribute values take the form of interval grey linguistic variables and attribute weight is unknown. To begin with, the relative concepts of interval grey linguistic variables are defined; the operation rules, the properties, and the distance between the two interval grey linguistic variables are...
December 2010
Hybrid multiple attribute decision making method based on relative approach degree of grey relation projection
A relative approach degree method of grey relation projection is presented to deal with multiple attribute making in which the attribute weight is unknown and attribute value is hybrid index. firstly, the normalized method of different type indices and the formula of distance for the same type indices are defined, and a objective weights determination model based on hybrid index type is constructed according...
December 2010
The use of intuition across cultures
The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the factors that influence intuition as a decision-making tool for leaders/managers in Hong Kong and the United States. This study examined the relationships among gender, management level, extent of management experience, country of operation, and the reported use of intuition in decision making. Existing empirical research in this field is sparse. In this...
December 2010
Tour guides’ emotional intelligence in relation to demographic characteristics
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is being recognized as a significant factor in academic work and general life experiences. Due to the fact that tour guides act as intermediaries between tourists and an unfamiliar environment, they play a significant role in the success or failure of a tour experience. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the relationships of demographic variables, including social...
December 2010
Family ownership and risk-taking: Exploring nonlinear effects in financial industry
This study examined the relevance of the family ownership on risk-taking. Using a sample selected from publicly listed companies among the financial institutions in Taiwan during 1996 to 2007, this study found that the family ownership had a significant negative effect on risk-taking in the financial industry. Moreover, these influences were non-linear by the range of family ownership. In contrast, when...
December 2010
Has the National Health Insurance Scheme improved hospital efficiency in Taiwan? Identifying factors that affects its efficiency
Striking a balance between containing costs and improving the quality of healthcare is an important issue. In this paper, we used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with variable returns-to-scale to evaluate improvements in healthcare efficiency in terms of cost (input) and quality (output) in Taipei hospitals from 1989 to 2001. We also adopted Tobit regression analysis to determine which factors were the major...
December 2010
Improvement of project sustainability by community participation: A case of Abbottabad District in Pakistan
People’s participation is considered as an integral part of both the ideal as well as the practice of democracy, and reflects the basic aspirations of the people. Citizen Community Board (CCB) is a community based organization that was introduced in Pakistan in 2001, under which people identify and implement their own need base projects by registering their own CCBs upon approval of funds from...
December 2010
Maximizing knowledge preservation and transformation in organization
The business environment is in great need of human resources for organizational transformation in recent years. Therefore, how to ensure new workers to acquire the knowledge and skills of organizational operations within a short time in order to achieve skill transfer by means of education and training are businesses faces. Therefore, this study will investigate the reasons to enhance knowledge preservation...
December 2010
The impact of brand class, brand awareness and price on two important consumer behavior factors; customer value and behavioral intentions
This paper investigates the factors affecting customer value and behavioral intentions using automobile buying behavior. Factors affecting specific aspects of consumer behavior are also explored. Building on the literature, a conceptual model is developed. The authors introduce a comprehensive customer value framework and test an extended value model with products. Based on a theoretical conceptualization of...
December 2010
The relationship of price volatility between TSE and TAIFEX stock indices futures with different maturities
Using the data set from January 2, 2004 to April 28, 2006, this study examined all aspects of the relation between volatility in the cash index and volatility in the nearby-month and nearby-quarter index futures. The GARCH Model was first estimated to examine the impact of the futures volume growth on the conditional variance of the cash price and vice versa. Next, the conditional variances at the 10-day...
December 2010
Multiple intelligences and the success of expatriation: The roles of contingency variables
Although, prior studies have discussed how the various intelligences of expatriates (IQ – intellectual intelligence, CQ – cultural intelligence, and EQ – emotional intelligence) could contribute to their success on foreign assignments, they tend to discuss each of these separately. By asserting that all of these intelligences operate within expatriates simultaneously, this study then...
December 2010
Memory, emotions and rock 'n' roll: The influence of music in advertising, on brand and endorser perception
This study addresses the extent to which music is capable of modifying the consumer's perception of the endorser and the brand. A sample of 540 subjects was exposed on random to one of four versions of an experimental radio commercial for a fictitious brand of mineral water differing only in the selection of the background music. The results indicate that music in advertising can significantly influence...
December 2010
Bank international diversification on home bias, profitability and risk: Evidence from emerging and industrial countries
In the study of the effects of international diversification, many researches focused on the benefits of industrial countries. This study aimed to further this work by seeking to determine whether a consolidated group of international banks with extensive global exposures would be able to diversify away from firm-specific risks for both emerging and industrial countries. This paper examined the effects of...
December 2010
Firm-specific attributes and contrarian profits: Evidence from the Taiwan stock exchange
This paper examines the performance of contrarian strategies and investigates whether such contrarian profits are related to firm-specific attributes. Using data from all listed stocks on the Taiwan stock exchange over the period 1990 - 2008, this paper finds a significant abnormal return of 19.39% earned by the contrarian strategy of buying prior losers and selling prior winners ranked by the cumulative...
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