How to get correct result from weighted average cost of capital (WACC) formula and avoid a common pitfall in calculating WACC: An analysis of Miller (2009) and Pierru’s (2009) articles
June 2013
Calculating the cost of capital has been always a key issue in financial management. One way to calculate cost of capital is using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) formula which has been presented by Modigliani and Miller. Recently, validity and correctness of WACC have been questioned by an article titled “The weighted average cost of capital is not quite right” (Miller, 2009), so that...
Regional integration: Evidence from Africa
June 2013
To promote and strengthen the economic development and financial system in today’s globalized world regional integration has become inevitable, in particular, regions where different nations share similarities in history, culture, trade and financial system such as, Africa. The purpose of this study was to examine the stock market integration among the African financial markets, in a regional...
Inward licensing of new ventures: Examining the effects of industry and strategy characteristics
June 2013
New ventures compete by creating innovative products. Liabilities of newness and inexperience, limited resources, rapid technological obsolescence and constantly changing market conditions often encourage new ventures to license other companies' technologies to complement and augment their internally developed innovations. Building on the knowledge-based view of the firm, the study proposes that the...
Corporate governance and performance: An empirical evidence from textile sector of Pakistan
June 2013
In developed countries a lot of work has been done on the subject “Corporate Governance” but on the other hand developing countries are still lacking in this area especially, Pakistan which has observed rare interest in research associated with corporate governance. Present research has explored the actual effect associated with corporate governance measures and financial performance. This...
An exploratory study on corporate governance practices in small and micro fast moving consumer goods enterprises in the Cape Metropole, Western Cape, South Africa
June 2013
Small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) play a crucial role in the growth and development of a country’s economy. With this in mind, the small business sector is seen as an important force to generate employment and more equitable income distribution. SMMEs strive towards sustainability and growth, however a substantial number of SMMEs fail due to, amongst other, the lack of corporate governance...
Technological determinants of entrepreneurship performance: Evidence from OECD countries
June 2013
In this paper we acknowledge the role of technology as an engine in fostering entrepreneurship. We examine the technological determinants of entrepreneurship performance in twenty three developed OECD countries during the period 2000-2007 using two measures of entrepreneurship performance: the number of newly registered corporations, which is introduced by the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey...
Employer and employees’ perceptions on implementation of health and safety regulations in the platinum mining sector of South Africa
June 2013
Maintaining occupational health and safety (OHS) is always a priority in many organisations. The purpose of this study was to investigate employer and employees’ perceptions on the implementation of OHS regulations in the Platinum mining industry in South Africa. Using questionnaires, data was collected from 22 employers and 153 employees in the platinum mining industry. The data was subjected to a...
Corporate disclosure, transparency and stock liquidity: Empirical estimation from the Ghana Stock Exchange
June 2013
Illiquidity remains one of the biggest challenges facing many African Securities Markets including Ghana. The paper sought to empirically document the extent to which corporate disclosure and transparency (TDS) reduces information asymmetry on the GSE with a residual effect of improving liquidity. Using a multidimensional liquidity approach of Liu (2006) and Lesmond et al. (1999) and the corporate...
Gabon corridors performance evaluation: New strategic approach based-supply chain and transport logistics efficiency
June 2013
This paper is aimed at evaluating Gabonese corridors’ supply chain and transport logistics efficiency. The main purposes of this paper are to: (a) carry out investigations and develop enabling environment strategies; (b) suggest a strategy for boosting investment to ameliorate efficiencies. The scope of the measurement includes: supply chain efficiency (corridor infrastructure; enabling environment;...
Investigating the role of psychosocial factors on mobilization behaviour among bank employees
June 2013
The study was designed to assess the predictive influence of psychosocial factors on mobilization behaviour among bank employees. The study was a cross-sectional survey, which employed ex-post facto design. Questionnaire format was employed for data collection. A total of 800 bank employees took part in the study as participants. Specifically, the participants comprised 377 males and 423 females with a mean...
Combining DEMATEL with ANP to modify multidimensional scaling in identifying the similarities of e-shopping stores
June 2013
While many studies have discussed the purchase behavior for e-shopping stores, there is little study focusing on mechanism which consumers accurately and reasonably identify the similarities of e-shopping stores. Therefore, we introduce the approach which combines DEMATEL with ANP to modify multidimensional scaling to address this concern. In traditional MDS, the average summation is combined with the...
Verifying the effects of organizational justice and work values upon organizational performance: using organizational citizenship behavior as the dual mediator
June 2013
This study aims at verifying the effects of employees’ perception of organizational justice and work values on organizational performance at a Taiwanese state-run company, with Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) being the dual mediator. The study interviewed employees of a Taiwanese state-run company with a special focus on those holding key positions, selected by simple random sampling. Linear...
Promoting tea business in the tea smallholding sector in developing countries through efficient technology transfer system: Special reference to Sri Lanka
June 2013
Tea production in smallholding sector, the dominant sector in Sri Lankan economy, is below its targeted level recently. Therefore, this paper attempts to study the effectiveness of the technology transferring system in tea smallholding sector in order to uplift its productivity. The study was carried out in Pasgoda DS division in Matara district, Southern, Sri Lanka. Seventy tea smallholders were interviewed...
Serbian forest potential management – Status and opportunities
June 2013
Starting from the role and importance of forests for society, the growing conflictbetween the demands and possibilities of the forest has led to an increasingdemand for information about this natural resource in quantitative and qualitative terms, both locally and globally. On the basis of the national forest...
Recovery period, inventories, sales growth cycles and companies’ profitability: Empirical evidence of Iran
June 2013
The current study reviews the effects of recovery period demands and inventories going through periods of circulation of profitability of companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2010. In this research, an efficiency asset synonymous with profitability is considered. The findings of the study show that between these two variables related to corporate profitability there is reversed relation. The...
Factors influencing customer satisfaction with the success factors identified in the insurance industry
June 2013
This article gives the customer satisfaction survey, and factors affecting the insurance industry, according to insurers. First, a study using Servqual model (service quality factors) was investigated; therein, customer satisfaction and other indicators and factors in the success of the insurance companies were identified. Finally, factors such as access, customer response time and trust in customer...
Evaluating efficacy of nursing managers using performance indicators of patient and staff satisfaction
June 2013
Organizations in the 21st century need self-efficient, independent, self-reliant, self-confident creative staffs. The present study aims to determine the efficacy of nursing managers in the hospitals of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences using performance indicators of patient and staff satisfaction. This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted in a six-month period between April...
Creating a sustainable competitive advantage at a high performing firm in Kenya
June 2013
This article examines the role of both resource- and activity-based views of a firm in creating a sustainable competitive advantage. The research design is a case study of a consistently high-performing firm in the motor service industry in Kenya. To collect data, in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face audio-taped interviews with senior managers including the chairman and CEO were employed. This...
Gender equity and executive management in tourism: Challenges in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region
June 2013
Tourism is a major employer of women. However, women experience gender discrimination with regard to attaining executive management positions. The paper reports on the study of gender and executive management in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries. The aim of the study is to investigate the extent at which gender equity is being practiced in the SADC tourism sector. The study used a...
A causal relationship between trade, FDI, exchange rates and economic growth of Pakistan
June 2013
This study aims to do an empirical investigation of the causal relationship among FDI (foreign direct investment), trade, real effective exchange rates and economic growth. Economic growth attracts FDI and enhances trade as explained in some literatures. The present study focuses on Pakistan during the period 1980 to 2012. The Johansson co-integration analysis shows the long term relationship between the...
Human resource (HR) challenges for the information technology (IT) industry in India
May 2013
This paper analyses the challenges human resource faces in Information technology industry of India. The focus of HR practitioners should not be only on to attract, motivate and retain key 'knowledge workers. But HR practitioners must also play a proactive role in IT industry. Profitability and sustainability of company in long run cannot be ensured without focusing on HR Management practices. This paper adds to the...
Effect of auditor opinion on discretionary accruals behavior of distressed firms: Empirical evidences from Iran
May 2013
The present study attempts to determine the discretionary accruals behavior (as a proxy for earnings management) of Iranian failing firms (defined here as pre-bankruptcy firms) in years prior to bankruptcy, and factors that lead to this behavior as well. For this purpose, we selected a sample composed of 68 bankrupt firms and 68 non-bankrupt firms (matched in terms of firms’ industry and size) and examined the...
Role of financial stress on relationship between financial problem and financial wellness among Malaysia workers
May 2013
This paper examines a framework for understanding the determinants of financial wellness. Samples were selected using multi-stage sampling technique among employees in public and private sectors. A total of 1000 completed questionnaires were analyzed using path analysis to identify direct and indirect effects on financial wellness. The results of this study can be used for better understanding on the relationships...
The determinants of debt maturity structure in Iranian firms
May 2013
The purpose of this research is to test the main theories of firm debt maturity in an emerging economy, including agency conflict; signaling and tax theories. This paper investigates the firm specific determinants of debt maturity structure for a sample of 140 Iranian manufacturing firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2001 to 2009. Employing random effect panel data analysis, and multivariate...
National culture and organizational capabilities of IT offshoring services in Kenya
May 2013
The pervasive adoption of outsourced information technology (IT) services has made the multi-billion dollar information technology outsourcing industry become important to individual organizations and governments as well. IT offshoring elevates the importance of country destination where services are outsourced to with increasing attention shifting to offshore destinations in Africa. African countries are emerging as...
An analysis of business skills and training needs essential for business success in plastic manufacturing industries in developing nations: A case study of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
May 2013
Businesses need to maintain a high level of performance in order to remain competitive and effective. One of the key factors to achieving this is having a well skilled workforce and a competitive management. It is very easy to get experienced managers but not easy to get workers who have relevant technical knowledge; hence there is a need to evaluate the workforce and recommend that those falling short should be sent...
The optimal pattern modeling of knowledge management systems establishment in public sector organizations: A case study in Tavanir organization
May 2013
Today, knowledge is seen as the main asset for major organizations and a resource to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and in the developing business world, the importance of knowledge management in organizations is increasing every day. The fact that many organizations neglect knowledge management is because of their vague understanding of the concept that exists in organizations. To overcome such a...
Progress and regression group performance in data envelopment analysis (DEA): An application of productivity Malmquist index
May 2013
In this paper, we extend the work of Camanho and Dyson (2006, 26:35-49) into a group of Malmquist productivity index for two time periods of measurement, based on the Malmquist index to enable the decision making units’ internal efficiencies from those associated with their group characteristics. We construct an index reflecting the relative performance groups in two time periods, which can be decomposed into two...
Head of household characteristics and family economic status (FES) among Kerman households, Iran
May 2013
Families are economically successful when they can meet their needs, provide a stronger and more protected financial future, and can move stably towards attaining the family vision. Economic status represents the economic capacity of families to meet their material and non-material needs. The aim of this article is to determine the effect of demography variables that is, age, gender, level of education, and occupation,...
Factors influencing brand association
May 2013
The purpose of this study is to investigate brand management alternatives (includes the susceptibility to global consumer culture, perceived brand globalness and brand investment) influence on brand cognition (includes brand association through brand credibility) and brand association in the personal computer industry. This is one of the first studies to provide evidence of the relationship between brand marketing...
The effect of entrepreneurial orientation on the internationalization of SMEs in developing countries
May 2013
The increasing globalization of markets and businesses is playing a major role on the pace at which small and medium enterprises (SMEs) internationalize. Within this context, the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and the internationalization of SMEs in developing countries is an important area of academic research. This paper reviews the literature in an effort to provide an understanding of this...
The relationship of ethical climate with intention and socially responsible investment behaviour: A structural equation model analysis
May 2013
This study examines the impact of organizational ethical climate on perceived socially responsible investment (SRI) behavior with intention to engage in SRI as a mediating variable. This study uses questionnaire to collect opinion from respondents. Questionnaires were distributed to 320 fund managers of unit trust fund companies but only 84 of them positively responded by returning the filled questionnaires. This led to...
Comparison of financial instruments in Islamic versus conventional banking system and liquidity management
May 2013
The aim of this paper is to study the financial instruments which are used for liquidity management in Islamic and conventional financial systems. For day to day operations banks need liquidity and banks must have to manage their liquidity according to the operations. Liquidity risk management is very important for banks as well as for financial institutions. Both types of financial systems have their own different...
Economic value added (EVA) versus traditional tools in predicting corporate performance in Malaysia
May 2013
A tool which could help in explaining company’s performance, particularly in Malaysia, in terms of quantitative factor is very much needed. However, it is arguable if earnings alone can be considered as the best performance tool. Economic value added (EVA) has recently amazed much attention as a tool that takes into consideration many factors and incorporates more information as compared to traditional tools....
Investigating the effect of management attitude with respect to human resources, export and marketing on the performance of firm: Evidence from Iran's export firms
May 2013
Quick changes in international economy have made it by far more difficult and more complicated to plan to work in foreign markets than it was in the past. Actually, with regard to the high intensity of competition in the area of world trade, it is unavoidably inevitable to accept the role of thoughts, skills and abilities of managers of commercial units to enter world markets. With respect to the importance of the...
The effect of ownership concentration on company performance
May 2013
The study is to explore a relationship between ownership attributes and the performance of the firm (value of the firm). The ownership concentration or type of ownership will be divided into a few categories either institutional or individual companies, foreign or non foreign holding companies and government or non government holding companies. The study found that companies in Malaysia with foreign or government...
Investigation of the effects of luxury brand perception and brand preference on purchase intention of luxury products
May 2013
Conspicuous consumption is a fairly universal phenomenon although possibly more pervasive in developed countries. It can be said, conspicuous consumption is more common in some cultures that have a tendency to materialism. Every country in terms of political, technological, cultural and economic environment is different. This paper deepens understanding of why consumers are willing to buy the luxury high end,...
Enhancing credit scoring model performance by a hybrid scoring matrix
May 2013
Competition of the consumer credit market in Taiwan has become severe recently. Therefore, most financial institutions actively develop credit scoring models based on assessments of the credit approval of new customers and the credit risk management of existing customers. This study uses a genetic algorithm for feature selection and decision trees for customer segmentation. Moreover, it utilizes logistic regression to...
Agricultural production cooperatives, entrepreneurship and education in Iran
May 2013
Training is one of the components affecting the human resource development in a society. It is an effective component for developing entrepreneurship in agricultural production cooperatives. This study purpose is evaluating and classifying the needed trainings in agricultural production cooperatives to develop entrepreneurship. This study is descriptive and...
Customer satisfaction in private and public fitness clubs in north of Iran
May 2013
Survival of sport organizations in today’s competitive world depends on their customer’s satisfaction. The aim of this study was to determine customers’ satisfaction in private and public body building clubs in north of Iran. In this descriptive study a questionnaire was provided to all subjects to determine demographic characteristics and satisfaction factors. A total of 390 sample, 175 men...
Behavioral intention in the luxury fast food restaurant
May 2013
The purpose of this article is to analyze the impacts of personal interaction encounters, service excellence, product quality and positive emotion on consumer behavioral intentions in luxury fast food restaurants. The paper investigates samples of luxury fast food restaurants' customers in Shiraz, using stratiï¬ed random sampling. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed by fast food restaurant staffs to...
The study of role and impact of formal education expenditures on economic growth in Iran
May 2013
In this paper, we investigated the long run relationship between formal education expenditures and economic growth and also their influences on each other in Iran and for years 1979 to 2008. In this purpose vector autoregressive model (VAR) has been used. First, stable of variables by the use of Dickey-fuller test has been examined. Next, analysis of Johnson test for considering the convergence among variables has been...
Strategic planning with fuzzy analysis network process approach (FANP)
May 2013
The main purpose of this research is to use a decision approach in prioritizing strategy choice for SWOT matrix analysis. This research was done in 2010, in Frab Co. which works in the field of installation of water and energy projects in Tehran. Based on the nature of the research, its statistical society was managers and experts of different units of the organization. The members of this team include the managing...
The impact of politically-connected executives in fraudulent financial reporting: Evidence based on the H shares1
May 2013
This study tries to investigate fraudulent financial reporting in China based firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange which has a high degree of officials’ involvement of China mainland and impact on audit quality and corporate governance. It intends to find out the motives behind fraudulent financial reporting and the opportunity which permits such kind of reporting; and whether...
Social media browsing and consumer behaviour: Exploring the youth market
May 2013
Despite the growing usage of social media, little evidence exists of academic research which explores the potential of social media as a marketing and communication tool by South African marketers. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study which examined the influence of social media on the purchasing behaviour of youth, by surveying a convenience sample of 150 students at a large university in South...
The impact of service quality on customer satisfaction and the moderating role of word-of-mouth
May 2013
This is a cross sectional field study in which we examined the relationship between perceived service quality and customer satisfaction with the moderating role of word-of-mouth. The sample size of the data is 350 that are collected from the fast food restaurants located in the one of the largest city of Pakistan, Lahore. After implementing some statistical tools we conclude that the service quality and customer...
Executive director’s remuneration after fraud and lawsuit revelation
May 2013
The twofold objectives of this study are; firstly, to determine whether fraud and lawsuit firms reduce their executives’ remuneration after fraud revelation; and secondly to empirically examine the effects of fraud and lawsuit revelation on the internal monitoring mechanisms which are board of directors (BOD) and remuneration committee. This study has a sample of 136 firms comprising 68 fraud and lawsuit firms...
Customer satisfaction, perceived value and customer loyalty: the mobile services industry in China
May 2013
This research integrates the American Customer Satisfaction Model, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to propose a modified American Customer Satisfaction Model to study consumer satisfaction with the mobile services industry in China. The research finds that perceived expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a major positive effect on customer...
Proactive management of innovations in information technology (IT) enabled services
May 2013
Since the early 1960s, many innovations on information technology-enabled services (IISs) that fulfill underserved customers and create competitive advantages for firms have been examined on the realization of their values. However, even with much theoretical promise, most IIS experiments have failed. Extant argumentsattribute this to initiatives, business models, institutional...
An empirical investigation of downsizing: A study of banking sector of Pakistan
May 2013
Downsizing is the burning issue of today’s dynamic organizations. Organizations are shortening their staff to improve their financial performance. This bustle is not only affected its employees at their workplace but also in their private lives. This study has been conducted in order to measure whether the organizations are successful in achieving their objectives of downsizing or not. This study has been...
Page 16 of 83, showing 50 records out of 4137 total, starting on record 751, ending on 800
Advertisement
Advertisement
