African Journal of
Business Management

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Bus. Manage.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1993-8233
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJBM
  • Start Year: 2007
  • Published Articles: 4187

Table of Content: 18 July, 2012; 6(28)

July 2012

Moral leadership in school organization

Leadership approaches in administration have brought new points of view into leadership. Moral leadership is one of the mostly stressed leadership approaches like visionary leadership, strategic leadership, instructional leadership, and transformational leadership. Different from other leadership approaches, moral leadership depends on moral authority. Moral leadership is the process of forming and developing moral...

Author(s): Vehbi Çelik

July 2012

Intellectual capital management enablers in an Iranian context

Today, developing and managing intellectual capital has become a real necessity in the field of trade, and the weakness of intellectual capital management and its measurements leads to a considerable percent neglect of the real potential of organizations' values. Meanwhile, recognizing the enablers is a necessary act to manage intellectual capital. In this survey, the direct effect of organic structure, as an...

Author(s): Seyed Ali Akbar Ahmadi, Azam Tadayon, Yashar Salamzadeh, Najmeh Jalalianand Mohammadreza Daraei

July 2012

Foreign direct investment behavior: Problemistic or slack search

This study examines the behaviors of firms that engage in Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). The present study is unique in adopting the classification of underperforming or outperforming, relative to aspiration level, to examine FDI behaviors. An analysis of the fixed-effects panel regression shows that the attainment discrepancy and the behaviors of their peer firms affect the listed Taiwanese firms’ FDIs into...

Author(s): Szu-Hsien Lin, You-Jie Chen, Ai-Chi Hsu, Ya-Chiu Angela Liu and Hung-Chih Wang,

July 2012

The most important problems that mayors experience and the basic fields were they need information and experience support most

This study aims to identify the most important problems of mayors who are elected into office, for two tenures or more and to describe the most important needs regarding information and experience for the mayors elected for a second tenure or more in 2009 with regards to type of municipalities and educational variables. For data collection, 2 questions were posed to 1927 mayors and 1341 of mayors replied to the...

Author(s): Nihan POTAS, Åžefika Åžule ERÇETÄ°N, Nuray KISA and Åžuay Nilhan AÇIKALIN

July 2012

Personality and moral character traits and acknowledging the principles of management ethics, auditing and accounting ethics

In the world, based on recent frauds in financial reporting of partial deregulation of the financial system, as some of the causes for the latest economic crisis, there is once again a growing distrust in external audit, which yields the growing distrust of the public and investors of the entire financial system. In recent years, even before the latest economic crisis, the emphasis in overlapping the gap in the quality...

Author(s): Branislav Nerandžić, Veselin Perović, Emil Živkov, Sandra PašÄ‡an and Vesna Gavran

July 2012

Predicting earnings management based on adjusted earnings per share (EPS)

This paper investigates the usefulness of accounting information in forecasting earnings management. For this purpose, the firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) that engage in adjusting the annual earnings per share (EPS) were recruited as the sample. It was found that the contracting incentive (debt contracts) and capital market pressures (net income and operating earnings growth) are two incentives for...

Author(s): Hassan Heidari,  Ali Ashtab and Golamreza Kordestani

July 2012

The effect of end user computing competence on human resource job performance: Mapping for human resource roles

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between end user computing competence and job performance by different human resource (HR) roles. A research model was formulated based on two theories from both the technology-to-performance chain (TPC) model and the HR five role model. The study used a multiple hierarchical regression approach, in which 122 HR professionals within eight financial companies...

Author(s): Hung-Yue Suen

July 2012

Quality of work life (QWL) and job stress among Iran public employees

Iran public organizations have initiated structural reform to enhance productivity. The reform has created some profound changes which lead to a great deal of uncertainty and stress among employees. As organizations take the challenge to cope with these changes, employees look for loyalty from the organization and expect that their job provides them with a certain amount of stability. To actualize these expectations...

Author(s): Mohammad Hossein Motaghi Pisheh

July 2012

An examination of the decision-making styles of hearing-impaired sports club managers in Turkey

This study was conducted so as to evaluate decision-making styles of managers of sports clubs which are affiliated under the Turkish National Federation for the Deaf. The study was carried out at the international sign language and hearing-impaired sports training seminar in Antalya organized for club managers and coaches of hearing-impaired sports clubs between the 8th to 9th January and the 15th to 16th January...

Author(s): Mahmut Açak

July 2012

The El Outaya salt refinery project: A joint venture technology transfer case

This case-study focuses largely on the positive aspects of technology-transfer and on related human resource management issues, finance and international cooperation among SONAREM, Dravo Corporation, ALREM, Dravo Costruttori and Etablissements Dolléans. Specifically, the case examines 1) the primary para-statal and internal administrative structures of the Joint Venture Entity, ALREM, 2) the socio-political,...

Author(s): Zhilin Yang, Arthur F. Madsen and Meihua Zhou

July 2012

Towards establishing long term surviving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa: An entrepreneurial approach

The question of why some businesses survive and others do not is still a central focus in entrepreneurship studies. Considering that entrepreneurs/owner-managers are the key decision makers in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and have direct control over the day to day operations of their business, ensuring the long term survival of their businesses remains a crucial issue to them. The objective of this paper is...

Author(s): Ngek Brownhilder Neneh and Johan Vanzyl

July 2012

Influence of financial education on retirement preparation in Malaysia

This paper examined the influence of financial learning on retirees’ retirement financial planning preparation. 750 questionnaires were distributed with a 53.9% return rate. Three hypotheses were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. The results revealed that some mediating effect existed between financial learning and behavioural assessment of personal finance, and that the older age groups had...

Author(s): Loo See Beh and Jee Yoong Folk

July 2012

Organizational team sport as a diversity management intervention: A qualitative study

An increasing number of organizations in South Africa are introducing formal organizational team sport activities, without any scientific knowledge on whether participation in these activities holds benefits for the management of diversity in the organization. The purpose of this research was to identify the indicators of an organizational team sport intervention that contributes to the effective management of a diverse...

Author(s): Yvonne T. Joubert and Johannes J. de Beer

July 2012

Values malleability or the potentially harmful effects of exposure to street trading? Derived global leadership and organisational behaviour effectiveness (GLOBE) individual values, context and informal entrepreneurial outcomes in the African city street trading context

In this study, individual values were derived from the global leadership and organisational behaviour effectiveness (GLOBE) organisational culture values, theory and adapted for testing in the street trading context of a large African city. A deficiency in the literature was found to exist with regard to the effects of individual values in the greater Johannesburg city street trading sector. This research therefore,...

Author(s): Chris William Callaghan

July 2012

The use of performance indicators for small and micro enterprises (SMEs): A Brazilian regional experience

Micro and small enterprises represent approximately 98.4% of private enterprises in Brazil. Those small businesses are placed in a highly competitive environment and they need management practices to pursue greater competitiveness, resulting in a demand for performance indicators that can better assist entrepreneurs in small business management. The aim of the research is to verify if the micro and small enterprises...

Author(s): Arcenildo Valderes Da Silva Nunes, Eric Dorion, Pelayo Munhoz Olea, Cristine Hermann Nodari, Adrieli Alves Pereira and Eliana Andréa Severo

July 2012

Can environmental regulations enhance efficiency? Empirical study for China’s thermal power industry

From the perspective of energy efficiency, the paper analyzes the environmental regulations on efficiency of the thermal power industry in China’s 30 provinces in the year of 2004, including the autonomous regions and municipalities. Excluding the environmental effects and the statistical noise, the paper studies the relationship between the level of environmental regulations and the efficiency of China’s...

Author(s): Xue-jie Bai and Yan Zhi

July 2012

Studying efficacy of organizational and conceptual factors on managers’ decision making in Iranian governmental organizations

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of organizational factors on the styles of managers’ decision making and the difference between the perception of managers and employees on the styles used by managers in the general governor Office of Kurdistan. On this basis, 60 managers and 290 employees were chosen as statistical sample. The analytical model of this study was based on general decision...

Author(s): Adel Salavati and Mohammad Salim Karimi

July 2012

The effect of variables population growth, urbanization and economic growth on CO2 Emissions in Iran

In this paper, equivalence relation and long term of five variables: CO2 emissions,the intensity of energy use, gross domestic product growth rate, urban population and growth population, and also their influences on each other in Iran for years 1973 to 2008 have been analyzed. For this purpose, vector autoregressive model (VAR) has been used. The first stability of variables by the use of Dickey-fuller...

Author(s): Masoud Abouie-Mehrizi, Seyed Masoud Atashi and Marzie Elahi

July 2012

The effect of spiritual leadership and other elements on employees’ empowerment of Iran's bank: Case study of Guilan Province

For creating spirituality in the workplace, establishing spiritual leadership is necessary to strengthen the commitment of staff and to improve their activities. To achieve this goal, a conceptual model was used. A sample size of 363 personnel was selected; data and information were collected using questionnaires, field and library research and Laserl software. Findings indicated that there is a significant and positive...

Author(s): Mehrdad Goudarzvand Chegini and Zaeimeh Farjadi Nezhad

July 2012

Stock price behavior of the Greek oil sector: The case of Hellenic petroleum S.A. Greece

The present study investigated the underlying process of the stock price returns time series of the oil sector taking as an example the case of Hellenic Petroleum SA, Greece. The data used are daily for over a 13 – year period. Nonlinearities were detected with different univariate tests that surveyed the independence and nonlinear deterministic structure of the time series studied. The data employed for these...

Author(s): Eleni Zafeiriou, Nikolaos Sariannidis, Garyfallos Arabatzis and Spyridon Sofios

July 2012

Relationship models of experience satisfaction in residential refurbishment

Economic development and changing lifestyles have resulted in changes in residential living quality of consumers and increasing demand for residential interior refurbishment. There are different types of residential interior refurbishment services with the two most common types being self-design and hiring of contractors and designers for both design and construction. Different types of residential interior...

Author(s): Horng-Jinh Chang, Chih-Wen Huang and Ching-Yu Lien

July 2012

Study of the role of social capital in assisting client of Isfahan by relying on social trust

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of social capital assistance for clients in Isfahan, who rely on social trust using a correlative-descriptive method. The statistical population comprises of all the persons with a welfare organization record in Isfahan and is selected by cluster-sampling. The instrument for studying the questionnaire is a nominal and content validity type, that is recommended by...

Author(s): Mohammad Reza Iravani and Saeed Shar​ifi