African Journal of
Business Management

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Bus. Manage.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1993-8233
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJBM
  • Start Year: 2007
  • Published Articles: 4191

Table of Content: 28 December, 2011; 5(34)

December 2011

A study on the customer-based brand equity of Taiwanese and Indonesian teenagers for a global brand

  This study aimed to determine the customer-based brand equity of Taiwanese and Indonesian teenage consumers using data from 925 teenage consumers in Taiwan and Indonesia from purposive sampling. This study implemented Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with LISREL software to test the hypotheses and certify the fitness of the research models. This research provided insight into the young teenage consumers...

Author(s): Shu-Hsien Liao, Retno Widowati P. A. and Da-Chian Hu

December 2011

The corporate cash holdings: Determinants and implications

  Several empirical studies have reported that the level of short-term financing is higher in firms operating in developing countries. Short-term financing increases risk of default as it matures quickly and leaves little room for the borrowing firm to manage its cash flows. But if the firm has a cash buffer, it can avoid such a risk. If firms in developing countries have higher level of short-term debts, do...

Author(s): Attaullah Shah

December 2011

Using Tobin’s Q ratio to testing the stakeholder theory applied to the corporate social performance

  Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is emerging as an important issue in global developments. Given their important role in the global supply chains, Taiwanese enterprises must keep up with the trend and stay connected with the world. Companies that want to grow up, need a socially responsible behaviour and some explicitly proposed tougher rules on disclosure and reporting. This paper brings up a brand new...

Author(s): Meng-Ju Lin, De-Chih Lee and Lin-Tsang Lee

December 2011

Do industries predict the stock market due to slow diffusion of information?

  The slow diffusion of information hypothesis has emerged as a more convincing explanation for lead-lag patterns in assets returns compared to traditional explanations such as non-synchronous or thin trading, liquidity factor, or size factor, etc. We provide further support to slow diffusion of information hypothesis from an emerging market. We use a rich data set of weekly returns of 34 industries listed at...

Author(s): Attaullah Shah, Akhtar Munir, Safiullah Khan and Zaheer Abbas

December 2011

Exploring the effects of consumer ethnocentrism on preference of choosing foreign airlines: A perspective of Chinese tourists

  This research explored effects of consumer ethnocentrism on preference of choosing foreign airline from a perspective of Chinese tourists which has never been addressed by other researches before. A variation of demographic characteristics toward consumer ethnocentric tendencies between tourists from Mainland China and Taiwan was found through a comparison of hypotheses testing result of this research. The...

Author(s): Yu-Hern Changand Chien-Hang Cheng

December 2011

Determinants of food security at household level in Pakistan

  The main objective of the study is to examine the determinants of household’s food security in Pakistan using a logistic regression procedure. The analysis is based on micro data taken from Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2007-08. Five main variables were used out of other demographic indicators that can affect food security. These include: place of residence, dependency...

Author(s): Anila Sultana and Adiqa Kiani

December 2011

Comparing the effect of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia’s (AIM) microcredit program on quality of life in urban and rural Malaysia

  This study was undertaken to measure and compare the impact of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia’s (AIM) microcredit programs on low-income household’s quality of life between urban and rural Peninsular Malaysia. To achieve the aforementioned objective, this study employed a cross-sectional data analysis using stratified random sampling method to examine whether participation in AIM’s microcredit...

Author(s): Abdullah- Al- Mamun, Joseph Adaikalam, Mohammad Nurul Huda Mazumder and Sazali Abdul Wahab

December 2011

Empirical research on the public–private partnership into the public hospitals from Romania

  The economic recession generated by the world financial crisis with implications on the extreme need of funding, the existence of a complex and more dynamic environment, characterized by various actors’ interaction, development of knowledge within the field, technological progress and quality of service offer impose the identification of alternatives to improve performance within the public healthcare...

Author(s): Daniela Artemisa Calu, Aurelia Åžtefănescu, Eugeniu Å¢urlea Cosmin Dobrinand Robert  Åžerban,  

December 2011

The influence on developing countries’ foreign direct investment (FDI) policies imposed by incentives: A game analysis

  When governments initiate incentive policies, they are concerned for the transnational corporations’ foreign direct investment (FDI). All governments intend to attract FDI by incentive policies. On the other hand, transnational corporations determine their FDI based on the incentive policies implemented by the developing countries. Therefore, incentive policies affect FDI more than anything else....

Author(s): Chen-Kuo Lee

December 2011

Comparative analysis of modes of monetary exchange rates in Nigeria

  The study examined and compared the three modes of monetary exchange rates available in the Nigerian financial sector. The study utilized the data on the three alternative modes of monetary exchange rates, namely, Central Bank of Nigeria, Bureau de Change rates and Inter-bank rate against US Dollar. Time series was fitted to the three sets of data and the result examined for effective comparison. The results...

Author(s): Joseph N. Mojekwu, Okwy P. Okpala and Ismail A. Adeleke

December 2011

Modelling the factors that influence mobile government services acceptance

  This is an exploratory study on the mobile government (m-government) in Malaysia. M-government can be a powerful component of the e-government that could facilitate more and better services to the citizens. In recent years, the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and particularly the rapid changes in mobile technologies have led to the development of new applications and services....

Author(s): Ahmad Althunibat, Nor Azan Mat zain and Noraidah Sahari @Ashaari

December 2011

Testing the weak form efficiency of the Turkish stock market

This paper examines the random walk hypothesis to determine the validity of weak-form efficiency for the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) in Turkey. Data are obtained from daily observations of the ISE indices (ISE-100 index, services index, financial index, industrial index and technology index) for the period October 23, 1987 to July 15, 2011. The random walk hypothesis is tested using parametric and non-parametric...

Author(s): Ahmet BÜYÜKÅžALVARCI and Hasan ABDÄ°OÄžLU

December 2011

Impulse buying: the role of store environmental stimulation and situational factors (An empirical investigation)

  This study aims to examine the role of environmentally induced stimulation in influencing impulse buying. In addition, the authors seek to investigate the impact of two situational factors (availability of time and money) on impulse buying. The present research empirically tests a theoretical model of impulse buying by examining the associations between impulse buying and environment of store, visual...

Author(s): Mohammad Mahmoudi Maymand and Mostafa Ahmadinejad

December 2011

Department of Business Administration & MBA, Payame Noor University, PO Box 19395-3697 Tehran, Iran.

  This paper focuses on human capital in the economy and entry deterrence when human capital is captured by a firm. A dynamic game theory model about one firm and a potential entrant is established to characterize entry deterrence with human capital. This study first argues that higher fixed set-up and transfer costs deter entrants. Second, to efficiently deter the entrants, the firm is inclined to...

Author(s): Pu-Yan Nie and Yu Ren

December 2011

Credit extension in South Africa: A business cycle perspective for the period 1985 to 2009

  This paper investigates and quantifies the relationship between the macroeconomic business cycle and bank-granted credit in South Africa for the period 1985 to 2009. The main question that this research seeks to answer is what role do banks play in amplifying the business cycle and what is the impact of this on the macroeconomy? The outcomes of the econometric model support the hypothesis that a positive...

Author(s): Leila Fourie, Ilsé Botha and Ronald Mears

December 2011

Technical modeling exchange rate by using genetic algorithm: A case study of the Iran’s Rial against the EU Euro

  Genetic algorithms (GAs) are computer programs that mimic the processes of biological evolution in order to solve problems and to model evolutionary systems. In this study, we apply GAs for technical models of exchange rate determination in exchange rate market. In this framework, we estimated auto regressive (AR), moving average (MA), auto regressive with moving average (ARMA) and mean reversion (MR) as...

Author(s): Saeed Rasekhi and Mehdi Rostamzadeh

December 2011

Review of relationship between knowledge of management, workforce productivity and nervous fatigue

  The worker fatigue models which consist of two variables of physical fatigue and nervous fatigue are suitable tools for the managers of companies in predicting the dangers due to fatigue in the work environment. These two variables are again divided into several independent variables which affect the whole model. This research aims to identify the variables which have an effect on the nervous fatigue of the...

Author(s): Shahrokh-Shahraki and Nooh -Bin Abu Bakar

December 2011

SMEs’ capital structure behavior on cash holdings to Korean financial crisis: The evidence from emerging market

  This paper explores the leverage impact on corporate cash holdings using SME data listed in the emerging Korean KOSPI market between 1980 and 2008. It is well known that SMEs are characterized by relatively high asymmetric information and agency cost. We focus on the relationship between cash holdings and leverage. We hypothesize that the impact of leverage on cash holdings is likely to be non-monotonic for...

Author(s): Sungsin Kim, Ji-Yong Seo and Pando Sohn

December 2011

Comparative analysis of the index of disclosure and the importance given by stakeholders to information considered relevant for accountability in Philanthropic Institutions of Higher Education of Brazil (PIHEB)

  The objective of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of the accountability theory approach of the index of disclosure and the importance given by stakeholders to information considered relevant for accountability in Philanthropic Institutions of Higher Education of Brazil (PIHEB). The study developed an analysis of a population of 146 entities that are drawn up by a cadastre in the National Council...

Author(s): Emanoel Marcos Lima and Carlos Alberto Pereira

December 2011

A hybrid optimized artificial intelligent model to forecast crude oil using genetic algorithm

  Crude oil is one of the most critical energy commodities while with coal and natural gas are projected to provide roughly the 86% share of the total US primary energy supply in 2030. In this study, a novel hybrid optimum model based on artificial intelligent (AI) is proposed for world crude oil spot price forecasting. A three-layer feed forward neural network (FNN) model was used to model the oil price...

Author(s): R. Tehrani and Fariba Khodayar

December 2011

Determinants of unpaid overtime: Exploring this phenomenon from the perspective of the embeddedness theory

  This paper attempts to be the pioneer literature review for unpaid overtime and further suggest an integrative framework for better understanding. The author begins the research with a simple question: is unpaid overtime an organizational driven behavior or a self-serving behavior? After reviewing the contradictory research results from Europe and Japan, the author applies the embeddedness theory to make up...

Author(s): Tseng, Fang-Tai

December 2011

Demand elasticities of oil in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia using autoregressive and error correction procedures

  This paper investigates the short-run and the long-run oil demand elasticities in Saudi Arabia for the period 1980-2009, using auto-regressive and co-integration analyses. It finds oil price (the world crude price) insignificant in the short-run and significant in the long-run, and the demand to be price inelastic. The income is significant, and the demand is income inelastic in the short-run and elastic in...

Author(s): Hamad M. H. Al-Sheikh and Bukhari M. S. Sillah

December 2011

Examining a chain relationship of social support, job satisfaction and work family balance: A case of working women in Pakistan

  In the current arena, social support, job satisfaction and work-family balance are important issues with respect to the organizational studies. The current study examines the relationship of social support with job satisfaction. It also investigates the relationship of job satisfaction with work family balance among working women in Pakistan. It aims to provide empirical grounds for the said relationship in...

Author(s): Ashfaq Ahmad, Muhammad Imran Malik and Mumtaz Ali

December 2011

The relationship among innovation strategy, human resources practices and commitment generation in the biotechnology sector

  Our aim consists of understanding the process of innovation from a fourth perspective: (1) identification of the most appropriate competitive strategy; (2) the mediating role that human resources development has; (3) the decisive role of human resources in the development of organizational commitment; and, finally, (4) the effect of organizational commitment on organizational results. We test the model in...

Author(s): Isabel Sánchez Quirós and Jesús García-Tenorio Ronda

December 2011

Analysis of wood-based panels import to Iran: Simultaneous equations model approach

  The consumption of forest product commodities in Iran is primarily based on import. So, the knowledge of wood and wood product import is of prime importance to the national economy and provides a useful guide to producers and importers of such commodities and the policy makers. In this paper, the import for wood based panels including particleboard, plywood and veneer in Iran during the period of 1984 to 2008...

Author(s): Ajang Tajdini, Hamed Mofrad, Ahmad Jahan Latibari and Mehran Roohnia

December 2011

The gap between science, education and economy of Serbia and developed countries

  This study examines problems of national development in Serbia from the perspective of science, higher education, and economy. Indentifying these problems is based on presentation and analysis of indicative examples and data, and previously defined factors of national development related to knowledge, finallypointing out to the evident gap between Serbia and the most competitive countries. The study...

Author(s): Jasmina Arsenijević, Vilmoš Tot, Marija Nikolić and Dragana Milin

December 2011

The impact of personalization and complaint handling on customer loyalty

  The main objective is to determine the impacts of personalization, service quality and complaint handling on the satisfaction and loyalty of current account holders with Chilean banks. Information on these impacts would help bank executives responsible for managing resources to improve offerings that secure customer loyalty. A conceptual model based on criteria found in a literature survey and data from bank...

Author(s): Sara Arancibia Carvajal, Adrián Leguina Ruzzi, Ángel Fernández Nogales and Valentín Molina Moreno

December 2011

A framework for efficient enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in technical educational institutions

  Technical educational institutions (TEIs) can use enterprise resource planning for an integrated, better and efficient system for management of all the information related to many users in these Institutions. Though ERP is used in many TEIs in India, but it has not been found to be completely successful. This paper aims at assessing the efficiency of implementing an ERP system from users’ perspective....

Author(s): Shivani Goel, Ravi Kiran and Deepak Garg

December 2011

The most prevailing aspect of organisational politics that influences job performance: Case study of Malaysian Government servants

  The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between organisational politics (OP) and its components with job performance (JP). The components of OP are general political behavior (GPB), going along to get ahead (GATGA) and pay and promotion policies (PPP). The study, also determined the contribution of the overall organisational politics, general political behavior, going along to get ahead...

Author(s): Sarminah Samad

December 2011

Summarizing data for secure transaction: A hash algorithm

  Hashing is a process of transforming a variable length data message into a fixed size message digest. Hashing algorithms are considered one-way functions, since the input cannot be determined from the message digests. As a security tool in data communication, hashing is used both for protecting data integrity and for authentication. This study introduces a newly developed hash function. In hashing function,...

Author(s): Mehmet Sinan BaÅŸar

December 2011

A study of the relationship between locus of control and job involvement in Iran public employees

  With governments throughout the world being increasingly under pressure to be more responsive and effective, there has been a great deal of interest in employee involvement with job. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the correlation of locus of control and job involvement in public sector organizations of Iran. Previous studies revealed that locus of control may be related to job...

Author(s): Mohammad Hossein Motaghi Pisheh

December 2011

A study of work environment and employees’ performance in Pakistan

  This study investigates the work environment and employee performance in Pakistan. It aims to test a model based on five dimensions of work environment and their effect on the performance of employees. The data were collected from 115 employees of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) and processed through Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) to apply statistical tests, that is,...

Author(s): M. Imran Malik, Ashfaq Ahmad, Soloman Fernado Gomez and Mumtaz Ali

December 2011

Effect of suppliers’ involvement in product innovation activities on business performance

  In recent years, businesses have increasingly been turning to suppliers, researchers and other partners to perform product or technologic innovations. In literature, suppliers’ role is also examined especially in development of new products and studies related to supplier involvement in development of new products show that an increase in supplier involvement is beneficial for product innovation or...

Author(s):    Vural ÇAÄžLIYAN and Hasan KürÅŸat GÜLEÅž   

December 2011

Event management and consumer satisfaction in tourism industry

  During the last decade of the 20th century, there has been an evidence of intensive growth of the economic role and importance of events within developed countries and transition countries economies. The economic role and importance of events might be achieved only if the planning, staging and taking place of the events are well managed. The economic importance of events brought about the competition between...

Author(s): Tatjana Pivac, Ivana Blešić, Igor Stamenković and Snežana Besermenji

December 2011

The evaluation mode of hotel housekeeping management

  The housekeeping department must satisfy the customers’ requirements and provide the customers services at any time in 24 hours; therefore, it needs a large number of employees. The salary expenditure is really huge, along with the consumption of room material and supplies, and cleaning products. These are considered as a hotel’s important expenditure based on cost calculation, thus, this...

Author(s): Shih-Yun Hsu, Tu-Kuang Ho, Ju-Je Tsai and Chiung-Hsia Wang

December 2011

Board structure and corporate entrepreneurship: A case study of U.K

  This study examines the relationship between corporate governance that is board structure and composition and corporate entrepreneurship. Existing research examines aspects of governance and entrepreneurship without any consideration of the links that may exist between these two drivers. This study seeks to address this gap. Five propositions were developed to test the relationship of board structure and...

Author(s): Satirenjit Kaur Johl, Alistair Bruce and Martin Binks

December 2011

Optimal two ordering policy with censored demand information in a quick response (QR) system

  This paper investigates the optimal two ordering policy regarding censored demand information in a quick response (QR) system, which generalizes the conventional information updates issues in a real-life setting. Firstly, the optimal two ordering issue is modeled and formulated, and an explicit expected profit objective is presented; secondly, the existence of the optimal solution is analyzed. Thirdly, a...

Author(s): Hua-ming Song, Hui Yang, Lei Ma, Qian Xu and Jun Fang

December 2011

The physical capital maintenance concept and the new requirements of the economic environment

  This study aims at promoting the physical capital maintenance concept. In order to convince the utility of the concept in terms of performance at the level of economic entities, the paper is presented as a game in the mirror, in which the ball is the technology and the players are the economics and the accounting. Using this ball, both of them will try to score in the target land of the...

Author(s): Ionel JIANU, Iulia JIANU and Ionela GUSATU

December 2011

Which types of management accounting system information can be used to respond adequately to environmental uncertainty? The effects of user participation and tolerance of ambiguity

  Previous research findings have shown that the relationship between environmental uncertainty and the usefulness of management accounting system (MAS) information is varied. However, there are few studies exploring whether the personalities would influence the aforementioned relationship. This paper argued that the tolerance of ambiguity produces different levels of need for various types of MAS information....

Author(s): Bing-Chyan Chiou

December 2011

The interaction of income smoothing and conditional accounting conservatism: Empirical evidence from Iran

  The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interaction of conditional conservatism with income smoothing in Tehran Stock Exchange. In order to test the hypotheses, 117 firms were selected during 2001 to 2009. We use Eckel (1981) model to classify smoothing and no smoothing firms and then we apply Ball and Shivakumar (2005) type measures of conditional conservatism on each group. The results indicate...

Author(s): Hashem Valipour Ghodratollah Talebnia and Sayed Ali Javanmard

December 2011

A study of employee satisfaction in terms of organization culture

  This study investigated the link between organizational culture and employee satisfaction in developmental sector’s organizations [(International Non-government Organizations (INGOs), National Non-Government Organizations (NNGOs) and government run development programs (GRDPs)] working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa(KP) and Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of Pakistan. A sample size of 401 was collected...

Author(s): Sajjadul Haq Safi, Waseef Jamal and Sajjad Ahmad

December 2011

Socio-demographic determinants of entrepreneurial intentions: A case from Iran

  The main purpose of this study was to identify rural youths’ entrepreneurial intentions in the western part of Iran. The research also sought to investigate impacts of socio demographic traits on this intention. The study concentrated on the population of 15 to 28 years old rural youth (boys) in Kermanshah Province, west of Iran. A sample of 351 rural youth was selected through a stratified random...

Author(s): Amirhossein Alibaygi and Mehrdad Pouya

December 2011

Investigating the relationship between principals’ emotional intelligence (EI) and organizational health: A case study

  The main purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between principals’ emotional intelligence and organizational health in the elementary, middle and high schools of Maragheh sub- province. In this research, Goleman’s competency model which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, sympathy and social skills (regulating relationship with the others) is used to measure...

Author(s): Farhad Nejad Irani, Reza Rasouli and  Masoud Behravesh

December 2011

An investigation into why Turkish business groups resist the adoption of M-form in post-liberalization

  The aim of the present study is to investigate why Turkish business groups resist the adoption of the M-form despite Chandler’s well-established premise on the evolution of multi-activity firms toward the M-form in post-liberalization. This paper is based on the economic and institutional theory. An analysis of the findings reveals that the holding companies (H-form) resist the M-form despite the...

Author(s): Kader Sahin