International Business Research

This study addresses a question that has not been researched much previously, namely, does the unavailability of health insurance act as an incentive for persons to enlist in the military in the U.S.? This relationship is proffered as the “Military Health Care Magnet Hypothesis.” The present study endeavors to provide insight into this issue within a cost-benefit framework. The empirical analysis uses annual data for the years 1974 through 2007, the only years to date for which all of the variables in the model are dependable after the end of military conscription in the U.S. in 1973. Both OLS and 2SLS results demonstrate, among other things, that the greater the percentage of the civilian population without health insurance, the greater the rate of enlistment in the U.S. Army.

International Business Research, Vol.1, No.1, January 2008. All in one file.

Vol.2, No.2, April 2009. All in one file.

Based on a feasibility analysis on the product and source market orientation of the Ailing River Drifting Scenic Spot, this article explores its product quality as well as market strategies in four aspects including product, price, promotion and place.

The purpose of this study was to empirically test whether academic satisfaction (university vision, respect and recognition, relationship with colleagues, teamwork, incentives, management support, salary) has an effect on university commitment (affective, normative, continuance), The population comprised of academic staff in Applied Science Private University, a questionnaire survey was adopted to collect the primary data from the respondents whom they were randomly selected using a stratified sampling technique, a total of 300 questionnaires were administered to potential respondents from the 9 faculties.The study findings indicate that overall academic satisfaction has a statistical significant effect on overall university commitment, it also reveals that university vision, teamwork, management support, salary and work environment has more impact on overall university commitment than respect and recognition, relationship with colleagues and incentives.

study was carried out in the administrative seats of Oyo and Ogun states of Nigeria with the aid of structured questionnaires which were administered on 325 respondents in the study area using simple random sampling approach. The collected data were analysed using multiple regression model.The study revealed that, duration of driving, stress, sleep deficit, alcohol contributed significantly to the causes of driver’s fatigue both at 5% and 10% significant levels.It was concluded that, the safest option is for driver to avoid driving when sleepy on when they are ill or taking medication. And that it is pertinent on them to plan their journeys in such a way that it will include regular rest, break of at least 15 minutes at every two hours.

Knowledge economy, as well as circular economy, has been the trend of the economic development of the world since the 21st century. The development of knowledge economy requires people to strengthen their ability of replacing material resources with intellectual resources, realizing that participants in the economic activities are better educated. With knowledge economy coming, the society is eager for the high-quality people. No doubt, enterprise accountants are one of the different kinds of talents. But we may wonder what an accountant should have to meet the high requirements of knowledge economy. Consequently, this paper which combines the theory with the practice of enterprise accountants, deeply analyzes the problem of accountants’ cultivation by an all-round and developing viewpoint from four aspects that is morality, consciousness, talent, and scholarship. It aims at making it possible for accountants to promote their cultivation to proper the accounting cause in the era of knowledge economy.

In the face of the fast developing of Information and technology and the appearance of the new management theory, the author analyze the abuse of the conventional accounting system, and use the advance ideas on modern information and technology (REA model and events drive) and the cooperation theory to redesign the frame of Accounting Information System of Third party logistics enterprise, and point out the virtue of the new system.

The goal of this study is to describe and summarize the differences between national accounting rules and international standards, then the valuing and analyzing their effects on business decisions, management performance and economic environment in Hungary. Financial data are from published financial statements and Hungarian Business Information database. My sample comprises 65 international standards adopting and 260 local accounting rules user firms. This paper showed that both businesses earnings and stock returns effect on the management turnover. Businesses with lower labour productivity compared to their industry peers have greater incentives to adopt international accounting standards. Sensitivity of CEO turnover to accounting earnings increased after the adoption of international system. Businesses with higher leverage and lagged sales growth have more frequent employee layoffs. Standards user enterprises’ employee layoffs are more response to accounting performance in the post-adoption period.

The journey to have a common set of accounting standards started long before to give it a professional shape and essence. And accountants all over the world feel the necessity to shorten the gap among different streams of accounting practices through harmonization. Still, we have a couple of strong variants of accounting practices (say, for example, US GAAP, UK GAAP, IAS etc.) over the world existed and practiced simultaneously. These variants are working as threats towards harmonization of accounting practices. However, the profession has also witnessed some improvements in recent years in the process of global convergence putting some ray of hope. International and even local standard setting bodies have come up with projects of harmonization and in most of the cases became successful. The day is not far away when we will observe that accounting world is controlled and guided by a single set of standards giving it a status of legal discipline in true sense. The paper focuses on this harmonization issue, its current status, challenges with special reference to Indian perspective.

The mergers & acquisitions (M&A) of enterprises are the management activities with high risks which exist through the whole M&A activity, and the financial risk is the important influencing factor to impact the M&A. By analyzing of value evaluation, financing activity and financial risk in M&A, it is obvious that M&A is a property rights trading with high risk (and the financial risk is the important factor with the highest risk). Therefore, the before-event control and the mid-event control should be applied to prevent the financial risk, and the after-event control should be used to reduce the financial risk, and accordingly enhance the survival rate of M&A.

This article aims at the problem of deviation between the specialty structure of general university and the demand structure of market, and judges the state of employment rate by the single-value and standard deviation(x-S) control chart, then presents a specialty structure adjustment mechanism. The theories and methods of this article provide a quantified tool of undergraduate specialty structure adjustment for universities, and decrease the blindness of adjustment. Apply this mechanism to a certain university’s computer science and technology specialty of Dalian, it achieved satisfying result.

Mobile commerce or better known as M-commerce is a fairly new phenomenon in the wake of the second technology wave from the famous E-commerce (electronic commerce) in the 21st century. As the Internet started to proliferate in many parts of the world, the mobile phone penetration in terms of voice communication started to grow rapidly. This simultaneous rapid growth has caused a new phenomenon of convergence of Internet computing and mobile communication where M-commerce has its root. M-commerce has the potential to enhance the work-life within the employed mobile phone users in Bangladesh. The purpose of this study is to examine whether awareness and knowledge, convenience of Mobile devices and WAP/GPRS enabled handsets, pricing and cost, security and privacy, rich and fast information, and perceived usefulness have any influence on the adoption of M-commerce among employed Mobile phone users in two major cities in Bangladesh – Dhaka and Chittagong. A survey method was used to collect data. The findings suggest that pricing and cost, rich and fast information, and security and privacy are significant predictors of the adoption of M-commerce. Self-efficacy is found to be a moderating factor for the adoption of M-commerce services. The findings also suggest that there is no significant gender difference in terms of M-commerce adoption level among mobile users in Bangladesh.

The cost advantage of export-oriented enterprise has promoted the quick increase of the export trade of China, and been the main source of the competitive advantage in the international market. Western enterprises with technical advantages may produce the products with higher quality and lower costs. So it is not the fault of the cost advantage completely when China frequently suffered the “two-anti and two-safeguard (anti-dumping and anti-subsidy, and safeguard measure and special safeguard measure)” in international trades. It is very important to further explore various effective sources of the cost advantage of export-oriented enterprises for solidifying their status in the international competition. At the same time, it is urgent to completely implement various effective strategies for preventing the “two-anti and two-safeguard” in international trades.

In recent years the tourism industry has seen the emergence of associations whose purpose is to encourage firms to behave in a more ethical fashion. In particular, ATR (Agir Pour un Tourisme Responsable: Action for responsible tourism) and ATES (Association pour le Tourisme Equitable et Solidaire: Association for equitable and interdependent tourism) represent an ever-larger number of tour operators who seek an increased commitment to sustainable tourism. Given this concern, and basing our research on the perceptions of adventure-tour operators top managers, we propose to explore to what extent the principles enunciated in these collective ethics charters have actually been applied within their organizations and "on the ground". An analysis of the observations we have collected shows that the application of these charters is still unsatisfactory on many levels, for reasons that are as much structural as they are economic or human. This leads to recommendations which we believe are likely to promote a better application of these charters in future.

This study conducts a cross-country comparison of capital structure and its determinants between UK and Germany to test alternative theories of capital structure within different institution traditions. The purpose of this study is to bring into focus the possible effect of institution differences on capital structure choice and its firm-level determinants.

Triathlons and their events are in a new era in the consumption of sport. Because of this increased funding more professionals are needed to understand what attracts sports consumers to what is seen as a gruelling but enjoyable multi sports event. For affective marketing and event management, practioners need to understand more and more what decisions are made when the sports consumer makes a choice for a particular sports event.This study is focused at the National Governing Body for the sport of Triathlon in the United Kingdom and also the Regional/ local event managers and marketers. Drawing upon marketing and consumer behaviour literature, the primary aim of this research was to investigate from the consumer perspective how their internal variables during the decision making process of consumer behaviour affects the selection of sports event, namely triathlon. To establish this information, data was drawn upon previous participants of a triathlon event, then a further investigation into what decisions were made from triathlon consumer’s perspective when selecting an event.A self administered piloted questionnaire was done in January (2005) with twelve active local triathletes. A further 60 were then posted and electronically mailed to previous participants of a Triathlon event 2005 at the end of January (2005). The consumer’s abilities ranged from the recreational participant through to the elite athlete and the questionnaire contained eighteen questions incorporating a variety of ordinal and nominal questions as well as likert scale questions. The questionnaires were both returned electronically and by post.The response rate was fairly high at 92% (n=55), respondents represented the sample frame representing a cross section of gender, age and abilities. The quantitative data was analysed via SPSS 13.0 which is a statistical package. This revealed a variety of statistical results of approximately twenty with statistical findings (P

United Kingdom local authority leisure facilities are beginning to move into a developing era of demand by the consumptionof those who wish to use it due to the promotion of a healthier lifestyle. Because of this there is an increasing demand forthose facilities to compete with private and not-profit organisations who have experienced and trained marketing departmentsto attract and publicise their products and services to the consumers out there. Therefore to stay in the market placeand compete with the different sectors of the leisure provider a clearer understanding of the consumer base needs to beunderstood.For the effective marketing and the facility management of those leisure facilities practioners need to understand more andmore about what decisions are made when the leisure consumer makes a choice of a particular leisure facility over anotherand in what way marketing influences this choice?Therefore this study looks at Leisure Divisions within three Local Authorities and to support this it draws upon marketingand consumer behaviour literature. The primary aim of the research was to investigate from the consumer’s perspectivewhat external marketing variables affected their choice on a local authority leisure facility. To establish this information, datawas drawn upon visitors from facilities spanning across three local authorities situated and then a qualititative analysis wasconducted in form of interviews to establish what decisions were made from the leisure consumer’s perspective whenmaking choices on a leisure facility.80 were administered in a face to face questionnaires at each of the facilities by the researcher which were then completedby March 2007.The consumer’s abilities ranged from the recreational/ infrequent consumer through to the regular/ physically activeconsumer and the questionnaire contained ten questions incorporating a variety of ordinal and nominal questions as wellas likert scale questions.The response rate was fairly high at 100% (N=80) respondents represented the sample frame a cross section of gender, ageand abilities. The quantitative data was analysed via SPSS 13.0 which is a statistical package. This revealed a variety ofstatistical results of approximately twenty with statistical findings (P>0.05) conducted then a further 5% (N=4) was used fora qualitative analysis.The most influential things that were found were that leisure consumers selected facilities based on locality and the mostpowerful marketing tool was word of mouth. .In discussing such findings, a number of recommendations have been made as to the future management and marketing ofthe leisure facilities as well helping to develop this subject matter further.Keywords: Professionalisation of marketing, Facility objectives, Word of mouth

This paper specifically looks at the process of organizational change and how employees can influence the outcomes. Organizations tend to underutilize their employees during times of change. An organization is basically a collection of people with the same objectives. Ultimately, I seek to understand how an employee change agent framework can function as an essential tool for controlling and analyzing organizational change. As a manager and an instructor of management, I believe that is the employee that essentially controls the success of any change in an organization. Employees should be charged with the ability to foster positive change by management, but more so, by themselves. It is the employees responsibility to make the change work in the organization, along with making changes in themselves to help improve not only the organization, but to improve their own working behaviors. All employers should be creating a learning organization by asking their employees to become responsible members of the organization. Allow your staff to be present at the table. Also empower your staff to become more aligned with the core mission of the organization. The more your staff believes they are making a difference for the organization, the more vested, accountable, and responsible they will become.

This is exploratory study that aims at examining formal contractual agreements for firms in Tanzania using Transaction cost theoretical approach. Transaction cost studies have rarely being done on firms in Africa and Tanzania in particular. Sampling frame used is from Tanzania revenue authority records for registered business 2008-2010. The study is centered on business – to business buyer-seller relations. Primary data were collected from buying side of this business relationship. Random sample of n=150 buyers were contacted through telephone calls and questionnaire were delivered personally. The response rate was about 65%. The findings suggest Transaction cost theoretical framework to be highly consistent with previous findings in western setting despite of using Tanzania as context. However there were some slightly differences which could partly be explained by study limitations. This study is limited in terms of not using variables like culture and institutions in connection to how they influence this theory.

The value concept seems to be one of the most recent and most popular trends. In recent years, customer value has become a major focus among strategy researchers and practitioners as an essential element of a firm’s competitive strategy. (Ravald and Grönroos, 1996) Customer value and customer benefit are key concepts in marketing as well as operations management the emphasis in airline management seems to lie on cost management and traditional quality management customer value concepts in passenger air transport, becomes clear that there have been changing focuses not necessarily always driven by customer needs but more by technical and market influences. (Biegera, Wittmerb) Therefore, this article focuses on customer value from a customer's perspective and study focuses on determination of the domestic passenger’s perceived value of Turkish Airlines’ services, like for example price, convenience of flights, on time performance etc. This concept is a new strategic orientation in the industry.

In this paper, 40 airports in Turkey were examined with the help of Data Envelopment Analyze Model and it was aimed to measure the activities of year 2008. For this purpose, operation expenses, number of personnel, flight traffic and number of passengers were taken as input variables, whereas number of passengers/area, flight traffic/runway, total load and operation expenses were taken as output variables. The analysis was solved with DEA Solver and it was concluded that the most effective airports were Istanbul Atatürk, Antalya, Denizli Çardak, Sinop, Kayseri Malatya and Van F.Melen Airports.

Development of a coherent methodology for supply chain vs. supply chain competition remains elusive in literature in terms of purpose, approaches and theoretical foundations. The purpose of this paper is to identify suitable theories of competition from which supply chain vs. supply chain competition may be further developed. Paper explores literature on competition theories, and competition and its correlates and also considers the dichotomy between competitiveness and competition in relation to achievement of a competitive advantage in supply chains. An argument is made for the identification and development of theory that reflects the multidimensional, process-based and emergent properties of supply chains. Three competition theories are identified from which supply chain vs. supply chain competition may begin to be conceptualized and possibly operationalized. A chronological conceptualization of competition, competitiveness and competitive advantage is also proposed, which is intuitive to the realization of competitive advantage in inter-supply chain competition.

The overarching research question in this paper is: What is the influence of high-versus-low context cultural orientations on effective participation in globally distributed collaboration using email? Two subsidiary research questions follow: (1) What discernable patterns of cultural variation are evident in the email messages, and (2) What is the effect of cultural variation on the contribution of Civil Society during the following stages of the decision-making process: (a) problem identification, (b) proposal making and generation of ideas, (c) response to ideas and deliberation, and (d) solution. To answer these questions, we will apply Edward Hall’s (1976) intercultural communication theory as the primary lens. Specifically, we will employ a cultural dimension called “context” which explains the variations in terms of high-context-versus-low context. Other literature in this domain will also be used to explore the various aspects of cultural impacts. The main objective of this paper is to propose a research design that uses content analysis to look at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) public archival email messages. From this source material, we will apply intercultural communication theory in order to provide descriptive statistical analysis and in-depth descriptions for each of the decision-making stages described above, from a cultural stance. At the completion of this study, we hope to be able to demonstrate specific impacts that high context and low context cultural backgrounds have on globally distributed collaboration, and to suggest some fertile areas for future research such as how to minimize the different cultures’ drawbacks and maximize their positive advantages to facilitate globally distributed collaboration.

Globalization and technological advancement has created a highly competitive market in the banking and finance industry. Performance of the industry depends heavily on the accuracy of the decisions made at managerial level. This study uses multiple linear regression technique and feed forward artificial neural network in predicting bank performance. The study aims to predict bank performance using multiple linear regression and neural network. The study then evaluates the performance of the two techniques with a goal to find a powerful tool in predicting the bank performance. Data of thirteen banks for the period 2001-2006 was used in the study. ROA was used as a measure of bank performance, and hence is a dependent variable for the multiple linear regressions. Seven variables including liquidity, credit risk, cost to income ratio, size, concentration ratio, inflation and GDP were used as independent variables. Under supervised learning, the dependent variable, ROA was used as the target output for the artificial neural network. Seven inputs corresponding to seven predictor variables were used for pattern recognition at the training phase. Experimental results from the multiple linear regression show that two variables: credit risk and cost to income ratio are significant in determining the bank performance. Two variables were found to explain about 60.9 percent of the total variation in the data with a mean square error (MSE) of 0.330. The artificial neural network was found to give optimal results by using thirteen hidden neurons. Testing results show that the seven inputs explain about 66.9 percent of the total variation in the data with a very low MSE of 0.00687. Performance of both methods is measured by mean square prediction error (MSPR) at the validation stage. The MSPR value for neural network is lower than the MPSR value for multiple linear regression (0.0061 against 0.6190). The study concludes that artificial neural network is the more powerful tool in predicting bank performance.

The development of bank card business has severely challenged the improvement of risk-controlling technology. While assessing risk is the foundation of risk-controlling in bank card business. Presently, domestic banks have set up their customer data base. By analyzing the status of risk assessing in risk-controlling, this article tries to applying Fisher Discrimination Approach to assessing customers’ risk and overcomes the difficulty of determining the influential factors’ share in traditional bank assessing approach.

Model selection tests and criteria are employed to identify empirically the most appropriate price variable for the purposeof studying the price-volume relation. Five different price variables are considered as explanatory variables in modelselection tests, which are carried out on a bilateral basis using data on stock prices and trading volume in eleven markets/indices. The results show that the most appropriate price variable varies from one market to another although two pricevariables appear to be dominant: the extreme value variance and the absolute price change. The results do not providemuch support for the notion of asymmetry in the price-volume relation. It is suggested that it may be useful to use nonnestedmodel selection tests and criteria to identify the most appropriate price variable before testing for causality, whichis the principal tool used for examining the price- volume relation.

This article examines the entrepreneurial intentions of young well educated people in Tunisia. Tunisia is a Muslim country which is “catching up”. Hence, understanding the attitudes and entrepreneurial intentions of females, and contrasting these with males, will provide an account of cultural attitudes towards female enterprise. Our survey of 332 students showed that male and female intentions were very positive, but varied by gender. We found that cultural gender expectations continued to play a major role, but that this was most obvious in how female enterprise could be operated, rather than in the attractiveness of entrepreneurship itself.

In this paper we have investigated the interactions between stock prices and exchange rates in three emerging countries of South Asia named as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. We have considered average monthly nominal exchange rates of US dollar in terms of Bangladeshi Taka, Indian Rupee and Pakistani Rupee and monthly values of Dhaka Stock Exchange General Index, Bombay Stock Exchange Index and Karachi Stock Exchange All Share Price Index for period of January 2003 to June 2008 to conduct the study. Empirical result shows that exchange rates and stock prices data series are non stationary and integrated of order one. Then we have applied Johansen procedure to test for the possibility of a cointegrating relationship. Result shows that there is no cointegrating relationship between stock prices and exchange rates. Finally we applied Granger causality test to find out any causal relationship between stock prices and exchange rates. Outcome shows there is no way causal relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in the countries.

By considering two time windows of crises, first one is the time period of Asian financial crisis (1997-1999) and the other one is prevailing global economic crisis (2007-2009), the pattern of underpricing and aftermarket performance are studied. A sample of 626 companies and Market adjusted return model are used. Result indicates that in the recent global economic crisis IPO activity is on shrinking trend and there is 10% increase in average underpricing as compared to last Asian financial crisis. There is a fluctuating trend in aftermarket performance of IPO returns. A minimum return of 62% in 2009 is observed. This study also endeavors to examine the efficiency of Chinese stock market and how the Asian and global financial crisis influences the efficiency of Chinese stock market. In order to determine the efficiency of Chinese stock market we apply efficient market hypothesis of random walk. Here we apply ADF, DF-GLS, PP and KPSS tests on stock market returns in order to check the unit root in data series for both Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges separately. The results of the study shows that Chinese stock market is weak form efficient and past data of stock market movements may not be very useable in order to make excess returns. In both periods of crises Chinese stock market is observed weak form efficient.

Service quality has many benefits including achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage as determinant of business success and failure and as a barometer of corporate performance. In the service industry like the property management, quality and perception of quality is essential. Thus, the need to deliver quality service is imperative in order to retain tenants as services is the criteria upon which clients, customers and users of real estate product and services differentiate one organization from another. The purpose of the study discussed in this paper is to develop PropertyQual, a service quality instrument for property management profession and to contribute to research that analyses the relationship between expectations and perceptions of service quality. It also aims to use a gap analysis based model to measure tenants’ perceptions of service quality in the property management of purpose built office buildings in Malaysia. This study utilizes a combination of quantitative and qualitative approach to research which allow triangulation of the findings and also enable the use of one method to inform the other, reveal paradox or contradictions, and extend the breadth of inquiry. The Cronbach alpha and CFA analysis confirmed that PropertyQual is a robust instrument to measure service quality in the property management services. The current findings do provide some important insights of understanding the variables that contribute to service quality and tenants satisfaction of property management services. This research has added to the base of knowledge regarding the assessment of service quality and tenant satisfaction in property management services and highlights areas for future research.

This paper compares the performance of engineering education programmes in India under varied management styles. The comparison is based on the scores allotted to various engineering programmes by the expert teams of National Board of Accreditation, India. The study has been formulated on the statistical techniques of hypothesis testing and multiple comparisons on the performance scores of 160 programmes from various states of India. It is found out that the performances of Autonomous colleges are superior and autonomy helps in the improvement of process factors of the engineering programmes, especially for the Industry-Institute interaction and R&D activities.

An intensely competitive world forces organizations to act ever more quickly. To enhance their capability to respond to change, organizations should seek to identify what are their core competencies and the competitive advantages which are their keys to success. The term “organizational learning” has become a term of interest to many academics and practitioners because this represents the organization’s ability to change. Simultaneously, organizations have to consider the cultural context in environments in which they act. This paper assesses the relationship between national culture and learning capabilities of a sample of organizations in Cambodia. The survey questionnaire, which received 417 responses, related to national culture and organizational learning. The study found that national culture had strong relationships with learning capabilities of organizations in Cambodia. The paper concludes by following some recommendations for Cambodian organizations to take into consideration to strengthen their levels of performance.

External auditors are very important for third partite because they add credibility to financial statements and third party can make decision in accord of financial statement audited. In recent years, the auditing and accounting profession faced scrutiny because of auditing scandals. Recent high profile accounting controversies such as Enron and World have highlighted the continuing debate about whether and how auditors can be independent of their clients (Kosmala, 2003). In the view of the fact, now a days because of non-audit services, the audit practice is questionable, whereas third parties believe that without independence, there is no value for accounting and auditing practices. In this paper the author concluded that the non-audit services impair audit independence and audit objectivity.In this situation, the author believes that both the professional and academic should be redefined non-audit services and also limited such services for audit and accounting professions; therefore national and international professions should be taken more reactions regarding to clarify of non-audit services to auditors as well as third parties.

Falsified financial statements have already become an international and historic issue. How to judge and audit the falsified activities in financial statements has been the focus of accounting research, and also the major problems deserving governments to solve. In recent years, the management level of enterprises in China falsifies financial statements by all methods to conceal the real financial conditions, business operations, and cash flows, with different aims. As a result, it causes great losses to the state. Besides, information users can not make the right decision with these falsified financial statements, causing a serious credit mess in market. This paper analyzes the motives of enterprises in China for falsifying financial statements, and also the common methods, advancing relevant methods for auditing recognition.

In recent years, some problems existing in the interior auditing of Chinese enterprise groups have directly or indirectly influenced the enhancement of the management and economic benefit of enterprise group. In this article, based on detailed analysis of these problems, following countermeasures are put forward, including perfecting the management mode of interior auditing, perfecting the program of interior auditing, performing the interior auditing by computer, and enhancing the auditors’ quality of interior auditing.

We examine the ability of short rates and yield spreads to forecast the growth in Australian industrial output. We find that since 1990, the short rate has a significant increase in its predictive power for forecasting output growth in many industries. We document this increase. The yield spread, on the other hand, is useful in predicting the growth of industries with a `longer' production cycle, such as manufacturing and wholesale trade. Hence, the predictive power of the yield spread on total GDP, is mainly from its ability to forecast these industries. Our out-of-sample forecasts show that yield spread is a good forecasting device for many industries, particular for output growth over longer horizons.

Based on cellular automata (CA), the diffusion of communication products, namely the mobile phone (MP) and the landline telephone (LT), were modeled and simulated. The ordinary least squares (OLS) procedure and nonlinear regression method were carried out to estimate the diffusion parameters. The predicted results were compared with the actual data. It is found that: (1) the diffusion processes of mobile phone and landline telephone were successfully examined using cellular automata method, (2) the predicted results of mobile phone and landline telephone show four stages of the product life cycle, (3) the present situation of mobile phones in China is at the fast growth stage and the present situation of landline telephone is at the maturity stage, (4) the market of mobile communication is growing fast and has a brighter future and the landline communication market is meeting great challenges. The future competition will be more serious between the mobile communication and the landline communication. Both of them can benefit from introduction of advanced technology and new services because such a strategy has the potential to convert some consumers of one of communications into another communications. As for the whole communications, the innovation of technology and services will be generated and introduced into the industry of communications to drive the market.

Due to global competition, companies have indeed emphasized that quality should have to be put in place, integrated into all aspects of products and services within their management system. Hence total quality management (TQM) has become increasingly popular as one of the managerial devices in ensuring continuous improvement as to improve customer satisfaction and retention as well as to ensure its product or service quality. Importantly, employees are regarded as the most important entity in ensuring that total quality management (TQM) can be carried out successfully in an organization. Therefore, this paper will address certain issues based on employees’ perspectives with regard to TQM implementation in the SMEs of the automobile industry in Klang Valley. Specifically, the research would identify the perceptions towards TQM among the employees in the small-medium industry in the automobile sector. Secondly, to determine the important factors towards TQM implementation as perceived by those employees. Finally, to ascertain whether there are other measurements employed by the SMEs of the automobile industry in ensuring quality.

With the rapid development of automotive industry and Logistics, automotive logistics which is the most complicated in logistics develops rapidly, but there is a wide gap in automotive logistics between China and foreign countries. In this paper, major logistics operation modes of domestic and foreign automotive industry are introduced, and many problems of Chinese automotive logistics are summarized on the basis of comparison and analysis. The optimizing countermeasure is brought forward to instruct China’s automotive logistics to develop better and more rapidly.

Our research will focus on research in the Journal of Business Ethics (hereafter JoBE) that used Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance. The JoBE is the foremost outlet for ethics research for most academic disciplines. We also included research from the International Journal of Value Based Management (hereafter IJoVBM) and Teaching Business Ethics (hereafter TBE), which merged with the JoBE in 2004. Our goal is to identify research that used Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance construct; we identified 84 such studies.. Understanding how uncertainty avoidance has been used in prior research could provide opportunities for future research to further increase our understanding of differences in international behavior and/or perceptions.

Balancing life and work is the most important challenge of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs seek a logical balance between their job and life and this issue is of great importance to Iranian entrepreneur women. Inability to handle the contrast between work and family is the main source of job stress and ends in job and personal dissatisfaction. To overcome these problems we have to look for solutions that not only meet the organization needs but also imposes less stress on entrepreneurs and thus results in improving their productivity.In this article we have studied female entrepreneurs situation and their share in labor market, as well as flexible methods of doing jobs especially job sharing method. We have done structured interviews with entrepreneurs of Azad University and their attitude to possibility of job sharing and its effect on female entrepreneurs at university has been expressed. After performing the qualitative methods, questionnaires were made and the attitude of female entrepreneurs towards job sharing was examined. The results of quantitative research show that they have a positive attitude towards job sharing but we have to notice that job sharing doesn’t lead in weakening the bargaining ability of female entrepreneurs.

Limited income people in Bangladesh are not solvent enough to buy essential household durables (like TV, fridge, furniture, sofa-set etc.) to enhance the lifestyle interests after fulfillment of their basic needs. They need consumer credit to buy these products for satisfying their lifestyle interests. The purpose of the study is to identify the consumer credit impacts on lifestyle interests of consumers of Bangladesh. 576 respondents in a survey were asked to rate the importance of 15 lifestyle interests variables related to consumer credit. These data were tested via factor analysis (the principal components method with varimax rotation) by using SPSS program. The results show that people borrow money to buy household goods to gratify their desired interests to family, home, recreation, fashion and food. The thesis will make contribution to our understanding that people need consumer credit to suit their desired interest to family, home, recreation, fashion, food etc.

Nowadays, the experimental country banks are in good conditions as a whole and they play an important role in promoting the construction of new socialized countryside, however there are some problems existing in operating .here try to provide some reference suggestion.

This paper employs a real option approach to evaluate the value of the option to delay write-offs non-performing loans(NPLs) in commercial banks. On the assumption that the callback rate of NPLs follows the standard geometric Bronian andthe reinvestment return follows jump-diffusion model, the partial differential equation which the value keep to is obtainedusing dynamic programming technique. With the condition of value-matching and smooth-pasting, the solution of theequation is obtained. The optimal timing in banks’ writing off their NPLs is gained with the solution, along with the conditionto put off disposal of NPLs.

Banking is an industry with high intensity and fast update of knowledge, information, and technology. Innovation is a key element for commercial banks’ survival and development. In the self-development process, China commercial banks cooperate with trust companies in business and create new financial products, strengthening management and risks control. By this way, banks can find out new profit rising point and the state-owned commercial banks can improve their comprehensive competitive strength. This paper analyzes the present situation and problems of China’s banking-and-trust operations, advancing effective business innovation and management mode.

While ethics and financial investments seem to be mutually exclusive, ethics have recently become an important issue in the financial field. There is an increased emphasis on the role of faith and religious beliefs on ethical business practices for some investors who not only seek profits through their investments but they also require the achievement of a moral duty beside the quest of wealth accumulation.Since investors become more aware of the benefits of Ethics and socially responsible investment, the interest in Islamic investing and ethically based banking is also increasing.Among the most important objectives of the Islamic finance in general and particularly the Islamic banks, is the establishment of justice and elimination of exploitation in business transaction. This can be done by the prohibition in of all sources of illegal “unjustified” enrichment and the prohibition of dealing in transactions that contain excessive risk or speculation. The paper seeks to explain that the Islamic bank services represent an example of ethically and socially responsible investment.

By predicting the condition of basic education teachers in western rural area, this paper establishes a mathematical model determining western basic education investment ratio.

Unbalanced bidding problem with mixed uncertainty of fuzziness and randomness is considered in this paper, where the bidding engineering quantities of each activity are assumed to be fuzzy random variables. Two types of fuzzy random models as expected value maximization model and maximax chance-constrained model are built to satisfy different optimization requirements. Then a hybrid intelligent algorithm integrating fuzzy random simulations, neural network and genetic algorithm is designed to solve these models. Finally, a numerical experiment is given to illustrate its effectiveness of the algorithm. The results show that the algorithm is feasible and effective.

This paper examines the culture clash at Rover when BMW took over the company from British Aerospace. Research hasshown that the globalisation of business across national and cultural boundaries has resulted in some culture-clashes andthere has also been an increase in interest in the impact of culture on business. This paper explains the breakdown incommunication and the different approaches to car manufacturing in Rover under BMW’s ownership.Both Rover and BMW were symbols of national pride and therefore deeply embedded in their own culture. When BMWtook over the Rover group, the company was making profits and Rover had won numerous quality awards. Six years later,BMW decided to sell Rover at a substantial loss but retained the new mini which has been very successful. Although someof the problems faced by BMW were outside their control, the culture clash certainly exacerbated the problem.