Business and Economics Journal

Post World War Ⅱ, European enterprises and industries, as well as their overall economies, were developed by deploying and adapting US technology and management methods; this practice was also observed in Germany around the same time. American management methods were introduced and implemented under the US-led productivity movement. The major American management methods implemented in Germany were those for management education and human relations as an American labor management method. In Germany, however, many factors influenced the introduction of American management methods.

This research examines the relationship between participation in decision making and employee productivity among staff in Naara Rural Bank and Builsa Community Bank. The mixed method research design was used for the study due to its peculiar nature. Thus qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches were employed. The simple and purposive sampling techniques were used to obtain a sample of 80 respondents for the study. Two sets of instruments were used in the study: a questionnaire consisting of 40 items of both open-ended and closed questions on the various employee participation scenarios and an interview guide consisting of ten items. The data analysis was done using The Statistical Product for Service Solutions (SPSS) and the Statistical Analysis System (SAS). The quantitative analysis indicated a significant association between productivity and the various forms of participation, using chi-square test of independence at 95% significance level. Findings from the study indicated that when employees participate in decision making in the various forms, decision implementation becomes easy, creates a good working environment, increases commitment and satisfaction on decisions taken and also increases employees moral since they feel recognized and as part of the team in the organization and the direct consequence of all this improved productivity.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the correlation between some demographic and financial predictor variables and the stochastic volatility of the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 index between January 2000 and December 2010 inclusive. In particular, the predictor variables used for the statistical analysis are: prime rate (PR)(t), the United States population proportion between the ages of 40-64 (PP(t)), inflation rate (IR(t)), logarithm of the unemployment rate (log(UE)(t)), and consumer confidence (CC)(t)). The empirical relationship between these variables is established using multiple regression analytic techniques with EXCEL software. The relevance of each predictor variable is assessed by inspection of the P-value of the associated multiple regression coefficient. The plot of the observed and modeled S&P 500 index for the 149 data points (months) corresponding to the period spanning January 2000 and December 2010 elucidates the potential of the empirical model to forecast the volatility of the S&P 500 for the period in question. The constructed empirical multiple regression model for the observed S&P 500 has the configuration:

Ŷ= -160.313+7331.269*(PR)(t)+4780.536*(PP)(t)+611.035*(IR)(t)

+606.866*log(UE)(t)+1.901*(CC)(t)

The adjusted R2 for the empirical model is approximately 0.49 .This means that during the period 2000-2010, about 49% of the variability of the S&P 500 volatility could be explained by the information accrued from the joint influence of the five predictor variables.

The writing instruments market in India is a very lucrative market for various brands worldwide simply because of its sheer size. This market is estimated at 1600 to 2400 mn pieces a year and Rs 22 bn in value. A number of Indian as well as International players are in the race to tap this market to the fullest. This paper is the result of a through field study done over a period of 11 months. Most of the data in this paper comes from primary sources that include consumer surveys, retail surveys, lab experiments and expert opinions. The research Methodology is detailed in subsequent chapters. This study primarily aims at mapping the Indian stationary market to achieve its objectives. Objectives that include gauging market from a macro perspective, analyzing the brand preferences, the consumer buying behavior, retailer BTL activities etc. The ultimate objective of the study is to study the user acceptance of various parameters by mapping this market. This Research Paper is aimed at presenting the findings of a thorough primary and secondary work done to explore the market acceptance for a new entrant. Also, this study throws light on the Consumer behavior and retail (POP) factor for writing instruments industry.

Flexible working methods have become more popular, because they increase employees’ quality of life. The number of Turkish firms that support flexible working models and help employees coordinate their work and personal life better are increasing, because employers consider their employees’ personal lives as more important. Changes in sectoral scope also played an important role in creating flexible working methods. For instance, the service sector’s need to support long-term projects in shipping, banking, telecommunication, press, and oil led to new work processes to focus on customer satisfaction while introducing more flexible working methods. This study presents the effects of flexible working methods on employee performance. It found that flexible working models are very precious for the improvement of and the sustainability of employee performance. According to the results many of flexible methods factors including job’s suitability for flexibility, job loyalty and attitude towards flexible working hours directly affect the employee performance

This paper examines the importance of labor capabilities and their relationship with employment within the hotel industry. This is a review of the literature related to the provision of training schemes to maintain competitiveness and economic growth in the hotel industry. The effects of psychological contracts are examined to address the employees’ behaviors in relation to fairness of treatment, trust, and delivery of promises. This review was undertaken to explore the significance of skills shortages and skills mismatches. The paper suggests that training schemes to ensure for employees’ employability, along with positive employment relationships, are the key to helping hotels cope with skills shortages.

In this paper, we seek to understand the relationship between ethical investment and corporate social responsibility. This requires us to identify both what we mean by ‘ethical investment’ and by ‘corporate social responsibility’.

The paper mainly raises some important questions about marketing and its role in society. The great thing about American capitalism and freedom is that our economy produces a very large variety of products and services. Our stores are well-stocked with food, appliances, furniture, electronics and everything you can imagine or wish for. We don’t have laws stopping any products from being made, as long as they don’t poison people, or pose a health or safety problem. This sounds like good news.

Organized crime has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to make criminal assets legal. This is made possible by some ineffectiveness of current national and international laws, which have not kept pace with the changing situation. Due to the fact that there is no particular concern with art, criminals and those involved in illegal activities have discovered the art world to be a real and clandestine arena through which money can be laundered. The following article argues for careful situation involving the actors of the art sector, notably its self-regulation, in order to curb money laundering through art.

This article presents the solution to the problem of the investment choice between cash funds and earning assets (the latter is associated with bonds) and describes the situation-related approach to estimating both the relative and absolute values of liquidity.

As a result of the expansion of higher education and changes to student funding in the UK, students are increasingly taking up opportunities to work while studying. Employment during term-time may provide needed funds but takes time away from studying. It may also constitute an investment in ‘informal’ human capital, making graduates more attractive to potential employers. Given the ambiguous effect of working while studying, we investigate whether term-time employment has a detrimental impact on educational attainment and examine whether this is compensated by wage gains arising from transferable skills and work experience. Using survey data from a UK university, we find that students work more for financial than investment reasons and identify a negative effect of term-time employment for students working out of financial necessity or those working with a greater intensity. We find some evidence that individuals who have undertaken term-time employment have higher salaries upon graduation.

‘Traditionally’ innovating the value proposition of a company meant reviewing the products with the intent to make them more “innovative” in their content. Today it is important to consider that in the new market context, customers are increasingly inclined to value a product through its utilization function, i.e. to buy it more as a ‘service’ than as a product. Selling products through the value of their function is defined as “Servitization” of products. This is only one of the new concepts being adopted today by leading companies to innovate their value propositions.

China's economic transition began at the end of 1978. The traditional planned economic system resulting artificial low interest rates, price, and overvalued exchange rates still heavily govern the financial system. The government now faces the challenge of ensuring their effective implementation in financial system where inherited structural constrain is the main problem. Ultimately, the financial sector need to be mobilized by which the resources could be allocated in a more effective and prudent manner, to support stable and sustainable growth, improved quality of life and better employment opportunity. This case study describes the nature of China financial market and offers a big picture of its current performance. It focuses on Chinese capital market and examines the appropriate role for an efficient capital market. The paper also analyzes the structure and behavior of the banking industry and critically discusses the central bank, the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary instruments, and it’s implication on exchange rate system. Finally, it illustrates the design of emerging banking regulation in transaction process and the future challenges and policy recommendations

Being exposed to financial market price risk is an omnipresent aspect of investing. This includes the risk of capital losses when investing in the stock or bond market or the risk of currency fluctuations when investing abroad. In this article, we compare symmetric and asymmetric hedging approaches. We argue that asymmetric hedging is the better choice for most investors. We discuss active hedging based on trend-following models and suggest a passive option-based strategy to benchmark them. Here we find that trend-following models often are superior to the optionbased strategy. Finally, we identify three market characteristics, which may have a significant impact on the outperformance of trend-following models over passive option-based hedging strategies: the relationship between the historical and implied volatility, the occurrence of large price movements and the presence of high short-term noise in the market.

In the recent years we have witnessed increasing interests in the issues of project portfolio management. This editorial illustrates the need as well as the possibility of the development of this knowledge domain extending the scope and variety of research perspectives. It constitutes an attempt to indicate new avenues for further research resulting from the analysis of project portfolio as a network of temporary organizations. Special attention is focused on the potential contributions of network-oriented perspective to the progress of project portfolio debate.

When risk tolerance is varied from small to large values in a parametric programming study using CEV as the maxim and, a family of maximum value solutions are obtained that can be compactly summarized in policy region tabulations (in the discrete case) or asset allocation tabulations (in the continuous case). This gives the decision analyst an awareness of the full spectrum of solutions, from the one appropriate for the ultra-risk-averse decision maker, to the one appropriate for the risk neutral decision maker. When the interval of uncertainty from the least square risk tolerance estimation procedure is compared to the policy region tabulation or asset allocation tabulation, one obtains the solutions that are most preferred by the decision maker whose risk tolerance has just been estimated. From these solutions, all optimal in a neighborhood of the estimated risk tolerance, a final solution can be selected with complete awareness of what nearby optimal solutions would be like. In addition, for decision analyses involving an information option, parametric analysis reveals that the risk-averse CEVSI evaluation of information can be substantially greater than the risk neutral EVSI evaluation, which may lead to acquisition of information in cases where the risk neutral decision maker would pass it by. Hence use of EVSI for buy decisions about information may result in serious underutilization of information, leading to much greater downside risk than would be the case if CEVSI were used for those very same information buy decisions.