International Journal of Economics & Management Sciences

Quality of work life is viewed as an alternative to the control approach of managing people. It refers to the relationship between a worker and his work environment. A happy and a healthy employee will give better turnover, make good decisions and positively contribute to the organizational goal. An assured good quality of work life will not only attract young and new talent but also retain the existing experienced talent. An organization‘s HR department assumes responsibility for the effective running of the Quality of Work Life for their employees. Tamilnadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) has around 30,000 employees and operates about 6800 retail liquor outlets throughout the state. Employees of TASMAC are not considered as government employees and are not entitled to the benefits and legal rights (like statutory pay, paid holidays and an 8 hour workday) of other employees of the state. Since its establishment happened in 1983, there is not much research study had been made? So an attempt has been made to study the Quality of work life of the employees of TASMAC in Dindigul city. Primary data was collected from the 100 TASMAC workers in Dindigul District. The study found that the monetary benefit cannot satisfy the individual and work life of the employees. The job recognition is the highly motivating factors in the promotion of the Quality of work life.

This paper reports the measure of total factor productivity change (TFPCH) for the Sudanese sugarcane factories: An empirical analysis with reference to Sudanese sugar companies (Kenana, Gunied, New Halfa, Sinnar and Assalaya). Based on Data Envelopment Analysis Program (DEAP) Software Version 2.1, using model of input– oriented Malmquist indices of total factor productivity (TFP). Relevant secondary data were collected and analyzed to meet the stated objectives. This paper aimed to decompose TFPCH into two components: Technological change (TECH) and technical efficiency change (EFCH) and the latter was further divided into scale efficiency change (SEFCH) and pure efficiency change (PEFCH). In the study on Sudanese sugarcane plants, the innovation was improving up and down of TECH over time. Scale efficiency operating in Kenana was remained constant return to scale, and total factor productivity was positive. For measuring the scale efficiency operating in Sudanese Sugar Company the results suggest that the scale efficiency was constant return to scale in Gunied and New Halfa compared to increased return to scale in Sinnar and Assalaya. The study recommended that the policy maker in the Sudanese Sugar Company and managers of other sugar factories should make effort to benefit from added value of sugar industry through downstream processes of sugarcane by-product such as molasses bagasse and filter cake, which could be utilized usefully for animal feed, energy and ethanol production.

The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship of personal characteristics and job satisfaction to the adversity quotient of Police Officers in Shimla District. In the present study the descriptive method was used and Questionnaire was distributed to 100 Police Officers of the Shimla District. The percentage, weighted mean and correlation were computed for the profile of the respondents in terms of personal characteristics and job satisfaction level in testing the hypothesis. Results of the study show a significant relationship between personal characteristics and over-all Adversity Quotient level. The study also shows that there is no significant relationship between job satisfaction and Adversity Quotient. Finally this study recommended that monetary support, availability of technical facilities; safety and security are needed to perform their jobs effectively. It is also recommended that administration should improve the skills, knowledge, and competencies among Police Officers.

In recent years, the use of technology to deliver the services has grown rapidly in banking sector and it made a significant impact on customer perception. In previous studies; automated service quality was proposed by the several studies to be an important antecedent of customer satisfaction. However, in traditional settings, human element is also considered a strong motivator of customer’s satisfaction. So the major objective of this research study was to explore the combined effects of automated service and traditional service quality (human interaction) on customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the investigation on customer satisfaction in automated services context, combine with traditional services quality is limited. However, we didn’t find any comprehensive study that has modeled these variables together. The research study was conducted through cross sectional field survey and self-administrated questionnaire was used in order to collect data in banking sector of Pakistan. Multiple regression analysis process was conducted to assess the effect of both services typology (automated and traditional) on customer satisfaction. The results have shown three main findings. First, it was found that automated service and traditional service quality (human interaction) both have direct significant effect on customer satisfaction. Second, the results find that an insignificant relationship between ATM services on customer satisfaction when moderated by Traditional Banking services, and directly this services play an important role to satisfy the customer. Thirdly, results found a strong positive significant association in Mobile banking services and internet banking services moderated by teller banking services.

Our study has explored the effects of leadership traits on organizational performance in hospitals and health care industry. The core objective of this study was to examine the effect of leadership traits and behavior on performance of hospitals. Transactional and transformational leadership traits were measured. Transformational leadership traits and performance/results measured relevantly in the study was leaders charisma, individual consideration and their inspirational motivation; extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction, in that order. Transactional leadership traits and performance/result variables were positive/contingent incentive or rewards and corrective actions/ management by exception; and effort, productivity and commitment/loyalty, correspondingly. In this study we adapt a survey questionnaire, and employed evaluative quantitative analysis method. Analysis was based on primary data generated through a planned Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) administered on participants. The answers to research questionnaire were scaled on likert’s scale and converted to quantitative data to enable segmentation of the data responses into the independent and dependent variables assumed on leadership traits and connected performance variables. The model which was used in the study was OLS linear regression model to estimate and evaluate the results. The result illustrates that although transformational leadership traits had positive effect on performance but it is insignificant while transactional leadership trait had an important constructive effect on organization and employees performance. The study also analyzed that transactional leadership trait was more suitable in inducing and enhancing performance in hospitals than transformational leadership style and, as a result, transactional leadership trait/behaviors is recommended for the health care organization/hospitals with integral policies and strategies for evolution to transformational leadership style as the hospitals matured, grew and developed.

The topic on cash holding has attracted strong debate in the field of financial management for the past half century. A number of researchers studied the topic corporate cash holding and its determinants in the past in developed economies while a little attention is given to the corporate cash holdings of developing economies. The objective of the study is to identify and measure the relationship of firm size, profitability, net working capital and leverage and their effect on corporate cash holdings. A sample of 30 textile firms of Pakistan listed on Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) was selected for the study, for the reason of examining their relationship. Secondary data for the period 2006-2013 was selected for the study. Variance Inflation Test (VIF) was used to check the problem of multicollinearity. Multiple regression models were used to conduct the results. Results calculated by regression model show consistency with the literature available. Profitability (ROA) and firm size (FS) show a positive and significant relation with cash holding. However negative and significant relationship was found between net working capital (NWC) and leverage (LEV) with cash holding.
The findings of the study will be useful for financial managers, financial practitioners, consultants and investors.

The issue of understanding and evaluating sustainability of farming organizations such as family farms, agrifirms, agro-corporations, agricultural cooperatives, etc. is among the most debated by the researchers, farmers, investors, policy-makers, interest groups, and public at large around the globe. This paper tries to unpack the sustainability suggesting a holistic framework for defining and assessing sustainability of farming enterprises. It gives answers to two important questions: “what is sustainability of farming enterprise?” and “how to assess sustainability of farms of different type?” First, evolution of the “concept” and the major approaches for assessing sustainability of farming organizations is discussed. More adequate definition of the sustainability is suggested as ability of a particular of farming enterprise to maintain its governance, economic, social and ecological functions in a long term. Next, a framework for assessing sustainability of farming enterprises is proposed, including a system of appropriate principles, criteria, indicators, and reference values for evaluating governance, economic, ecological and social aspects of sustainability as well as an approach for their integration and interpretation. The ultimate objective of this study is to work out an effective framework for assessing sustainability of farming organizations in the specific economic, institutional and natural environment in which they exist and evolve, assist agri-business management and strategy formation, and agricultural policies and forms of public intervention in agrarian sector.

The study analyzed the role of interpersonal communication in client counseling environments, establishing emotional stability, and building lasting effective counselor-client relationship. Numerous studies reviewed indicate that the quality of interpersonal communication between counselors/psychologists and clients is significant in improving clients’ self-esteem, emotional stability, interactional effectiveness, and responsive engagement. An extended literature review was conducted to analyze past communication patterns between counselors/psychologists and clients to evaluate the role of human communication in the quality of therapy and in the results achieved.
Based on content analysis of clients-counselors interactions and relationships, review of related literature, and personal interviews and discussions, it was determined that effective interpersonal communication is critically important in achieving clients’ high level of recovery, speedy compliance, and enhanced self-awareness. This study clearly establishes that communication is a significant part of a successful counseling practice. Additionally, productive counseling largely depends on communication competence - the ability to articulate instructions and procedures clearly, persuasively, and consistently both verbally and nonverbally.

Bangladesh has bright prospects of travel and leisure in future. She possesses travel and leisure possibilities everywhere. But, Bangladesh travel and leisure is experiencing so many problems including technique. By applying specialized market techniques she can earn more Forex because Bangladesh is endowed with four key travel and leisure products: Seashores, Woodlands, Mountains and islands, traditional position and Historical sites those are mostly pleasing to many visitors. This document is focusing the existing pros and cons of travel and leisure market in Bangladesh and the ways to apply specialized market technique. Results indicate that four famous items can play essential part in the total income in this industry. Finally, this document indicates how specialized market technique will help the policy maker to distinguish the visitors market and customize their service to achieve ideal promotion goals and fix existing downwards income.

Conflict is inevitable in every field of life due to argument, disagreement and difference of opinions among individuals. Conflict management is essential in order to avoid its negative impact on the performance of organization. This study aims at focusing on different styles for managing conflict which executives may prefer for resolving conflict either with public or with their subordinates. Dimensions of conflict studied are Disagreement and Argument while conflict management styles studied are Avoiding, Competing, Collaborating, Accommodating and Compromising. This paper focuses on all the conflict handling styles. Employees working as Deputy Assistant Directors (Sample size = 120) in National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) were selected by convenience sampling for collection of data through questionnaires (Thomas-Kilmann Instrument) and collected data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Out of 120 questionnaires, 88 questionnaires were received from respondents and response rate can be said as 73%. Findings reveal that Deputy Assistant Directors prefer to use collaborating style followed by accommodating, compromising, avoiding and competing respectively for managing conflict. Implications of the study are discussed in the paper.

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between professional social media use and the healthcare researcher. The innovation which was introduced with biomedical databases has improved research works by making rapid steps in all kind of scientific researches. Besides, instruments such as Internet, search engines and professional social media have brought a great development in the way of rapidly connecting with the professionals and the researchers all over the world in last decades. So it is very interesting to see how they are playing a vital role today in this field through this rapid development. For example, Linkedin, Slideshare, Research gate, PubMed, NCBI, Facebook, Skype etc. has already brought a revolutionary change in the field. The possibility to bridge researchers; for example, with similar discipline or by other different discipline using professional social media has provided with the scientific community a rapid development which was never seen in last decades.

This study sought to determine the economic factors predicting IPO share price volatility at the Nairobi Securities Exchange under the mediating role of regulatory authorities such as the Central Bank of Kenya, Capital Markets Authority, Nairobi Securities Exchange and National Treasury, and the intervening function of Investment banks, commercial banks, brokerage houses, media and politics. Through a correlational research design employing simple regression, the results are contradictory on the economic indicators and their effect on different sectors of the economy. With the exception of Equity bank which showed a positive relationship with interest rates, Foreign exchange, Nairobi Securities All Share Index and Lagged Share Price, KenGen and Safaricom showed no significant relationship with their economic predictors. A reworked model comprising inflation rate, interest rate, foreign exchange rate and money supply captured the overall market prediction with the initial three having negative significance whereas money supply had positive significance as a predictor of share price volatility.

A quantitative method was used to explore the financial performance of the listed firms on the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The number of firms explored was 196 out of a possible 206 (two firms are subsidiaries of one of the firm, and others are insurance firms excluded). The listed firms were observed from 2009-2014 to understand their status in the market, and the direction they are headed towards. The financial data were gathered from the published annual reports of the respective firms and the financial statements from the Kuwait Stock Exchange website. The results, using the Altman Z-score model for the period 2009-2014, show that approximately 39.46% of the firms on average were safe; approximately 25.94% of the firms on average were distressed; approximately 15.90% of the firms on average were in a grey area; and approximately 18.71% firms on average had no available data. The bankruptcy rate could not be justified using the Zmijewski score model due to the inconclusive results and the absence of bankruptcy laws in the State of Kuwait. This paper provides insight into the financial distress level in Kuwait. The level of distress shows that major changes are necessary within firms and operations are not running smooth. Bankruptcy laws are required for firms operating in distress. This exploration is a stepping-stone for potential investors by showing the most profitable sectors for investment and for future researchers to predict accurate bankruptcy rates in the State of Kuwait.

As businesses have become global, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has spread in private business sectors. This has led to the development of digital markets, the regional and organizational decentralization1 of the internal organization as well as the more frequent occurrence of hybrid forms of corporations. In contrast to the local independent and international activities of enterprises, generally accepted tax principles2 are used to evaluate current tax regulations as well as to recommend possible reform approaches based on physical and legal aspects, which serve as taxable entities and tax attributes. This paper proposes a valid tax plan that minimizes a multinational technology company’s taxes.

In this research, we will try to show to what extent the competitive environment in the knowledge era and the extrinsic individual motivation of innovative entrepreneurs could enhance technological innovation in newlyestablished enterprises. A study on a sample of 105 new Tunisian enterprises deemed innovative in a national and regional innovative economic environment revealed 'the following: The nature of the market demand and the dissemination of knowledge by firms have a positive effect on the improvement of technological innovation, while efforts to adapt to market changes, the entrepreneurs' motivation extrinsic system to innovate, the state of competition and the evolution of that market had no effect on it.

This study aims at making available to the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) authorities an additional decision tool that would enhance their transparency and credibility. Therefore the Taylor rule, which connects the level of short term interest rates in output gap and the gap between the rate of inflation and the inflation target the mass money was introduced, net foreign assets and a dummy variable to capture the effects of the 1994 devaluation of the generalized method of moments (GMM) particularly suitable in the context of "Forward looking rules" is used here. The results obtained from annual data (1985-2014) shows that the estimated rule does not pretty much describe the behavior of money market rates over the period. Moreover, it seems that Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) gives more and more weight to support the activity and the stabilization of prices, anything that weakens its effectiveness and credibility. Our results confirm the need for the central bank to return to its policy primarily based on inflation targeting sit for the credibility of its monetary policy.

Market share expansion strategy is usually considered by the manufacturers who intend to achieve lower production cost to extend the surviving period in mature markets where intense price competition occurs frequently. This study will discuss one manufacturer who is producing mature stage products and supplying them to product market to serve the end users. In order to produce the products, it is necessary for the manufacturer to procure the key components of the products from the component market which is on its fast-growing stage with high price fluctuation. Spot procurement and SC procurement are to be compared to find out which is a better strategy to support the manufacturer in the decision-making of production capacity. Profit rate, deficit rate and market share rate are considered as the valuation index in this study.

This study raises the question about the level of misstatement risk and fraud associated with the Private Placement Memorandum. The reason for raising this question is that Private Placement Memorandum is circulated among potential investors without any regulatory approval to ensure the content. Individuals have tremendous wealth and liquidity in the Middle East region, particularly the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council; Hence, investment opportunities through Private Placement Offers are numerous for the investors in the region., The associated risk of fraud or misstatement, therefore, is equally high with Private Placement Memorandum due to lack of any regulatory bodies that control and monitor Private Placement Memorandum in the Middle East. A qualitative study approach was used with a questionnaire circulated among a selected population to secure direct feedback based on participants’ experience. The results of the survey conclude the need for direct regulatory control on the Private Placement Memorandum with the goal to give better protection to investors in the region. The data collected suggests that the Private Placement Memorandum is not transparent mainly due to there being no direct monitoring of the content of Private Placement Memorandum from regulatory authorities in the region. Hence, the study achieved the objective of highlighting the need for statutory bodies to regulate and protect investors’ interests in the region. This study could help authorities understand factors to be considered, while allowing private placement with best possible disclosure in Private Placement Memorandum, with legal and criminal consequences in case of intentional misstatement, misleading information, or lack of sufficient disclosures.

This qualitative research based on phenomenology might prove useful in writing the Investment Policy for Institutional Investors in nascent capital markets. The study provides insight into how institutional investors prepare for imminent occurrence of extreme market conditions and the measures they adopt to mitigate the consequences of such extreme market conditions on their investment portfolios. The responses were collected over nearly one and a half years, from March 2013 to September 2014, using various forums held in different cities of the world. The study adopted the methodological triangulation approach to reinforce the findings and build credibility whilst enhancing the usefulness of the findings. This was done by interacting with different groups of respondents and different forums to confirm the findings. All of the respondents were senior decision makers from a wide variety of Institutional Investment entities. From the detailed analysis of the responses emerged concise but dominant topics and strategies. Some of these include risk-based diversification, volatility regimes and risk indicators, low volatility anomalies, rebalancing, going long volatility, longer horizon, rule-based decision making and corporate governance, counter-cyclicality, benchmark agnostic strategies and valuation fundamentals.