Archives-September 2012

This paper advances research on strategic entrepreneurship and small firm competitiveness from the Resource-Based perspective. Several scholars have explained the Resource-Based View mainly in the context of the large firms. The paper considers a review of literatures on strategic entrepreneurship and the Resource-Based View and contends small firms lack resources compared with the large ones, however, their “opportunity-seeking” activities is a rare resource. It is opined an understanding of the interactions of these concepts, that is, the simultaneous pursuit of “opportunity- and advantage-seeking” positions is critical for small firms that operate in dynamic competitive environments to create and sustain competitive advantages.

This study is based on observation on court-domination , it tries to answer how the governmental organs and their staff who were not chosen by people directly should answer people. The same essay has introduced some concepts of answering, it is to examine some answering goals in the governmental centers and their different aspects. This study is to assign an example as a theoretical form in order to compare some of usual answering systems in the world. The writer, by using the same examples of answering systems in English and America which are two political (parliamentary and boss) systems and those of Pakistan and Bangladesh have explained all details. The writer hops to study the reply systems in the foresaid societies, let us know about these systems and their effects.

Jasikan College of Education is a college that has been designated to serve as Teacher Education Institution, which trains teachers academically and professionally to teach at the basic school level in the Ghana. Based on this vision, the college runs two major programs i.e. “The General Education Program” and “The Early Childhood Program”. The Early Childhood program is a program that sees to the training of teachers to teach at the lower primary schools in the country such as classes (1-3), and kindergartens (1-2). At these lower primary levels, pupils and teachers are not expected to do arithmetic’s with simple and or programmed calculators in any of the subjects. However, when it comes to arithmetic’s on conversion of S.I units, most teachers and pupils in class three end-up using calculators in arriving at answers / solutions. When this happens most pupils tend not to comprehend the subject. In view of this the researcher designed “The D-Conversion model Solution Calculator” from the Distance conversion model (The D-Conversion model) to help both teachers and pupils arrive at answers very easy to tutors and meaningful to pupils when it comes to conversion of distance. This D-Conversion model Solution Calculator is a tool which helps one to arrive at the same answers that simple and or complex calculators give. The D-Conversion model Solution Calculator on one dimension distance (length) was tested on the 114 second year Early Childhood students of Jasikan College of Education. Its used in this study was (1) to see whether the 2011/ 2012 Early Childhood students will be able to perform some arithmetic’s on conversion of length without the use of calculators and (2) to aid the 2011/2012 Early Childhood students design their own teaching and learning material in teaching conversion to the use of calculators as a teaching and learning material in their out-segment schools and or their posted schools.

Quality has become one of the major concerns of higher education at all levels. With Globalization of economy, a demand for quality in higher education has become all the more prominent, so that no other choice except to meet the global standards. Accreditation is an activity widely accepted in developed countries but generally is not known in many other countries. In India, the task of assessment and accreditation of universities and colleges has been assigned to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous body established by the University Grants Commission (UGC). The objectives of Academic Staff Colleges are to enable the newly appointed lecturer to: (a) Understand the significance of education in general and higher education in particular in the global context, (b) Acquire and improve basic skills of teaching and learning with innovative and advanced methods. (c) Utilize the time to improve the personality of the teacher. As the Academic Staff Colleges are now considered as important units to improve quality of Teaching- Learning process in The Country, its quality assessment is critical for the future of higher education. Therefore, this study is designed to examine the set of criteria to assess the quality of institutions.

Corporate social responsibility encompasses a wide range of issues ranging from business ethics, corporate governance, and socially responsible business practice to environmental sustainability and community engagement. CSR is an idea whereby companies integrate their social and environmental commitment in line with their economic development within an interaction with stakeholders. Company committed on improving the quality of life of its workforce as well as local community and society in general. The issue of CSR is gaining interest around the world since 1950’s, where academicians and practitioners have been consolidating the research in this area. In Malaysia, CSR issues recently begin applied and measured by companies. This paper analyzes the evolution of the CSR concept and presenting various definitions from literature together with Malaysian banking institutions definitions. This article aims to shed some light on the how banking institution in Malaysia defines CSR and perform their CSR activities.

In the world of FMCG and soft drink market, importance of Trade marketing cannot be ignored; different companies are spending a huge budget on different trade marketing activities, which ultimately affect the annual sales volume. The purpose of this study is to explain the relationship between trade marketing activities and the annual sales volume of soft drink retail in Pakistan, soft drink is the industry which is investing the most on trade marketing activities It is hoped that this study has served the purpose of providing an overview of soft drink industry and trade marketing and relationship between different trade marketing variables and annual sales volume. Primary data is collected from 300 retailers through a field survey and after this survey I have analyzed this data by using SPSS, and for better understanding of Trade marketing strategies lot of information about different trade marketing strategies used by Coca-Cola is gathered through detailed sessions with Coca-Cola Trade marketing manager and Sales Training manger.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has now been used in all walks of lives and the introduction of this technology outside of Malaysia, especially in the developed countries has matured far more. Leaping towards this gap has made Malaysian leaders in the past saw the potential of ICT and the MSC project was the stepping stone to ensure that Malaysia will not be left out in this area with potential possibilities of changing the country’s economy. This viewpoint paper will discuss mostly on the human behavior and acceptance towards change to fulfill human capital. The importance of change is to ensure the organizational development is coping to business goal and competition. Challenges of human resource acceptance or rejections toward technology in general is somehow related to business goal, thus this paper will discuss the views from many research and articles related to the subject matter.

This paper discusses the results of a study that was conducted to investigate the income smoothing behavior in differences industries. Eckel’s Income Smoothing Index (1981) is used to determine the presence of artificial income smoothing behavior. The descriptive statistics are used to develop a profile of the sampled companies. Then the univariate test is conducted to investigate any significant systematic differences between companies that smooth their reported income and companies that do not. Finally, this study use logistics regression to investigate the factors associated with income smoothing practices.Results shows that industrial and technology companies smooth income more than other types of industries. The findings also indicate that income smoothers tend to be large companies with high ownership control.

Customer’s satisfaction is identify as the most essential concept of marketing with solid evidence of strategic links between physical evidences (interior and exterior design) and customer satisfaction (Bitner, 1992). The spirit of innumerable researches in diverse industries endorse that the service provider pay greater attention to satisfy their customers. Malaysian government is serious in making the country as a hub for tourism. Unfortunately, until recently, number of complaints on physical evidences of the hotels and resorts keep increasing upward. Accordingly, this current study looks for the impact of physical evidences on the customer’s satisfaction in hotels and resorts sector of Lumut. Data was collected through survey questionnaire. A convenience sampling was employed to select the respondents. The results provide a basis from which within industries benchmarking and the identification of best practices can be captured and used by practitioners.Therefore, recognition of significant determinants of customer’s satisfaction may facilitate the higher management in adopting and implementing efficient and effective customers’ focus strategies.

Pesticide may be a necessary evil. They protect crops including cocoa from pests attack, and thus maximize productivity in agricultural businesses. However, if pesticide residues are found to be above their maximum residue limits, they pose adverse health effects to humans. Exporting nations also tend to lose foreign exchange, if produce are found to contain high residue levels. The main objective of this study was to monitor and assess residue levels of 15 organochlorine pesticides in cocoa beans from Ghana, against their various maximum residue limits. Cocoa beans were sampled at random in two cocoa storage stations located in Tema and Takoradi, cities of Ghana. The extraction method uses acetonitrile as the extracting solvent. Two solid phase extraction clean-ups were employed; bond elut C18 cartridge, followed by envi-carp/LC-NH2 cartridge, using acetonitrile and a mixture of toluene/acetonitrile in the ratio 1:3 as eluting solvents, respectively. The investigated pesticides were beta-HCH, lindane, delta-HCH, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, gamma-chlordane, alpha-endosulfan, beta-endosulfan, endosulfan sulfate, p,p-DDT, p,p-DDD, p,p-DDE and methoxychlor. The percentage recoveries ranged from 70-110 percent, with method determination limit of 0.01µg/g. The widest range of organochlorine pesticides detected was from endosulfan (0.01 – 0.10 µg/g); however none of the detected organochlorine pesticides exceed their various maximum residue limits.