Search results for: Business Practices

Authors: Vedat Coskun, Fahri Soylemezgiller, Busra Ozdenizci, Kerem Ok

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In recent years, several smart card solutions for transportation services of cities with different technical infrastructures and business models has emerged considerably, which triggers new business and technical opportunities. In order to create a unique system, we present a novel, promising system called Multifunctional City Smart Card System to be used in all cities that provides transportation and loyalty services based on the MasterCard M/Chip Advance standards. The proposed system provides a unique solution for transportation services of large cities over the world, aiming to answer all transportation needs of citizens. In this paper, development of the Multifunctional City Smart Card system and system requirements are briefly described. Moreover, performance analysis results of M/Chip Advance Compatible Validators which is the system's most important component are presented.

Keywords: Smart Card, M/Chip Advance Standard, City Transportation, Performance Analysis.

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Authors: Mohammadreza Razzazi, Maryam Bayat

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Selection of the best possible set of suppliers has a significant impact on the overall profitability and success of any business. For this reason, it is usually necessary to optimize all business processes and to make use of cost-effective alternatives for additional savings. This paper proposes a new efficient context-aware supplier selection model that takes into account possible changes of the environment while significantly reducing selection costs. The proposed model is based on data clustering techniques while inspiring certain principles of online algorithms for an optimally selection of suppliers. Unlike common selection models which re-run the selection algorithm from the scratch-line for any decision-making sub-period on the whole environment, our model considers the changes only and superimposes it to the previously defined best set of suppliers to obtain a new best set of suppliers. Therefore, any recomputation of unchanged elements of the environment is avoided and selection costs are consequently reduced significantly. A numerical evaluation confirms applicability of this model and proves that it is a more optimal solution compared with common static selection models in this field.

Keywords: Supplier Selection, Context-Awareness, OnlineAlgorithms, Data Clustering.

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Authors: E. Happ, A. Albert Tóth

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The aim of the research is to investigate the forms of the demands of leisure tourism in a West-Hungarian industrial city, Győr. Today, Győr is still a traditional industrial city, its industry is mainly based on vehicle industry, but the role of tourism is increasing in the life of the city as well. Because of the industrial nature and the strong economy of the city, the ratio of business tourists is high. It can be stated that MICE tourism is dominating in Győr. Developments of the last decade can help the city with new tourism products to increase the leisure tourism. The new types of tourism – besides business tourism – can help the providers to increase the occupancy rates and the demand at the weekends. The research demonstrates the theoretical background of the topic, and it shows the present situation of the tourism in Győr with secondary data. The secondary research contains statistical data from the Hungarian Statistical Office and the city council, and it is based on the providers’ data. The next part of the paper shows the potential types of leisure tourism with the help of primary research. The primary research contains the results of an online questionnaire with a sample of 1000 potential customers. It is completed with 10 in-depth interviews with tourism experts, who explained their opinions about the opportunities of leisure tourism in Győr from the providers’ side. The online questionnaire was filled out in spring 2017 by customers, who have already stayed in Győr or plan to visit the city. At the same time in-depth interviews were made with hotel managers, head of touristic institutions and employees at the council. Based on the research it can be stated that the touristic supply of Győr allows the increase of the leisure tourism ratio in the city. Primarily, the cultural and health tourism show potential development, but the supply side of touristic services can be developed in order to increase the number of guest nights. The tourism marketing needs to be strengthened in the city, and a distinctive marketing activity - from other cities - is needed as well. To conclude, although Győr is an industrial city, it has a transforming industrial part, and tourism is also strongly present in its economy. Besides the leading role of business tourism, different types of leisure tourism have the opportunity to take place in the city.

Keywords: Business Tourism, Győr, industrial city, leisure tourism, touristic demand.

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Authors: Hamideh Mahdavifar, Ramin Nassiri, Alireza Bagheri

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Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a framework for description, coordination and alignment of all activities across the organization in order to achieve strategic goals using ICT enablers. A number of EA-compatible frameworks have been developed. We, in this paper, mainly focus on Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) since its reference models are plentiful. Among these models we are interested here in its business reference model (BRM). The test process is one important subject of an EA project which is to somewhat overlooked. This lack of attention may cause drawbacks or even failure of an enterprise architecture project. To address this issue we intend to use International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB) framework and standard test suites to present a method to improve EA testing process. The main challenge is how to communicate between the concepts of EA and ISTQB. In this paper, we propose a method for integrating these concepts.

Keywords: Business Reference Model (BRM), Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), ISTQB, Test Techniques.

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Authors: Omneya N. Mekhaimer, Elkhayam M. Dorra, A. Samer Ezeldin

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Over the recent decades, studies on organizational culture have gained global attention in the business management literature, where it has been established that the cultural factors embedded in the organization have an implicit yet significant influence on the organization’s success. Unlike other industries, the construction industry is widely known to be operating in a dynamic and adversarial nature; considering the unique characteristics it denotes, thereby the level of disputes has propagated in the construction industry throughout the years. To that end, this paper aims to study the influence of organizational culture in the contractor’s organization on the frequency of disputes caused between the owner and the contractor in commercial projects based in Egypt. This objective is achieved by using a quantitative approach through a survey questionnaire to explore the dominant cultural attributes that exist in the contractor’s organization based on the Competing Value Framework (CVF) theory, which classifies organizational culture into four main cultural types: (1) clan, (2) adhocracy, (3) market, and (4) hierarchy. Accordingly, the collected data are statistically analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 28) software, whereby a correlation analysis using Pearson Correlation is carried out to assess the relationship between these variables and their statistical significance using the p-value. The results show that there is an influence of organizational culture attributes on the frequency of disputes whereby market culture is identified to be the most dominant organizational culture that is currently practiced in contractor’s organization, which consequently contributes to increasing the frequency of disputes in commercial projects. These findings suggest that alternative management practices should be adopted rather than the existing ones with an aim to minimize dispute occurrence.

Keywords: Construction projects, correlation analysis, disputes, Egypt, organizational culture.

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Authors: Ghada Elshafei, Abdelazim Negm

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Recently, the green architecture becomes a significant way to a sustainable future. Green building designs involve finding the balance between comfortable homebuilding and sustainable environment. Moreover, the utilization of the new technologies such as artificial intelligence techniques are used to complement current practices in creating greener structures to keep the built environment more sustainable. The most common objectives in green buildings should be designed to minimize the overall impact of the built environment that effect on ecosystems in general and in particularly human health and natural environment. This will lead to protecting occupant health, improving employee productivity, reducing pollution and sustaining the environmental. In green building design, multiple parameters which may be interrelated, contradicting, vague and of qualitative/quantitative nature are broaden to use. This paper presents a comprehensive critical state- ofart- review of current practices based on fuzzy and its combination techniques. Also, presented how green architecture/building can be improved using the technologies that been used for analysis to seek optimal green solutions strategies and models to assist in making the best possible decision out of different alternatives.

Keywords: Green architecture/building, technologies, optimization, strategies, fuzzy techniques and models.

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Authors: M. M. Mashhadi, K. Mohajeri, M. D. Nayeri

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Positioning the organization in the strategic environment of its industry is one of the first and most important phases of the organizational strategic planning and in today knowledge-based economy has its importance been duplicated for higher education institutes as the centers of education, knowledge creation and knowledge worker training. Up to now, various models with diverse approaches have been applied to investigate organizations- strategic position in different industries. Regarding the essential importance and strategic role of quality in higher education institutes, in this study, a quality-oriented approach has been suggested to positioning them in their strategic environment. Then the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) model has been adopted to position the top Iranian business schools in their strategic environment. The result of this study can be used in strategic planning of these institutes as well as the other Iranian business schools.

Keywords: Strategic planning, Strategic positioning, Quality, EFQM model, Higher education institutions.

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Authors: Khaled E. A. Negm

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In the current research, we present an operation framework and protection mechanism to facilitate secure environment to protect mobile agents against tampering. The system depends on the presence of an authentication authority. The advantage of the proposed system is that security measures is an integral part of the design, thus common security retrofitting problems do not arise. This is due to the presence of AlGamal encryption mechanism to protect its confidential content and any collected data by the agent from the visited host . So that eavesdropping on information from the agent is no longer possible to reveal any confidential information. Also the inherent security constraints within the framework allow the system to operate as an intrusion detection system for any mobile agent environment. The mechanism is tested for most of the well known severe attacks against agents and networked systems. The scheme proved a promising performance that makes it very much recommended for the types of transactions that needs highly secure environments, e. g., business to business.

Keywords: Mobile agent security, mobile accesses, agent encryption.

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Authors: Wen Zhang

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The smartphone plays a significant role in media convergence, and smartphone photography is reconstructing the way we communicate and think. This article aims to explore the smartphone photography practices of urban Chinese smartphone users and images produced by smartphones from a techno-cultural perspective. The analysis consists of two types of data: One is a semi-structured interview of 21 participants, and the other consists of the images created by the participants. The findings are organised in two parts. The first part summarises the current tendencies of capturing, editing, sharing and archiving digital images via smartphones. The second part shows that food and selfie/anti-selfie are the preferred subjects of smartphone photographic images from a technical and multi-purpose perspective and demonstrates that screenshots and image texts are new genres of non-photographic images that are frequently made by smartphones, which contributes to improving operational efficiency, disseminating information and sharing knowledge. The analyses illustrate the positive impacts between smartphones and photography enthusiasm and practices based on the diffusion of innovation theory, which also makes us rethink the value of photographs and the practice of ‘photographic seeing’ from the screen itself.

Keywords: Digital photography, photographic-seeing, media convergence, technological innovation, smartphone, selfie/anti-selfie, image-text.

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Authors: Fatih Eren

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This research aims to find an answer to the question of which knowledge and skills do the Turkish urban planners need in their business practice. Understanding change in cities, making a prediction, making an urban decision and putting it into practice, working together with actors from different organizations from various academic disciplines, persuading people to accept something and developing good personal and professional relationships have become very complex and difficult in today’s world. The truth is that urban planners work in many institutions under various positions which are not similar to each other by field of activity and all planners are forced to develop some knowledge and skills for success in their business in Turkey. This study targets to explore what urban planners do in the global information age. The study is the product of a comprehensive nation-wide research. In-depth interviews were conducted with 174 experienced urban planners, who work in different public institutions and private companies under varied positions in the Turkish Planning System, to find out knowledge and skills needed by next-generation urban planners. The main characteristics of next-generation urban planners are defined; skills that planners needed today are explored in this paper. Findings show that the positivist (traditional) planning approach has given place to anti-positivist planning approaches in the Turkish Planning System so next-generation urban planners who seek success and want to carve out a niche for themselves in business life have to equip themselves with innovative skills. The result section also includes useful and instructive findings for planners about what is the meaning of being an urban planner and what is the ideal content and context of planning education at universities in the global age.

Keywords: The global information age, urban planners, innovative job skills, planning education.

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Authors: Tomáš Ludík, Josef Navrátil, Alena Langerová

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Tackling emergency situations is performed based on emergency scenarios. These scenarios do not have a uniform form in the Czech Republic. They are unstructured and developed primarily in the text form. This does not allow solving emergency situations efficiently. For this reason, the paper aims at defining a Process Oriented Architecture to support and thus to improve tackling emergency situations in the Czech Republic. The innovative Process Oriented Architecture is based on the Workflow Reference Model while taking into account the options of Business Process Management Suites for the implementation of process oriented emergency scenarios. To verify the proposed architecture the Proof of Concept has been used which covers the reception of an emergency event at the district emergency operations centre. Within the particular implementation of the proposed architecture the Bonita Open Solution has been used. The architecture created in this way is suitable not only for emergency management, but also for educational purposes.

Keywords: Business Process Management Suite, Czech Republic, Emergency Scenarios, Process Execution, Process Oriented Architecture.

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Authors: Zeeshan Hamid, Sarwar Mehmood Azhar, Hammad Basir

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In today’s era, it is no news that organizations should demonstrate honest conduct as well as ethical administration. Therefore, the concept of corporate social responsibility (subsequently CSR) has created its tag upon the company’s focal point as well as marketing communications, and will continue in the future. The importance of CSR has increased in the last decade, and this concept has attracted global attention. The notion of CSR has strategic significance for many organizations. However, businesses are not adapting the activities of CSR that benefit to all of its stakeholders (including society). The main reason is the practitioners are unfortunately unable to comprehend its importance; and therefore, the activities of the CSR are so detached from the business activities. Hence, it is required to develop an understanding that the activities of CSR are not only beneficial for the society but it also benefit to business. This paper focuses on the concept of strategic CSR, and develops a theoretical framework that will help practitioners to filter and chose the activities of CSR that are strategic in nature.

Keywords: Economic responsibility, ethical responsibility, legal responsibility, philanthropic responsibility, strategic corporate social responsibility, value chain activities filter.

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Authors: Lidon Lashley

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This paper presents how the social model of disability can be used to reshape inclusive education practices in Guyana. Inclusive education in Guyana is metamorphosizing but still firmly held in the tenets of the Medical Model of Disability which influences the experiences of children with Special Education Needs and/or Disabilities (SEN/D). An ethnographic approach to data gathering was employed in this study. Qualitative data were gathered from the voices of children with and without SEN/D as well as their mainstream teachers to present the interplay of discourses and subjectivities in the situation. The data were analyzed using Adele Clarke's situational analysis. The data suggest that it is possible but will be challenging to fully contextualize and adopt Loreman's synthesis and Booths and Ainscow's Index in the two mainstream schools studied. In addition, the data paved the way for the presentation of the 'Southern Inclusive Education Framework for Guyana' and its support tool 'The Inclusive Checker created for Southern mainstream primary classrooms'.

Keywords: Social Model of Disability, Medical Model of Disability, subjectivities, metamorphosis, special education needs, postcolonial Guyana, Quasi-inclusion practices, Guyanese cultural challenges, mainstream primary schools, Loreman's Synthesis, Booths and Ainscow's Index.

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Authors: Martin Roth, Axel Klarmann, Bogdan Franczyk

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The importance of logistics has changed enormously in the last few decades. While logistics was formerly one of the core functions of most companies, logistics or at least parts of their functions are nowadays outsourced to external logistic service providers in terms of contracts. As a result of this shift new business models like the fourth party logistics provider emerged, which designs, plans and monitors the resulting logistics networks. This new business model and topics such as Synchromodality or Big Data impose new requirements on the underlying IT, which cannot be met with conventional concepts and approaches. In this paper, the challenges of logistics network monitoring are outlined by using a scenario. The most common layers in a logical multilayered architecture for an information system are used to point out the arising challenges for IT. In addition, first appropriate solution approaches are introduced.

 

Keywords: Complex Event Processing, Fourth Party Logistics Service Provider, Logistics monitoring, Synchromodality.

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Authors: Gysele Lima Ricci, Jose Miguel Rodriguez Anton

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Companies in the tourism sector need to achieve competitive advantages for their survival in the market. In this way, the models based on association, cooperation, complementarity, distribution, exchange and mutual assistance arise as a possibility of organizational development, taking as reference the concept of networks. Many companies seek to partner in local networks as clusters to act together and associate. The main objective of the present research is to identify the specificities of management and the practices of cooperation in the tourist destination of São Paulo - Brazil, and to propose a new management model with possible cluster of tourism. The empirical analysis was carried out in three phases. As a first phase, a research was made by the companies, associations and tourism organizations existing in São Paulo, analyzing the characteristics of their business. In the second phase, the management specificities and cooperation practice used in the tourist destination. And in the third phase, identifying the possible strengths and weaknesses that potential or potential tourist cluster could have, proposing the development of the management model of the same adapted to the needs of the companies, associations and organizations. As a main result, it has been identified that companies, associations and organizations could be looking for synergies with each other and collaborate through a Hiperred organizational structure, in which they share their knowledge, try to make the most of the collaboration and to benefit from three concepts: flexibility, learning and collaboration. Finally, it is concluded that, the proposed tourism cluster management model is viable for the development of tourism destinations because it makes it possible to strategically address agents which are responsible for public policies, as well as public and private companies and organizations in their strategies competitiveness and cooperation.

Keywords: Cluster, management model, networks, tourism sector.

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Authors: Redha M. Elhuni

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The critical key success factors, which have to be targeted with appropriate change management, are the user acceptance and support of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system at the early implementation stages. This becomes even more important in Arab context where national and organisational culture with a different value and belief system, resulting in different management styles, might not complement with Western business culture embedded in the predefined standard business processes of existing ERP packages. This study explains and critically evaluates research into national and organizational culture and the influence of different national cultures on the implementation and reengineering process of ERP packages in an Arab context. Using a case study, realized through a quantitative survey testing five of Martinsons’s and Davison’s propositions in a Libyan sample company, confirmed the expected results from the literature review that culture has an impact on the implementation process and that employee empowerment is an unavoidable consequence of an ERP implementation.

Keywords: Enterprise resource planning, ERP systems, organisational culture, Arab context.

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Authors: A. S. Salimzhanova, J. C. Sardinas, O. A. Yanovskaya

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The objective of this research work is to discuss the concept of “green growth” in the Republic of Kazakhstan introduced by its government in the “National Sustainable Development Strategy” with the objective of transition to a resource-efficient, “green economy.” We believe that emerging economies like Kazakhstan can pursue a cleaner and more efficient development path by introducing an environmental tax system based on resource consumption rather than only income and labor. The key issues discussed in this article are the eco-efficiency, which refers to closing the gap between economic and ecological efficiencies, and the structural change of the economy toward “green growth.” We also strongly believe that studying the experience of East Asian countries on “green reform” including eco-innovation and “green solutions” in business is essential to the case of Kazakhstan. All of these will raise the status of Kazakhstan to the level of one of the thirty developed countries over the next decades.

Keywords: Economic strategy, green growth, green solutions, natural resource management, environmental tax system.

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Authors: A. Qayed Al-Emadi, C. Schwabenland, B. Czarnecka

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In 2009, the new HRM policy was implemented in Qatar for public sector organisations. The purpose of this research is to examine how Qatar’s 2009 HRM policy was significant in influencing employee retention in public organisations. The conducted study utilised quantitative methodology to analyse the data on employees’ perceptions of such HRM practices as Performance Management, Rewards and Promotion, Training and Development associated with the HRM policy in public organisations in comparison to semi-private organisations. Employees of seven public and semi-private organisations filled in the questionnaire based on the 5-point Likert scale to present quantitative results. The data was analysed with the correlation and multiple regression statistical analyses. It was found that Performance Management had the relationship with Employee Retention, and Rewards and Promotion influenced Job Satisfaction in public organisations. Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention was also observed. However, no significant differences were observed in the role of HRM practices in public and semi-private organisations.

Keywords: Performance management, rewards, promotion, training and development, job satisfaction, employee retention, SHRM, configurationally perspective.

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Authors: Zahra Mohammadnazari, Fateme Rostambeygi, Fatemeh Dehrouyeh, Hwang Ki-Soon, Amir Aghsami

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Corporations have always prioritized efforts to examine and improve processes. Various metrics, such as the cost and time required to implement the process and can be specified in this regard. Process improvement can be defined as an improvement of these indicators. This is accomplished by looking at prospective adjustments to the current executive process model or the resources allotted to it. Research has been conducted in this paper to the improve the procurement process and aims to explore assessment prospects in the project using a combination of process mining and simulation (benefiting from Play-In and Play-Out methodologies). To run the simulation, we will need to complete the control flow diagram, institution settings, resource settings, and activity settings. The process of mining event logs yields the process control flow. However, both the entry of institutions and the distribution of resources must be modeled. The rate of admission of institutions and the distribution of time for the implementation of activities will be determined in the next step.

Keywords: Business reengineering, Petri net, process-based simulation, process mining.

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Authors: Whee Yen Wong, Kim Yeow Tshai, Chan Wai Lee

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There are various approaches to implement quality improvements. Organizations aim for a management standard which is capable of providing customers with quality assurance on their product/service via continuous process improvement. Carefully planned steps are necessary to ensure the right quality improvement methodology (QIM) and business operations are consistent, reliable and truly meet the customers' needs. This paper traces the evolution of QIM in Malaysia-s Information Technology (IT) industry in the past, current and future; and highlights some of the thought of researchers who contributed to the science and practice of quality, and identifies leading methodologies in use today. Some of the misconceptions and mistakes leading to quality system failures will also be examined and discussed. This paper aims to provide a general overview of different types of QIMs available for IT businesses in maximizing business advantages, enhancing product quality, improving process routines and increasing performance earnings.

Keywords: Evolution, Integrating and Aligning, Malaysia's Quality Improvement Methodology, Six Sigma Data Quality Management.

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Authors: Witthaya Mekhum

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The OTOP Entrepreneurship that used to create substantial source of income for local Thai communities are now in a stage of exigent matters that required assistances from public sectors due to over Entrepreneurship of duplicative ideas, unable to adjust costs and prices, lack of innovation, and inadequate of quality control. Moreover, there is a repetitive problem of middlemen who constantly corner the OTOP market. Local OTOP producers become easy preys since they do not know how to add more values, how to create and maintain their own brand name, and how to create proper packaging and labeling. The suggested solutions to local OTOP producers are to adopt modern management techniques, to find knowhow to add more values to products and to unravel other marketing problems. The objectives of this research are to study the prevalent OTOP products management and to discover direction to manage OTOP products to enhance the effectiveness of OTOP Entrepreneurship in Nonthaburi Province, Thailand. There were 113 participants in this study. The research tools can be divided into two parts: First part is done by questionnaire to find responses of the prevalent OTOP Entrepreneurship management. Second part is the use of focus group which is conducted to encapsulate ideas and local wisdom. Data analysis is performed by using frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation as well as the synthesis of several small group discussions. The findings reveal that 1) Business Resources: the quality of product is most important and the marketing of product is least important. 2) Business Management: Leadership is most important and raw material planning is least important. 3) Business Readiness: Communication is most important and packaging is least important. 4) Support from public sector: Certified from the government is most important and source of raw material is the least important.

Keywords: Management, OTOP Entrepreneurship, Local Wisdom

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Authors: Bruno Škrinjarić

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Rapid technological developments and increase in organizations’ interdependence on international scale are changing the traditional workplace paradigm. A key feature of knowledge based economy is that employers are looking for individuals that possess both specific academic skills and knowledge, and also capability to be proactive and respond to problems creatively and autonomously. The focus of this paper is workers with Economics and Business background and its goals are threefold: (1) to explore wide range of competences and identify which are the most important to employers; (2) to investigate the existence and magnitude of gap between required and possessed level of a certain competency; and (3) to inquire how this gap is connected with performance of a company. A study was conducted on a representative sample of Croatian enterprises during the spring of 2016. Results show that generic, rather than specific, competences are more important to employers and the gap between the relative importance of certain competence and its current representation in existing workforce is greater for generic competences than for specific. Finally, results do not support the hypothesis that this gap is correlated with firms’ performance.

Keywords: Competency gap, competency matching, key competences, firm performance.

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Authors: Kusumaphorn Sompong, Helen Lawton Smith, Barbara Igel

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This paper provides a key driver-based conceptual framework that can be used to improve a firm-s success in commercializing technology and in new product innovation resulting from collaboration with other organizations through strategic alliances. Based on a qualitative study using an interview approach, strategic alliances of entrepreneurs in the food processing industry in Thailand are explored. This paper describes factors affecting decisions to collaborate through alliances. It identifies four issues: maintaining the efficiency of the value chain for production capability, adapting to present and future competition, careful assessment of value of outcomes, and management of innovation. We consider five driving factors: resource orientation, assessment of risk, business opportunity, sharing of benefits and confidence in alliance partners. These factors will be of interest to entrepreneurs and policy makers with regard to further understanding of the direction of business strategies.

Keywords: Managing collaboration, strategic alliance, technology commercialization, innovation.

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Authors: Seung Woo Lee, So Jeong Nam, Jai-Kyung Lee

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It can be said that the business sector is faced with a range of challenges–a rapidly changing business environment, an increase and diversification of customers- demands and the consequent need for quick response–for having in place flexible management and production info systems. As a matter of fact, many manufacturers have adopted production info management systems such as MES and ERP. Nevertheless, managers are having difficulties obtaining ever-changing production process information in real time, or responding quickly to any change in production related needs on the basis of such information. This is because they rely on poor production info systems which are not capable of providing real-time factory settings. If the manufacturer doesn-t have a capacity for collecting or digitalizing the 4 Ms (Man, Machine, Material, Method), which are resources for production, on a real time basis, it might to difficult to effectively maintain the information on production process. In this regard, this paper will introduce some new alternatives to the existing methods of collecting the 4 Ms in real time, which are currently comprise the production field.

Keywords: 4M, Acquisition of Data on shop-floor, Real-time machine interface

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Authors: K. Matušínská, H. Starzyczná, M. Stoklasa

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The paper deals with behaviour of the segment 50+ in the financial market in the Czech Republic. This segment could be said as the strong market power and it can be a crucial business potential for financial business units. The main defined objective of this paper is analysis of the customers´ behaviour of the segment 50- 60 years in the financial market in the Czech Republic and proposal making of the suitable marketing approach to satisfy their demands in the area of product, price, distribution and marketing communication policy. This paper is based on data from one part of primary marketing research. Paper determinates the basic problem areas as well as definition of financial services marketing, defining the primary research problem, hypothesis and primary research methodology. Finally suitable marketing approach to selected sub segment at age of 50-60 years is proposed according to marketing research findings.

Keywords: Population aging in the Czech Republic, Segment 50-60 years, Financial services marketing, Marketing research, Marketing approach.

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Authors: I. M. Sujaul, M. A. Sobahan, A. A. Edriyana, F. M. Yahaya, R. M. Yunus

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This study was carried out to investigate the adverse effect of industrial wastewater on surface water quality in Gebeng industrial estate, Pahang, Malaysia. Surface water was collected from six sampling stations. Physicochemical parameters were characterized based on in-situ and ex-situ analysis according to standard methods by American Public Health Association (APHA). Selected heavy metals were determined by using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP MS). The results revealed that the concentration of heavy metals such as Pb, Cu, Cd, Cr and Hg were high in samples. The results also showed that the value of Pb and Hg were higher in the wet season in comparison to dry season. According to Malaysia National Water Quality Standard (NWQS) and Water Quality Index (WQI) all the sampling station were categorized as class IV (highly polluted). The present study revealed that the adverse effects of careless disposal of wastes and directly discharge of effluents affected on surface water quality. Therefore, the authorities should implement the laws to ensure the proper practices of wastewater management for environmental sustainability around the study area.

Keywords: Gebeng, heavy metals, waste water, water quality index.

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Authors: Md. Mahbubur Rahim

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B2E portals represent a new class of web-based information technologies which many organisations are introducing in recent years to stay in touch with their distributed workforces and enable them to perform value added activities for organisations. However, actual usage of these emerging systems (measured using suitable instruments) has not been reported in the contemporary scholarly literature. We argue that many of the instruments to measure usage of various types of IT-enabled information systems are not directly applicable for B2E portals because they were developed for the context of traditional mainframe and PC-based information systems. It is therefore important to develop a new instrument for web-based portal technologies aimed at employees. In this article, we report on the development and initial qualitative evaluation of an instrument that seeks to operationaise a set of independent factors affecting the usage of portals by employees. The proposed instrument is useful to IT/e-commerce researchers and practitioners alike as it enhances their confidence in predicting employee usage of portals in organisations.

Keywords: Portal, business-to-employees, instrument, evaluation, qualitative research.

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Authors: R. A. Sabir , X. Xinping , S.A. Sabr

Abstract:

This paper has presented research in progress concerning the contribution of target costing approach to achievement competitive price in the Iraqi firm. The title of the paper is one of the subjects that get large concerns in the finance and business world in the present time. That is because many competitive firms have appeared in the regional and global markets and the rapid changes that covered all fields of life. On the other hand, this paper concentrated on lack knowledge of the industrial firms, regarding the significant role of target cost for achieving the competitive prices. The paper depends on the main supposition, using the competitive price to get the target cost in the industrial firms. In order to achieve competitive advantage in business world the firms should rely on modern methods to manage cost and profit. From strategic perspective the target cost achieves a so powerful competitive advantage represented in cost reduction. Nevertheless the target cost does not exclude the calculation and survey of costs during the production process. Products- estimated costs are calculated and compared with the target costs.

Keywords: Target Costing, Competitive Price, Target Profit, Iraq Kurdistan Region.

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Authors: G. Gürsel, K. H. Gülkesen, N. Zayim, A. Arifoğlu, O. Saka

Abstract:

User satisfaction is one of the most used success indicators in the research of information system (IS). Literature shows user expectations have great influence on user satisfaction. Both expectation and satisfaction of users are important for Hospital Information Systems (HIS). Education, IS experience, age, attitude towards change, business title, sex and working unit of the hospital, are examined as the potential determinant of the medical users’ expectations. Data about medical user expectations are collected by the “Expectation Questionnaire” developed for this study. Expectation data are used for calculating the Expectation Meeting Ratio (EMR) with the evaluation framework also developed for this study. The internal consistencies of the answers to the questionnaire are measured by Cronbach´s Alpha coefficient. The multivariate analysis of medical user’s EMRs of HIS is performed by forward stepwise binary logistic regression analysis. Education and business title is appeared to be the determinants of expectations from HIS.

Keywords: Evaluation, Fuzzy Logic, Hospital Information System, User Expectation.

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Authors: K. Bouchbout, Z. Alimazighi

Abstract:

The importance of inter-organizational system (IOS) has been increasingly recognized by organizations. However, IOS adoption has proved to be difficult and, at this stage, why this is so is not fully uncovered. In practice, benefits have often remained concentrated, primarily accruing to the dominant party, resulting in low rates of adoption and usage, and often culminating in the failure of the IOS. The main research question is why organizations initiate or join IOS and what factors influence their adoption and use levels. This paper reviews the literature on IOS adoption and proposes a theoretical framework in order to identify the critical factors to capture a complete picture of IOS adoption. With our proposed critical factors, we are able to investigate their relative contributions to IOS adoption decisions. We obtain findings that suggested that there are five groups of factors that significantly affect the adoption and use decision of IOS in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) context: 1) interorganizational context, 2) organizational context, 3) technological context, 4) perceived costs, and 5) perceived benefits.

Keywords: Business-to-Business relationships, buyer-supplier relationships, Critical factors, Interorganizational Information Systems, IOS adoption and use.

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