Search results for: public risk management organisations

Authors: Monica Dudian , Raluca Andreea Popa

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This article analyses the relationship between sovereign credit risk rating and gross domestic product for Central and Eastern European Countries for the period 1996 – 2010. In order to study the metioned relationship, we have used a numerical transformation of the risk qualification, thus: we marked 0 the lowest risk; then, we went on ascending, with a pace of 5, up to the score of 355 corresponding to the maximum risk. The used method of analysis is that of econometric modelling with EViews 7.0. programme. This software allows the analysis of data into a pannel type system, involving a mix of periods of time and series of data for different entities. The main conclusion of the work is the one confirming the negative relationship between the sovereign credit risk and the gross domestic product for the Central European and Eastern countries during the reviewed period.

Keywords: credit rating agencies, economic growth, gross domestic product, sovereign credit risk rating.

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Authors: Petr Teply

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While the form of crises may change, their essence remains the same (such as a cycle of abundant liquidity, rapid credit growth, and a low-inflation environment followed by an asset-price bubble). The current market turbulence began in mid-2000s when the US economy shifted to imbalanced both internal and external macroeconomic positions. We see two key causes of these problems – loose US monetary policy in early 2000s and US government guarantees issued on the securities by government-sponsored enterprises what was further fueled by financial innovations such as structured credit products. We have discovered both negative and positive lessons deriving from this crisis and divided the negative lessons into three groups: financial products and valuation, processes and business models, and strategic issues. Moreover, we address key risk management lessons and exit strategies derived from the current crisis and recommend policies that should help diminish the negative impact of future potential crises.

Keywords: exist strategy, global crisis, risk management, corporate governance

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Authors: R. Kozik, A. Leśniak A., E. Plebankiewicz

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Contracting authorities in the public sector are obligated to apply the principles provided for in the Polish law for the evaluation and selection of contractors. In order to analyse the methods of contractors selecting applied in practice by public clients, the notices of contract award results for construction works were analysed. The analysis shows that the procedure selected more and more often is open competitive bidding, where the assessment of the competence of contractors is not very precise, as well as noncompetitive bidding, i.e. single source procurement. The share of procurement procedures, where the only criterion is price, is increasing. The solution to the problems existing here might be the introduction of one of the forms of pre-selection of contractors. The article also briefly discusses verification systems for companies applying for public contracts used in EU countries.

Keywords: Certification, contractors selection, open tendering, public investors.

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Authors: B. O. Diyaolu, O. O. Oyerinde

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This study examined the effect of sexuality education training programs on the knowledge and practice of sexual risk behavior among secondary school adolescents in Ibadan North Local Government area of Oyo State. A total of 105 students were sampled from two schools in the Local Government area. 70 students constituted the experimental group while 35 constituted the control group. Pretest-Posttest control group quasi-experimental design was adopted. A self-developed questionnaire was used to test participants’ knowledge and practice of sexual risk behavior before and after the training (α = .62, .82 and .74). Analysis indicated a significant effect of sexuality education training on participants’ knowledge and practice of sexual risk behavior, a significant gender difference in knowledge of sexual risk behavior but no significant age and gender difference in the practice of sexual risk behavior. It was thus concluded that sexuality education should be taught in schools and emphasized at homes with no age or gender restrictions.

Keywords: Early adolescent, health risk, sexual risk behavior, sexuality education.

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Authors: Ali E. Abbas

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This paper highlights some of the normative issues that might result by setting independent thresholds in risk analyses and particularly with safety regions. A second objective is to explain how such regions can be specified appropriately in a meaningful way. We start with a review of the importance of setting deterministic trade-offs among target requirements. We then show how to determine safety regions for risk analysis appropriately using utility functions.

Keywords: Decision analysis, thresholds, risk, reliability.

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Authors: Smita S. D. Goorah, Dilish Jokhoo

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A personal estimate of a health risk may not correspond to a scientific assessment of the health risk. Hence, there is a need to investigate perceived health risks in the public. In this study, a young, educated and healthy group of people from a tertiary institute were questioned about their health concerns. Ethics clearance was obtained and data was collected by means of a questionnaire. 362 students participated in the study. Tobacco use, heavy alcohol drinking, illicit drugs, unsafe sex and potential carcinogens were perceived to be the five greatest threats to health in this cohort. On the other hand natural health products, unemployment, unmet contraceptive needs, family violence and homelessness were felt to be the least perceived health risks. Nutrition-related health risks as well as health risks due to physical inactivity and obesity were not perceived as major health threats. Such a study of health perceptions may guide health promotion campaigns.

Keywords: Health promotion, perceptions of health risks, university students.

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Authors: Hekmatpanah, M.

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Since the beginning of human history, human activities have caused many changes in the environment. Today, a particular attention should be paid to gaining knowledge about water quality of wetlands which are pristine natural environments rich in genetic reserves. If qualitative conditions of industrial areas (in terms of both physicochemical and biological conditions) are not addressed properly, they could cause disruption in natural ecosystems, especially in rivers. With regards to the quality of water resources, determination of pollutant sources plays a pivotal role in engineering projects as well as designing water quality control systems. Thus, using different methods such as flow duration curves, dischargepollution load model and frequency analysis by HYFA software package, risk of various industrial pollutants in international and ecologically important Gavkhoni wetland is analyzed. In this study, a station located at Varzaneh City is used as the last station on Zayanderud River, from where the river water is discharged into the wetland. Results showed that elements- concentrations often exceeded the allowed level and river water can endanger regional ecosystem. In addition, if the river discharge is managed on Q25 basis, this basis can lower concentrations of elements, keeping them within the normal level.

Keywords: Pollutants Risk, Industry, Flow Discharge, Management, Gavkhoni Wetland

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Authors: MP. Mulaudzi, MA. Petersen, J. Mukuddem-Petersen , IM. Schoeman, B. de Waal, JM. Manale

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This conference paper discusses a risk allocation problem for subprime investing banks involving investment in subprime structured mortgage products (SMPs) and Treasuries. In order to solve this problem, we develop a L'evy process-based model of jump diffusion-type for investment choice in subprime SMPs and Treasuries. This model incorporates subprime SMP losses for which credit default insurance in the form of credit default swaps (CDSs) can be purchased. In essence, we solve a mean swap-at-risk (SaR) optimization problem for investment which determines optimal allocation between SMPs and Treasuries subject to credit risk protection via CDSs. In this regard, SaR is indicative of how much protection investors must purchase from swap protection sellers in order to cover possible losses from SMP default. Here, SaR is defined in terms of value-at-risk (VaR). Finally, we provide an analysis of the aforementioned optimization problem and its connections with the subprime mortgage crisis (SMC).

Keywords: Investors; Jump Diffusion Process, Structured Mortgage Products, Treasuries, Credit Risk, Credit Default Swaps, Tranching Risk, Counterparty Risk, Value-at-Risk, Swaps-at-Risk, Subprime Mortgage Crisis.

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Authors: Ali Mohaghar, Iman Ghasemian Sahebi, Alireza Arab

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In the last decades, increasing in human and natural disaster occurrence had very irreparable effects on human life. Hence, one of the important issues in humanitarian supply chain management is identifying and prioritizing the different risks and finding suitable solutions for encountering them at the time of disaster occurrence. This study is an attempt to provide a comprehensive review of humanitarian supply chain risks in a case study of Tehran Red Crescent Societies. For this purpose, Best-Worst method (BWM) has been used for analyzing the risks of the humanitarian supply chain. 22 risks of the humanitarian supply chain were identified based on the literature and interviews with four experts. According to BWM method, the importance of each risk was calculated. The findings showed that culture contexts, little awareness of people, and poor education system are the most important humanitarian supply chain risks. This research provides a useful guideline for managers so that they can benefit from the results to prioritize their solutions.

Keywords: Best worst method, humanitarian logistics, humanitarian supply chain, risk management.

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Authors: Leandi Steenkamp

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The sectional title industry has been a part of the property landscape in South Africa for almost half a century, and plays a significant role in addressing the housing problem in the country. Stakeholders such as owners and investors in sectional title property are in most cases not directly involved in the management thereof, and place reliance on the audited annual financial statements of bodies corporate for decision-making purposes. Although the industry seems to be highly regulated, the legislation regarding accounting and auditing of sectional title is vague and ambiguous. Furthermore, there are no industry-specific auditing and accounting standards to guide accounting and auditing practitioners in performing their work and industry financial benchmarks are not readily available. In addition, financial pressure on sectional title schemes is often very high due to the fact that some owners exercise unrealistic pressure to keep monthly levies as low as possible. All these factors have an impact on the business risk as well as audit risk of bodies corporate. Very little academic research has been undertaken on the sectional title industry in South Africa from an accounting and auditing perspective. The aim of this paper is threefold: Firstly, to discuss the findings of a literature review on uncertainties, ambiguity and confusing aspects in current legislation regarding the audit of a sectional title property that may cause or increase audit and business risk. Secondly, empirical findings of risk-related aspects from the results of interviews with three groups of body corporate role-players will be discussed. The role-players were body corporate trustee chairpersons, body corporate managing agents and accounting and auditing practitioners of bodies corporate. Specific reference will be made to business risk and audit risk. Thirdly, practical recommendations will be made on possibilities of closing the audit expectation gap, and further research opportunities in this regard will be discussed.

Keywords: Assurance, audit, audit risk, body corporate, corporate governance, sectional title.

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Authors: Rao Fu, Jie Chen, Shutian Zeng, Yiping Zhuang, Agus Sudjianto

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Generative Adversarial Net (GAN) has proved to be a powerful machine learning tool in image data analysis and generation. In this paper, we propose to use Conditional Generative Adversarial Net (CGAN) to learn and simulate time series data. The conditions include both categorical and continuous variables with different auxiliary information. Our simulation studies show that CGAN has the capability to learn different types of normal and heavy-tailed distributions, as well as dependent structures of different time series. It also has the capability to generate conditional predictive distributions consistent with training data distributions. We also provide an in-depth discussion on the rationale behind GAN and the neural networks as hierarchical splines to establish a clear connection with existing statistical methods of distribution generation. In practice, CGAN has a wide range of applications in market risk and counterparty risk analysis: it can be applied to learn historical data and generate scenarios for the calculation of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES), and it can also predict the movement of the market risk factors. We present a real data analysis including a backtesting to demonstrate that CGAN can outperform Historical Simulation (HS), a popular method in market risk analysis to calculate VaR. CGAN can also be applied in economic time series modeling and forecasting. In this regard, we have included an example of hypothetical shock analysis for economic models and the generation of potential CCAR scenarios by CGAN at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Conditional Generative Adversarial Net, market and credit risk management, neural network, time series.

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Authors: E. Inzunza-González, C. Cruz-Hernández, R. M. López-Gutiérrez, E. E. García-Guerrero, L. Cardoza- Avendaño, H. Serrano-Guerrero

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In this paper the development of a software to encrypt messages with asymmetric cryptography is presented. In particular, is used the RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) algorithm to encrypt alphanumeric information. The software allows to generate different public keys from two prime numbers provided by the user, the user must then select a public-key to generate the corresponding private-key. To encrypt the information, the user must provide the public-key of the recipient as well as the message to be encrypted. The generated ciphertext can be sent through an insecure channel, so that would be very difficult to be interpreted by an intruder or attacker. At the end of the communication, the recipient can decrypt the original message if provide his/her public-key and his/her corresponding private-key.

Keywords: Asymmetric cryptography, Prime number, Publickey, Private-key, Software.

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Authors: Jorge Barros Mendes

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The Portuguese Constitution, in article 22, instituted the general principle of tort liability of the State and other public law entities. Consequently, ordinary legislation established the tort liability of the State into the Portuguese Legal Order, by means of Decree-Law 48051, of 1967. This decree, which was criticised extensively, was amended by virtue of Law 67/2007, of 31st December, establishing the regime for tort liability arising from losses caused by third parties, due to the acts of public management in relation to all the functions of the State, i.e. i) administrative, ii) legislative, and iii) jurisdictional.

Keywords: Portuguese courts, tort liability of the state.

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Authors: Khelood A. Mkalaf, Peter Gibson, John Flanagan

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This study investigates the relationship between the reliability of critical medical equipment (CME) and the effectiveness of CME maintenance management strategies in relation to patient outcomes in 84 public hospitals of a top 20 OECD country. The work has examined the effectiveness of CME maintenance management strategies used by the public hospital system of a large state run health organization. The conceptual framework was designed to examine the significance of the relationship between six variables: (1) types of maintenance management strategies, (2) maintenance services, (3) maintenance practice, (4) medical equipment reliability, (5) maintenance costs and (6) patient outcomes. The results provide interesting insights into the effectiveness of the maintenance strategies used. For example, there appears to be about a 1 in 10 000 probability of failure of anesthesia equipment, but these seem to be confined to specific maintenance situations. There are also some findings in relation to outsourcing of maintenance. For each of the variables listed, results are reported in relation to the various types of maintenance strategies and services. Decision-makers may use these results to evaluate more effective maintenance strategies for their CME and generate more effective patient outcomes.

Keywords: Critical medical equipment, maintenance strategy, patient outcomes, reliability.

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Authors: H.B. Nguendo Yongsi

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An epidemiological cross sectional study was undertaken in Yaoundé in 2002 and updated in 2005. Focused on health within the city, the objectives were to measure diarrheal prevalence and to identify the risk factors associated with them. Results of microbiological examinations have revealed an urban average prevalence rate of 14.5%. Access to basic services in the living environment appears to be an important risk factor for diarrheas. Statistical and spatial analyses conducted have revealed that prevalence of diarrheal diseases vary among the two main types of settlement (informal and planned). More importantly, this study shows that, diarrhea prevalence rates (notably bacterial and parasitic diarrheas) vary according to the sub- category of settlements. The study draws a number of theoretical and policy implications for researchers and policy decision makers.

Keywords: Cameroon, diarrheal diseases, health risk factor, planned and spontaneous settlement, urban policy, urbanization.

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Authors: Slavka Zeković

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A preliminary evaluation of the urban land system is presented in the article together with the instruments of land policy in Serbia. The main reason for the analysis is demand for definition of reform framework for urban land management in Serbia in the period of transition towards market-led system. It is concluded that due to the limitations of the current regulation it will be impossible in the future to apply market principles in the urban land policy (supply and demand of land, land capitalization, investment efficiency, et al.). Based on the estimation that the urban land system and land policy are key factors of competitiveness between regions and towns in Serbia, it is necessary to initiate changes in this field. There are indicated on an option of privatization of urban public land and possible establishment of leasehold land. A comparative analysis of the possibilities of the reform urban land system in Serbia has been carried out in relation to two approaches of market systems: (a) with dominant private ownership of urban land (neo/liberal approach) and (b) with dominant public ownership of urban land (system of leasehold)whose findings can be a basis for further study of the new system in Serbia.. The attanied results are part of studies matter for the making of Strategy of territorial development of Serbia.

Keywords: Urban Land System, Urban Land Management, Instruments of Land Policy, Evaluation, Market.

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Authors: Anna Grichting, Sara Al Sada, Angelica Caccam, Urshi Khan

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Qatar, a Gulf country highly dependent on its oil and gas revenues – is looking to innovate, diversify, and ultimately reach its aim of creating a knowledge economy to prepare for its post-oil era. One area that the country is investing in is Contemporary Art, and world renowned artists such as Damien Hirst and Richard Serra – have been commissioned to design site-specific art for the public spaces of the city of Doha as well as in more remote desert locations. This research discusses the changing presence, role and context of public art in Doha, both from a historical and cultural overview, and the different forms and media as well as the typologies of urban and public spaces in which the art is installed. It examines the process of implementing site-specific artworks, looking at questions of scale, history, social meaning and formal aesthetics. The methodologies combine theoretical research on the understanding of public art and its role and placement in public space, as well as empirical research on contemporary public art projects in Doha, based on documentation and interviews and as well as site and context analysis of the urban or architectural spaces within which the art is situated. Surveys and interviews – using social media - in different segments of the contemporary Qatari society, including all nationalities and social groups, are used to measure and qualify the impacts and effects on the population.

Keywords: Contemporary Public Art, Knowledge Economy, Public Realm, Site Specific Art Works.

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Authors: Brandtner Patrick, Staberhofer Franz

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Logistics and Supply Chain Management are of crucial importance for organisational success. In the era of Digitalization, several implications and improvement potentials for these domains arise, which at the same time could lead to decreased competitiveness and could endanger long-term company success if ignored or neglected. However, empirical research on the issue of Digitalization and benefits purported to it by practitioners is scarce and mainly focused on single technologies or separate, isolated Supply Chain blocks as e.g. distribution logistics or procurement only. The current paper applies a holistic focus group approach to elaborate practitioner use cases at the nexus of the concepts of Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Digitalization. In the course of three focus group workshops with over 45 participants from more than 20 organisations, a comprehensive set of benefit entitlements and areas for improvement in terms of applying digitalization to SCM is developed. The main results of the paper indicate the relevance of Digitalization being realized in practice. In the form of seventeen concrete research action fields, the benefit entitlements are aggregated and transformed into potential starting points for future research projects in this area. The main contribution of this paper is an empirically grounded basis for future research projects and an overview of actual research action fields from practitioners’ point of view.

Keywords: Digital transformation, supply chain management, digital supply chain, value networks.

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Authors: Javier Parra-Domínguez, Juan Manuel Corchado

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At present, public efficiency is a concept that intends to maximize return on public investment focus on minimizing the use of resources and maximizing the outputs. The concept takes into account statistical criteria drawn up according to techniques such as DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). The purpose of the current work is to consider, more precisely, the theoretical application of CBR (Case-Based Reasoning) from economics and computer science, as a preliminary step to improving the efficiency of law enforcement agencies (public sector). With the aim of increasing the efficiency of the public sector, we have entered into a phase whose main objective is the implementation of new technologies. Our main conclusion is that the application of computer techniques, such as CBR, has become key to the efficiency of the public sector, which continues to require economic valuation based on methodologies such as DEA. As a theoretical result and conclusion, the incorporation of CBR systems will reduce the number of inputs and increase, theoretically, the number of outputs generated based on previous computer knowledge.

Keywords: Case-based reasoning, knowledge, police, public efficiency.

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Authors: Ya-Fen Lee, Yun-Yao Chi

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The study aims to explore the relationship between risk perception of rockfall and revisit intention using a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. A total of 573 valid questionnaires are collected from travelers to Taroko National Park, Taiwan. The findings show the majority of travelers have the medium perception of rockfall risk, and are willing to revisit the Taroko National Park. The revisit intention to Taroko National Park is influenced by hazardous preferences, willingness-to-pay, obstruction and attraction. The risk perception has an indirect effect on revisit intention through influencing willingness-to-pay. The study results can be a reference for mitigation the rockfall disaster.

Keywords: Risk perception, rockfall, revisit intention, structural equation modeling.

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Authors: Gyou-tae Park, Young-gyu Kim, Jeong-rock Kwon, Yongwoo Lee, Hiesik Kim

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The gas safety management system using an intelligent gas meter we proposed is to monitor flow and pressure of gas, earthquake, temperature, smoke and leak of methane. Then our system takes safety measures to protect a serious risk by the result of an event, to communicate with a wall-pad including a gateway by zigbee network in buildings and to report the event to user by the safety management program in a server. Also, the inner cutoff valve of an intelligent gas meter is operated if any event occurred or abnormal at each sensor.

Keywords: micom gas-meter, gas safety, zigbee, ubiquitous

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Authors: Marwah Mohsin, Thomas Beach, Alan Kwan, Mahdi Ismail

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This paper describes the differences in views on sustainable development between the general public and experts in a developing country, Iraq. This paper will answer the question: How do the views of the public differ from the generally accepted view of experts in the context of sustainable urban development in Iraq? In order to answer this question, the views of both the public and the experts will be analysed. These results are taken from a public survey and a Delphi questionnaire. These will be analysed using statistical methods in order to identify the significant differences. This will enable investigation of the different perceptions between the public perceptions and the experts’ views towards urban sustainable development factors. This is important due to the fact that different viewpoints between policy-makers and the public will impact on the acceptance by the public of any future sustainable development work that is undertaken. The brief findings of the statistical analysis show that the views of both the public and the experts are considered different in most of the variables except six variables show no differences. Those variables are ‘The importance of establishing sustainable cities in Iraq’, ‘Mitigate traffic congestion’, ‘Waste recycling and separating’, ‘Use wastewater recycling’, ‘Parks and green spaces’, and ‘Promote investment’.

Keywords: Urban sustainable development, experts’ views, public views, statistical analysis.

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Authors: Salman Iqbal

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Knowledge management (KM) literature has mainly focused on the antecedents of KM. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of specific human resource management (HRM) practices on employee knowledge sharing and its outcome as individual knowledge capability. Based on previous literature, a model is proposed for the study and hypotheses are formulated. The cross-sectional dataset comes from a sample of 19 knowledge intensive firms (KIFs). This study has run an item parceling technique followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on the latent constructs of the research model. Employees’ collaboration and their interpersonal trust can help to improve their knowledge sharing behaviour and knowledge capability within organisations. This study suggests that in future, by using a larger sample, better statistical insight is possible. The findings of this study are beneficial for scholars, policy makers and practitioners. The empirical results of this study are entirely based on employees’ perceptions and make a significant research contribution, given there is a dearth of empirical research focusing on the subcontinent.

Keywords: Employees’ collaboration, individual knowledge capability, knowledge sharing, monetary rewards, structural equation modelling.

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Authors: Paiboon Jeamponk

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The Bangnanglee Sub-district Administrative Office, Thailand had initiated a policy to environmental protection with encouraging household waste management in order to promote civil responsibility for domestic hygienic. This research studied the household behaviors on solid waste and wastewater management. A sample population of 306 families answered a questionnaire. The study showed that, on average, domestic activities had produced 1.93 kilograms of waste per household per day. It has been found that 79% of the households made several attempts to reduce their own amount of waste. 80% of the households stationed their own garbage bins. 71% managed their waste by selling recyclable products. As for the rest of the waste, 51% burned them, while 29% disposed their waste in the nearby public trashcans and other 13% have them buried. As for wastewater, 60% of the households disposed it into the sewage, whereas 30% disposed them right from their elevated house.

Keywords: Environmental integrated management, environmental protection, household waste management.

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Authors: Adarsh Patil, David A. Power, John P. Morrison

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Grid environments consist of the volatile integration of discrete heterogeneous resources. The notion of the Grid is to unite different users and organisations and pool their resources into one large computing platform where they can harness, inter-operate, collaborate and interact. If the Grid Community is to achieve this objective, then participants (Users and Organisations) need to be willing to donate or share their resources and permit other participants to use their resources. Resources do not have to be shared at all times, since it may result in users not having access to their own resource. The idea of reward-based computing was developed to address the sharing problem in a pragmatic manner. Participants are offered a reward to donate their resources to the Grid. A reward may include monetary recompense or a pro rata share of available resources when constrained. This latter point may imply a quality of service, which in turn may require some globally agreed reservation mechanism. This paper presents a platform for economybased computing using the WebCom Grid middleware. Using this middleware, participants can configure their resources at times and priority levels to suit their local usage policy. The WebCom system accounts for processing done on individual participants- resources and rewards them accordingly.

Keywords: WebCom, Economy-based computing, WebComGrid Bank Reward, Condensed Graph, Distributor, Accounting, GridPoint.

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Authors: Barry Ardley, Abi Hunt, Nick Taylor

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As a theoretical and practical framework this study uses the student as producer approach to learning in higher education, as adopted by the Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, UK. Student as producer positions learners as skilled and capable agents, able to participate as partners with tutors in live research projects. To illuminate the nature of this approach to learning and to highlight its critical issues, the authors report on two guided student consultancy projects. These were set up with the assistance of two local organisations in the city of Lincoln UK. Using the student as producer model to deliver the projects enabled learners to acquire and develop a range of key skills and knowledge, not easily accessible in more traditional educational settings. This paper presents a systematic case study analysis of the eight organising principles of the student as producer model, as adopted by university tutors. The experience of tutors implementing student as producer suggests that the model can be widely applied to benefit not only the learning and teaching experiences of higher education students, and staff, but additionally, a university’s research programme and its community partners.

Keywords: Experiential learning, consultancy clients, student as producer.

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Authors: Sriaroonnirun Sittha, Rotchanakitumnuai Siriluck

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This paper addresses a current problem that occurs among Thai internet service providers with regard to bandwidth network quality management. The IPSTAR department of Telecom Organization of Thailand public company (TOT); the largest internet service provider in Thailand, is the case study to analyze the problem that exists. The Internet bandwidth network quality management (iBWQM) framework is mainly applied to the problem that has been found. Bandwidth management policy (BMP) and quality of service (QoS) are two antecedents of iBWQM. This paper investigates internet user behavior, marketing demand and network operation views in order to determine bandwidth management policy (e.g. quota management, scheduling and malicious management). The congestion of bandwidth is also analyzed to enhance quality of service (QoS). Moreover, the iBWQM framework is able to improve the quality of service and increase bandwidth utilization, minimize complaint rate concerns to slow speed, and provide network planning guidelines through Thai Internet services providers.

Keywords: Internet bandwidth management, Internet serviceprovider, Internet usage behavior, Quality of Service.

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Authors: Helene Eller

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The aim of non-profit organizations (NPO) is to provide services and goods for its clientele, with profit being a minor objective. By having this definition as the basic purpose of doing business, it is obvious that the goal of an organisation is to serve several bottom lines and not only the financial one. This approach is underpinned by the non-distribution constraint which means that NPO are allowed to make profits to a certain extent, but not to distribute them. The advantage is that there are no single shareholders who might have an interest in the prosperity of the organisation: there is no pie to divide. The gained profits remain within the organisation and will be reinvested in purposeful projects. Good governance is mandatory to support the aim of NPOs. Looking for a measure of good governance the principals of corporate governance (CG) will come in mind. The purpose of CG is direction and control, and in the field of NPO, CG is enlarged to consider the relationship to all important stakeholders who have an impact on the organisation. The recognition of more relevant parties than the shareholder is the link to corporate social responsibility (CSR). It supports a broader view of the bottom line: It is no longer enough to know how profits are used but rather how they are made. Besides, CSR addresses the responsibility of organisations for their impact on society. When transferring the concept of CSR to the non-profit area it will become obvious that CSR with its distinctive features will match the aims of NPOs. As a consequence, NPOs who apply CG apply also CSR to a certain extent. The research is designed as a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis. First, the investigation focuses on the theoretical basis of both concepts. Second, the similarities and differences are outlined and as a result the interconnection of both concepts will show up. The contribution of this research is manifold: The interconnection of both concepts when applied to NPOs has not got any attention in science yet. CSR and governance as integrated concept provides a lot of advantages for NPOs compared to for-profit organisations which are in a steady justification to show the impact they might have on the society. NPOs, however, integrate economic and social aspects as starting point. For NPOs CG is not a mere concept of compliance but rather an enhanced concept integrating a lot of aspects of CSR. There is no “either-nor” between the concepts for NPOs.

Keywords: Business ethics, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, non-profit organisations, stakeholder theory.

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Authors: Tomasz L. Nawrocki, Danuta Szwajca

Abstract:

The growing importance of reputation in building enterprise value and achieving long-term competitive advantage creates the need for its measurement and evaluation for the management purposes (effective reputation and its risk management). The paper presents practical application of self-developed corporate reputation assessment model from the viewpoint of stock market investors. The model has a pioneer character and example analysis performed for selected industry is a form of specific test for this tool. In the proposed solution, three aspects - informational, financial and development, as well as social ones - were considered. It was also assumed that the individual sub-criteria will be based on public sources of information, and as the calculation apparatus, capable of obtaining synthetic final assessment, fuzzy logic will be used. The main reason for developing this model was to fulfill the gap in the scope of synthetic measure of corporate reputation that would provide higher degree of objectivity by relying on "hard" (not from surveys) and publicly available data. It should be also noted that results obtained on the basis of proposed corporate reputation assessment method give possibilities of various internal as well as inter-branch comparisons and analysis of corporate reputation impact.

Keywords: Corporate reputation, fuzzy logic, fuzzy model, stock market investors.

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Authors: Isabel Duarte de Almeida, João Vilas-Boas, Ana Abrantes Cabral

Abstract:

The number and adequacy of Performance-Indicators (PIs) for organisational purposes are core to the success of organisations and a major concern to the sponsor of this research. This assignment developed a procedure to improve a firm’s performance assessment system, by identifying two key-PIs out of 28 initial ones, and by setting criteria and their relative importance to validate and rank the adequacy and the right number of operational metrics. The Analytical-Hierarchy-Process was used with a synthesismethod to treat data coming from the management inquiries. Although organisational alignment has been achieved, business processes should also be targeted and PIs continuously revised.

Keywords: Strategic performance assessment systems, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).

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