Management Arts

The purpose of research was to study the most important factors that are causing growth of industry and then suggest a plan of action that could be followed in response to the existing decline Of textile growth in Pakistan. The Pakistan textile industry contributes more than 60 percent (US $ 9.6 billion) to the country’s total exports. However, currently this industry is facing great decline in its growth rate. The major reasons for this decline can be the global recession, internal security concerns, the high cost of production due to increase in the energy costs etc. Depreciation of Pakistani rupee that significantly raised the cost of imported inputs, rise in inflation rate, and high cost of financing has also effected seriously the growth in the textile industry. As a result neither the buyers are able to visit frequently Pakistan nor are the exporters able to travel abroad for effectively marketing their products. With an in-depth investigation it was found that the Pakistan’s textile industry can once again be brought back on winning track if government takes serious actions in removing or normalizing the above mentioned hurdles. Additionally, the government should provide subsidy to the textile industry, minimize the internal dispute among the exporters, withdraw the withholding and sales taxes etc. Purchasing new machinery or enhancing the quality of the existing machinery and introducing new technology can also be very useful in increasing the research & development (R & D) related activities that in the modern era are very important for increasing the industrial growth of a country.

Students were to research on a particular industry sector, study their governance and point out the good, bad and ugly practices of their governance. Here, in this report, I have selected Swissair airline sector for my study. Swissair, considering their dramatic fall (it used to be one of the best airlines and nation’s pride that apparently got market failure, gone under debt in 2002 and the government had to bail it out) was a very good choice for this report. The structure of this report is very simple since the scope was just to point out governance and ethics practices of this company. In my report, I have given a little background information about the company that is followed by the bad governance and ethics practices in Swissair. These bad points are followed by the ugly practices. Now when Swissair saw itself failing they started taking steps that included some governance and ethical changes as well. I have tried to include them in the good points. Overall, my report is a short paper describing governance in Swissair, where I have tried my best to include all major and critically important points.

This paper provides analysis of household characteristics based on micro-level household data of 2004-05 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) Islamabad. The cross tabulation analysis of household characteristics and homeownership shows that homeowners as compared to renters are in a better living condition. They have a better quality of houses as well as number of rooms for living is greater than those of non-homeowners are. Electricity connection as a quality indicator for homeownership is the most common utility whereas gas and telephone is the least common. It is also seen that there is no significant difference between renters and homeowners in regard to type of toilets available in houses. In all three areas urban, rural and overall Pakistan, homeownership rate increases as age increases. The analysis shows weak relationship between educational level of household head and homeownership rates. The occupation of the household head has no significant effect on homeownership rate. The households headed by divorced and widowed heads have higher rates of homeownership as compared to the other two categories (currently married and never married).

This paper describes key aspects of the informal employment - its size and composition, its linkages with working poverty and provides more complete picture of the dimensions of informal employment in Pakistan using data of Labour Force Survey since 1999-2009. The data show that informal employment in the country is the result of the economy’s inability to create sufficient numbers of quality jobs to absorb increasing labour force. Compared to 3.4 average annual growth rates of labour force from 1999-2009, the informal sector employment growth rate is 3.6. As a result, share of formal sector employment shrunk from 34% to 26% in case of males and from 34.3% to 27% in case of females. Data further reveal that out of roughly 48.2 million employed people in 2009, about three fourth of them are in informal employment i.e. 37.0 million. The agriculture sector alone absorbs 54.4 percent of the informal employment. The distribution of status in informal employment shows large proportions of own account workers and contributing family workers in informal employment. It is shown that in 2009, more than one third (44.3 per cent) of all informal employed workers in Pakistan work as own-account workers and about one third (35.3 percent) as contributing family workers. Presence of a large informal employment is, in a way challenge to policy makers to consider improved working conditions, legal and social protection of the people employed in the informal economy and implementation of the appropriate regulatory frame work, developing training and skills, etc. To increase job quantity and quality, the emphasis should be placed on investing in people, especially the most vulnerable – in their education, skills training, lifelong learning, health and safety – and encouraging their entrepreneurial initiative.

Countries around the world have showed great efforts in promoting and improving the effectiveness of services given. Malaysia government required all public agencies in this country to strive to achieve ISO certification in order to developed high and consistent quality based on the principle of right the first time and all the time through documentation of policies and procedures. The issue on public service that does not meet the customer expectation has always been as an interesting topic and discussion. Until now, public sector is still trying to improve the facilities in order to meet customer satisfaction. To explore the differences between expected and perceived service quality towards publics Service delivery in Majlis Perbandaran Sungai Petani Kedah (MPSPK), a study was conducted on each individual that received service delivery in the public agency. The results of the study indicated that the overall service quality provided by the MPSPK was below customers’ expectations. Tangible was rated as the most important dimension followed by understanding customer, empathy, reliability and communication.

This paper is part of an ongoing research on the development of systemic maintenance management model for Malaysian university buildings. In order to achieve this aim, there is a need to develop a performance model against which services are measure. Measuring performance is a significant part of systemic maintenance management service delivery. Maintenance organization needs to know where they are in order to provide user-driven services and to enhance productivity. Through “hypothetico-deductive” theory, this paper developed a 10 points matrix for the university maintenance organizations for measuring and improving their service delivery. The aim of this paper is to present the validated maintenance management model for Malaysian university maintenance organizations. The model is to guide and facilitate value added service delivery through initiating maintenance according to user value system rather than mainly on the condition of the building

The current research is about “Assessment of Organizational Learning Status based on INVEST Pattern (Case Study; Branches Management in Bank Keshavarzi of Mazandaran Province)”. The main question of the research is that; how is the organizational learning status of branches management in bank Keshavarzi of Mazandaran province? And based on INVEST pattern constituents the research questions are formed. The study of statistical universe is consists of seventy seven (77) individuals from entire management, experts and personnel of branches management in bank Keshavarsi of Mazandaran province. Using table of Kerjesy & Morgan, 63 samples of this research is obtained. The approach of study is of type descriptive -measurement in which the questionnaire’s tool is used for collecting information which contains judgmental admissibility and since the coefficient of Alpha – Cronbakh obtained as 0.955 also showed that it had the required reliability and has distributed based on simple random sampling among individuals sample. After data collection, the two terms distribution test was used for answering the questions and results indicate that the status of six(6) constituents of learners with motivation, culture of educator, outlook for learning, increased learning, management support and changeable structure of branches management in bank Keshavarzi of Mazandaran province are all at medium to upper level. To respond to the main question of research also resulted that organizational learning status is at medium to upper level. Based on freedman test the priority of constitutes; outlook for future, supportive management, culture of educator and personnel with motivation, supportive & learning structure have been increased respectively.

Medical tourism is developing a new dimension in Malaysian healthcare system and its diversifying the national economy. In order to be competitive in this emerging industry, Malaysia needs to identify and implement competitive strategies based on the needs of medical tourists globally and the availability of its resources in the country. Literature review shows the study on medical tourism is focusing on wide variety of issues ranging from cost, promotion, barriers and cultural aspects. This conceptual paper would like to propose the extension of Porter model and Peng Y model of internationalization in medical tourism research. Porter model usually used in manufacturing and service oriented research. Whereas Peng Y model usually used in the international business studies. As medical tourism is moving forward to be a competitive industry and it is happening globally, it is wise to extend or associate those two models in the medical tourism research. Therefore, this paper is focused on competitive strategies, institutional based strategies, industry based strategies and resource based strategies that the health care centers need to adopt based on the both models. A theoretical framework is proposed to research emphasizing on the above four strategies in medical tourism.

This paper aims to examine the key drivers for employee engagement within an organization. It seeks to answer the question: what are the keys to improving the level of employee engagement? A case study illustrates a strategy for employee engagement that was based on research on the key drivers of engagement. The paper presents practical case study material from Kia Motors – the South Korean automotive manufacturer. It shows how Human Resources (HR) worked to develop a strategy to address very poor levels of employee engagement. A clear set of engagement measures was developed to assess the impact of the engagement strategy. This paper ascertains some of the key drivers of employee engagement as illustrated by the case study. It demonstrates a number of practical tools HR professionals can utilize to build employee engagement within their organizations.

In the age of competitive Globalization and dynamic world, business enterprises need to focus on innovative practices which will help in maximizing stake and shareholders wealth. The fundamental concern of corporate governance is to ensure that the firm’s directors and mangers act ethically in the interests of he firm and its shareholders and that the mangers are held accountable to capital providers for the use of assets. The concept of corporate governance can be taken as a parallel to the quality practices under the ISO standard. It also involves entry of non-executive directors into the board, and making the members more positive and dynamic in their activities. All business information must be made available to them, and system controls are activated to ensure authenticity, timeliness and effectiveness of information. Globalization and Liberalization have taken the Indian corporate world towards the international field. This, not only is there a need to establish viable and acceptable corporate governance, but it should also conform to international standards. The basic principles of corporate of corporate governance are based on ethical parameters such as complete transparency, integrity and accountability. The present paper addresses the issues of corporate performance, transparency, strategies, executive functions, compensation and accountability, auditors and several related issues.