International Business

In this study, I explore the impact of self-efficacy of individuals on their job performance in the banking sector of Spain. In particular, this study explores different prevalent literature on self-efficacy and how it can lead to improvement or deterioration of individual’s performance in banks. The results highlight an important corporate level phenomenon. The results on the basis of robust statistical techniques support the proposed key arguments of the study.

Interest in entrepreneurship has heightened in recent years, especially in business schools. Much of this interest is driven by student demand for courses in entrepreneurship, either because of genuine interest in the subject, or because students see entrepreneurship education as a useful hedge given uncertain corporate careers This paper reports a study of the importance of religious faith to entrepreneurs and the relationship of that faith to their ethical judgments. The importance of religious faith to entrepreneurs was similar to the importance of religious faith to other business respondents. Literature offers numerous definitions of ethics.Crane and Matten (2004, p.8) define business ethics as ‘‘the study of business situations, activities, and ecisions where issues of right and wrong are dressed’’. Based on Jones‘s definition of ethical decisions (Jones, 1991, cited in Chau and Siu, 2000) ,Entrepreneurs who identified religious interests as being of high importance, and also entrepreneurs who were highly orthodox in their faith, expressed more sensitive ethical judgments on at least five of sixteen ethical issues than did entrepreneurs who indicated that religious interests were of low or no importance.

Many of the previous research studies on innovation tend to focus on process and product (technological) innovations. It is, however, interesting to note that Organisational and Marketing Innovations (OMIs) could be the necessary prerequisites to optimally utilise and deploy such technological innovations. This study proposes Organisational Ambidexterity as a necessary antecedent to develop the firm’s OMI capabilities. For firms to remain competitive and adaptive to a continuous change in the business environment, Organisational Ambidexterity has been noted to be a necessary attribute, but research on ambidexterity at individual level of analysis is limited. The study intends to develop a framework that promotes effective innovation through shop floor employees’ contributions to Organisational Ambidexterity, OMIs capabilities of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

The main aim of this study is analysis of relationship between organizational justice and knowledge management. This analysis is based on descriptive analysis and from survey branch. Information gathering means is questionnaire, and in order to organizational justice analysis Chester and Ted (2007) 20 scores questionnaire is used and for knowledge management evaluation is the 21 questions questionnaire of Proset et al. For determining acquired data Kolmogorov -Simonov test is used and results confirm data normality. Used test in this analysis are correlation spearman test, line regression test, T-test and Friedman test and with using related test confirmed research propositions; results shows that in the aim community with improving organizational justice and knowledge management in staffs is increased too, line-regression results between organizational justice and knowledge management shows that between inter organizational justice as a independent variable and knowledge management there is linearity relationship.

Business intelligence systems combine operational data with analytical tools to present complex and competitive information to planners and decision makers. The objective is to improve the timeliness and quality of inputs to the decision process. Business Intelligence is used to understand the capabilities available in the firm; the state of the art, trends, and future directions in the markets, the technologies, and the regulatory environment in which the firm competes; and the actions of competitors and the implications of these actions. The emergence of the data warehouse as a repository, advances in data cleansing, increased capabilities of hardware and software, and the emergence of the web architecture all combine to create a richer business intelligence environment than was available previously. Although business intelligence systems are widely used in industry, research about them is limited. This paper, in addition to being a tutorial, proposes a BI framework and potential research topics. The framework highlights the importance of unstructured data and discusses the need to develop BI tools for its acquisition, integration, cleanup, search, analysis, and delivery. In addition, this paper explores a matrix for BI data types (structured vs. unstructured) and data sources (internal and external) to guide research.

Indian banking system touches the lives of millions and has to be inspired by larger social purpose and has sub-verse national priorities. Technology has been playing a crucial role in the tremendous improvement of banking services and operations. The specific objectives of this research are to study the bank marketing mix strategies, current challenges and to identify and analyse service innovation initiatives in selected banks. The study is a conceptual one based on survey of literature. Two models of innovation 4P’s of Innovation model by Bessant and Tidd (2007) and Six Dimensional Service Innovation Model by Pim den Hertog et al., (2010) were used in the study. It is observed that banks in India are moving towards sustainability through social banking and innovative service operations and offerings. It is found that both types of banks have embraced service innovation as a part of their future banking strategy and are moving continuously towards customer-centric and service-centric banks. Indian banking industry has moved way ahead both in terms of offering value added services and delivering quality service. The most pertinent challenge is the very presence of large number of un-remunerative branches, low productivity, overstaff and the archaic methods of operations. All these factors have affected the productivity and profitability of the bank concerned.

Corporate Social responsibility is not a new idea, the importance and needs for this ethical and social obligation is tremendously rising with its full swing. There are a number of its implications which are paying more to the institutions as well as to the communities. There is a debate that it is the core duty of firms and industrial institutions to pay their respective return to the common public and the society as a whole where they are operating. The objective of the study is threefold: i) to determine the root causes and basic needs of corporate social responsibilities; ii) to determine the effects on social and other civilizations beard without its existences, and iii) to examines the inputs and efforts which are being offered in the past. The equilibrium of demand and supply of different determinants of corporate social responsibility is discussed. Investment & expansion of Tangible/Intangible Assets, Factory Plant, Equipment, Building, Process of Manufacturing, Inventories and wastages, are also included. The main research questions is whether the contribution of industrial development having showed some positive impacts on the society? The results are not in the favour of the social society, and we have to see why firms are enhancing their activities, and who is obtaining undue benefit from these unethical business activities. This study elaborates the serious social aspects, where all participants are showing their agreement and willingness. At the end, some conclusions are provided for further development providing a spark of ideas for further studies and investigations.

The next paper shows the successful case of an strategic management model based in competences, used by the organization AIESEC to be implemented in small and medium enterprises located in Guadalajara’s metropolitan zone, all this, with the main purpose of improving in those areas where the firm has the opportunity to grow and become more competitive.

Unemployment is a global challenge especially to developing nations like Pakistan. In the current era motivating the nation towards entrepreneurship is recommended to be a solution of unemployment. As adequate number of jobs both in government and private sectors are not being generated due to economic crisis in Pakistan, it is perceived that more entrepreneurial projects should mitigate the unemployment. Nevertheless, opting entrepreneurship is one solution, however the question arises is it a universal solution of unemployment for people of all classes in a nation? This conceptual cum empirical study contributes a critical view on the role of entrepreneurship in mitigating unemployment in Pakistan with the help of existing literature, expert’s opinions and logical analysis. The study concluded that although entrepreneurship is a solution for unemployment, but it is not universally applicable for all people in Pakistan. The study recommends that measures must be taken to ensure balance of new vacancies in all walks of life as every person in the nation cannot serve an entrepreneur. Further, a nation for its prosperity and growth depends on quality professionals in all spheres of life. The study therefore concluded not to consider entrepreneurship a panacea. In addition to using entrepreneurship as one tool, it recommends production and utilization of quality professionals in all walks of life with continuous generation of adequate vacancies at a predefined periodic interval to address unemployment effectively.

Economic sanctions can result in more than a 70% decrease in business activities in a sanctioned country. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to identify the strategies import and export small business owners use to sustain businesses under economic sanctions. The population for this study was import and export small business owners in the state of Khartoum, Sudan. General systems theory served as the conceptual framework and underpinned the study. The data collection included semistructured interviews and government financial reports. Adhering to an interview protocol, conducting transcript reviews of participants’ interviews, member checking, and methodological triangulation represented the measures to ensure dependability, trustworthiness, creditability, transferability, and confirmability of the research. The thematic data analysis involved data cleaning, uploading the transcribed interviews into qualitative data analysis software, reorganizing the data, coding relevant information, and methodological triangulation against financial reports from the Central Bank of Sudan and the World Development Bank Indicators. The results from the thematic data analysis led to the identification of some major themes, notably, innovative strategies to secure funding and increase business sustainability despite the unfavorable economic climate consequent to the prevalent economic sanctions. The consensus among participants denoted that creative strategies presented the only choice to overcome the adverse business climate. The study findings may contribute to positive social change as the knowledge from it may aid in the improvement of employment, the living standards, and the prosperity of small businesses and societies in Sudan.