Management Arts

Contract Farming (CF) is one of the major High Impact Project of the Malaysian government in order to be more effective in supplying fruits product and to provide enough land to produce it with collaboration and cooperation of eight government agencies where Federal Agriculture Marketing Agency (FAMA) acts as project manager. The reason for choosing watermelon production in Kelantan is due to the fact that the state has the highest number of participants involved under contract farming and the major crop produce in Kelantan is the watermelon. One of the objectives of this study is to determine the relationship between aspect of technical transfer and farmer’s productivity in contract farming. Projects implementation of agricultural development needs the efficient and effective service support. The result showed that there is significant relationship between all independent variables studied. Results indicated that the highest percentage response on aspect of technical transfer and a significant relationship between aspects of technology transfer and watermelon output.

The paper aims to analyze the need of adept governance for best corporate practice in India, and therefore, the significance of corporate audit that must maintain ample physical transparency with due accountability. Corporate audit is generally a multi-stage process, and therefore, it is widely believed to be the most powerful tool for best corporate disclosure. However, in most public enterprises in general and state owned enterprises in particular, the reality is opposite to the myth. Here, the boards of directors and the management have direct interference in the internal audit task with the prime motive being a personal gain. Then, the external audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and his office is merely supervisory in nature that too comes with major limitations like multi-tasking, autocracy and unethical influences from the political peers. In this context, the degree of accuracy and acceptability of all such audit reports has invariably come under greater suspicion. The paper, therefore, suggest for an integrated effort from the sides of owners, management, employees, auditor and Government to achieve best corporate governance of most state owned enterprises. In addition, a self audit and edit at each level and every step of corporate work culture is expected to induce more stimuli for a better transparency and functional autonomy in public sector organizations.

Despite the existence of several service quality models that have attempted to predict customer satisfaction in relation to service quality in various services, empirical studies applied to service settings in selected developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, have proven beyond any doubt that the orthodox SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, and Human-Societal Element (HSE) models not only do not apply to developing countries’ settings, but also give misleading and distorted indicators of the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in these developing countries. Thus, the major objective of the current exploratory study is to investigate and pinpoint the reasons that make the orthodox models of service quality inapplicable in the context of developing counties, and to suggest ways and means of developing a service quality model that is oriented to the unique cultural, social, and psychological aspects of customers in the developing countries. This proposed specific model may enable organizations in the Third World to be in a better position to predict customer satisfaction and loyalty with a high degree of accuracy, and formulate proper target marketing strategies in this direction.

Journalistic accounts of emotional intelligence in books and magazines of the mid-1990s explained the concept to an interested public -but not without introducing some crucial inaccuracies. Moreover, much has been learned about emotional intelligence since those early writings. The systematic study of emotional intelligence is often dated to the early 1990s, when scientific articles suggested that there existed an unrecognized but important human mental ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance thought.

This paper examines the process of how the local universities in Malaysia are and were trying to change their roles in the Malaysian economy in order to respond to this current development as well as the globalization of the knowledge economy. This study intends to explore the dimensions of entrepreneurial university in Malaysia and develop questionnaire to test the entrepreneurial intensity of local universities in Malaysia. In aspiring to achieve the status of a fully developed nation by 2020, tertiary education in Malaysia has been targeted to grow on its own by becoming more entrepreneurial and self-reliant. There is an urgent need for the shift from the traditional model of the universities to the new “entrepreneurial” model. The new entrepreneurial model for public universities in Malaysia is expected to be different from the universities in the advanced economies due to several reasons. The reasons include more rigid bureaucratic control by the government, emphasis on homegrown innovation and lack of commercialization demand and ability. Six main theoretical models of entrepreneurial universities were identified and in each one, there are elements or characteristics associated with the inputs as can be found in Morris’s Input-Output Perspective theoretical framework. This model will be use to measure the entrepreneurial intensity in the context of education institutions as an organization. Dimensions of entrepreneurial university in Malaysia will be explored through expert survey employing Delphi Method. Instruments to measure the entrepreneurial intensity of public universities will then be developed. This will be used to appraise the entrepreneurial intensity of the public universities in Malaysia.

Today, one of the problems of managers is information security in the organizations and ways of struggling with those penetrating into the organization. Social engineering technique is one of the ways of access to organizational information through vulnerable behaviors of human beings. This article tries to determine the most important criteria by assessing effective social engineering criteria in the organization in DEMATEL method. At first, views of the experts have been used in order to select effective criteria and then a structure based on theory of graphs was formulated on the basis of experts’ judges and a mathematical model has been obtained with regard to relations, manner and intensity of effect and their interactions. Finally, determination of criteria importance helps the managers make decisions and do correct management in the organization.

The present paper attempts to highlights the historical details of Andhra Pradesh Paper Mills Ltd. (APPM) and narrates in brief about its growth and development strategies since its inception. Over the decades, the company has been identified as one of the top performers in the Indian paper industry, both in terms of employment creation and revenue generation. The business model of the company is primarily based on innovation and development of products, investment in quality, improvement of process efficiency, reduction of utility cost and quality team work for which it has acquired a world-class brand name. Today, the company is both wood positive and energy efficient. It has achieved excellence in sales and profitability due to its value-added product diversification strategy with rational changing keeping in mind the need of its domestic as well as international customers. This success story of the company is certainly encouraging for other hundreds of impaired companies operating in the same industry regarding how to cope up with their business challenges strategically keeping in mind the changing need of the dynamic society so that maximization of their shareholder’s net worth can be significantly achieved.

The study analyzed the socioeconomic determinants of farmers’ use of indigenous soil management practices of yam production in Nasarawa state, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique of six local government areas and three communities each was used to select 288 yam farmers for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. It was discovered that most of the farmers (33.7%) and (31.6 %) were within the age ranges of 31-40 and 41-50 years respectively. Men (92.0) and married (88.2%) farmers dominated yam production in the study area. The literacy level of farmers in the study area was found to be low and majority (41.7%) of them had less than 10 years farming experience. It was discovered that the most prevalent indigenous soil management practices were tillage, crop rotation, mulching, green manuring, shifting cultivation, intercropping, organic manuring, bush fallowing and burning of crop residues in decreasing order of prevalence. The study revealed that Cost effectiveness (99.7%), Conservation of biodiversity (96.9%), user friendliness (94.8%) and Compatibility with the culture of the people (75.7%) were the advantages of using indigenous soil management practices. Use of indigenous soil management practices is significantly and positively affected by marital status, farm size, age and farming experience. The F-value at 5% level of probability confirmed that the joint effects of farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics significantly affected the use of indigenous soil management practices of yam production. The study recommends that research and extension must work closely with the rural farmers to consolidate on the identified indigenous soil management practices in the area to improve on them for a sustainable agricultural development. They must also strengthen the confidence of farmers by expressing faith in such local knowledge found to be economically viable and ecologically Sound. This will boost yam production and create opportunity for sustaining a growing population and food security in rural communities of the area.

This study aims to propose a normative model to determine the potential of cultural tourism in the municipalities that comprise the region 6 of the State of Jalisco, territorially delimited in the South of Jalisco. Firstly, it is conducted an anlaysis to determine the demand for cultural tourism to determine the cultural tourist profile under the assumptions that tourists especially motivated by culture, tend to travel longer distances than most tourists. It discusses the motivations and satisfactions of cultural tourists to establish the potential market in accordance with the characteristics of the target market in the Southern region of Jalisco. Any operation of cultural tourism companies should make the strategic diagnosis, so that explains the use of SWOT analysis as a tool for strategic planning of cultural tourism enterprises. Finally, we propose the development strategies of cultural tourism in this region of Southern Jalisco.

This article is concerned with the economic impacts of tourism industry, especially in developing countries. It initially reviews the concept and using a model, it deals with the factors affecting the economic impacts associated with tourism. The research findings indicated that with short-term and long-term strategic planning and using the specific abilities and tourism products of developing countries, which suffer from some indices as unemployment, limits in earning and currency flows, inflation and other problems, most of their economic problems can be solved.