Archives-August 2011

The advent of ERP Systems, marked a new beginning in the Information Systems arena. It has brought about in reality the much sought after idea of providing competitive edge to organizations with the help of Information Systems. Though worldwide, several companies have extended their ERP systems to cover the entire supply chain, most of the Indian companies are still lagging behind. The research work carried out, was a Case Study based research work where a comparison and analysis of 10 cases was carried out in such organizations where ERP has been implemented. The basic objective of the study was to compare ERP implementation projects of ten successful companies and find critical issues related to various Pre-implementation, Implementation and Post implementation phases. The role of Information Systems in effective management of organizations has been since a long time. From merely crunching numbers, to helping taking strategic decisions, Information Systems have come a long way today. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, a term coined by Gartner Research firm in the beginning of 1990s, was one such IS application that marked the beginning of a new age of enterprise wide computing.

This paper explores the dimensions that contribute to leadership excellence in Thailand and empirically tests the Selvarajah, Duignan, Nuttman, Lane and Suppiah (1995) model. Summated scales for the importance of Excellent Leadership, Personal Qualities, Managerial Behaviours (MB), Organisational Demands, and Environmental Influences were developed. A structural model was constructed to explain the relationship in excellence in leadership. 403 managers participated in this research. The findings suggest that there are strong cultural factors such as non-confrontation and respect moderating the perceptions of Thai managers with regard to an Excellent Leader. Thailand attracts international investor interest and the relevance of behavioural values for business is of great importance to human resources management. There is limited literature on Thai management and leadership styles and the available literature has not linked cultural values and norms to leadership constructs in Thailand. The findings in this paper are important for managers on foreign assignment in Thailand and for others who engage with Thailand.

The objective of this paper is to explore the role networking play in making small scale business activities more sustainable. Using a sample of 320 women small scale business operators from the Mfantsiman district of Ghana, the study adopts the multinomial logit as well as ordinary least square (OLS) estimation techniques to determine the effects of number of network on start-up capital and credit amount. The central focus of the paper is to discuss the role of networking in making women more innovative in sourcing for start-up and top-up capital for business activities. The paper establishes that belonging to more than three networks significantly reduces the quantum of credit that women business operators can access thus it is one network that significantly determines credit size for business expansion but at the start –up stage, more networks is vital in sourcing for start-up capital from other sources. The paper recommends that networking should be used by women not only at the start-up stage but also the later stages when financing needs becomes more crucial for business expansion, it is important for women to stay with an established network. Besides networking, the paper offers recommendations on ‘flexible’ repayment schedule as a way of increasing credit duration for greater access to loans. The paper offers policy recommendations to assist in building stronger entrepreneurial network in order to ensure sustainable entrepreneurship.

Chinnalaptti a small village at Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu is famous for its Chungidi handllom sarees. Around 13 textile processing units are there in this village. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the physio-chemical characteristics of dye effluent such as Total Dissolved Solid TDS),Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (COD) Total Hardness, Sulphate, Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Copper, Zinc and Nickel.

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.

In this research, a descriptive study was done and 190 individual samples as questionnaire forms were collected from general physicians who attended in hospitals, educational and private centers in Kermanshah and Tehran cities, Iran. After collecting the questionnaires, data were analysed using SPSS 13 software and chi-square test. The results showed that in 74.2 % and 68.4 % of cases, nasal x-ray film was requested in patients with the prior history of cosmetic nasal surgery and medicolegal reasons, respectively which is in line with the work done by some researchers [2,3]. There were significant correlations among old nasal fracture, medicolegal reasons and prior history of cosmetic nasal surgery with requesting of nasal x-ray films (P-value <0.01), whereas there were not any significant correlations between requesting of nasal x-ray films and sexuality of physicians or type of centers (private and educational). The causes of nasal x-ray film requesting based on the viewpoint of physicians were: 1) medicolegal reasons, 2) the prior history of cosmetic nasal surgery and 3) old nasal fracture, respectively. According to these results, the frequency of nasal x-ray film requesting is relatively high and more studies in a longer time period are necessary to clarify the causes.

The present review deals with the interaction of hepatitis C virus (HCV) with various host factors and the underlying mechanisms involved in liver pathology during HCV infection. The persistence of virus after HCV infection causing chronic hepatitis in high majority of patients was explained in terms of host immune response varying with mutating nature of HCV virus. High scale variability in HCV genome arising of frequent mutation favours HCV to escape immune mediated eradication and to persist in host causing continued liver cell injury. HCV shows pathogenic effect via its role in several metabolic changes and inducing reactive phenomenon including hepatic steatosis, oxidative stress and insulin resistance in HCV infected patients. The structural and non-structural components of HCV virus, particularly, HCV-core, NS3 and NS5A proteins were involved in causing all these reactive state. Moreover, HCV-genotypes showed their varying effect on overall HCV pathogenesis. The HCV core protein from HCV-genotype-3 had close association with causing hepatic steatosis, increasing oxidative stress and inducing insulin resistance in HCV infected patients. All these reactions, ie. hepatic steaotis, oxidative stress and insulin resistance play important role in progression / regression of disease. However, many more studies are still needed to understand it in full measure for developing an effective anti-viral or anti-infection therapy.

Quality of work life is a large step forward from the traditional job design of scientific management which focused solely on specialization and efficiency for the performance of narrow tasks, adopting division of labour, rigid hierarchy, and standardization of labour to reach its objective of efficiency. Quality of work life can be defined as “The quality of relationship between employees and the total working environment”. Quality of work life is “The degree to which members of a work organization are able to satisfy important personnel needs through their experience in the organization”. “Happy employees could able to produce higher productivity. The happiness can be perceived only when the employees good satisfaction on the work load, working condition, relationship with peers, superiors and subordinates about the climate plays a crucial role to determine the level of job satisfaction. The present study is descriptive in nature, which includes surveys and fact findings enquiries of different kind. Both Primary and Secondary Data were collected in order to obtain the related information for this study. Sample size of this study was 100. The data thus collected through questionnaire were subdued into suitable tabular forms. For analyzing the data and interpretation, simple statistical tools like percentage, chi-square and Henry Garrot Ranking method were used. At last the findings, suggestions and conclusion were made for the improvement of quality of work life in the organization.

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is a subclass of Mobile ad hoc networks which provides a distinguished approach for Intelligent Transport System (ITS). The survey of routing protocols in VANET is important and necessary for smart ITS. This paper discusses the advantages / disadvantages and the applications of various routing protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks. It explores the motivation behind the designed, and traces the evolution of these routing protocols. This paper discusses the main 5 types of protocols for VANET Topology Based, Positioned Based, Geo Cast, Broad Cast, Cluster Based Protocols.

Travel and Tourism industry is helping India’s economy in generating employment opportunities directly and indirectly. The present investigation is an analysis of financial and operating performance of a specialised financial institution came into existence to promote tourism in India i.e. Tourism Finance Corporation of India Ltd. It contributes in the development of tourism facilities in the country. The main concern of the study is to analyse financial and operational performance of the corporation through Financial Statement Analysis. The study is based exclusively on secondary data, which has been collected from various annual reports of Tourism Finance Corporation of India Ltd. The data has been analysed and interpreted by FSA, tables and graphs to make the data presentable and easy to understand. The research will provide assistance to the TFCI and other financial institutions to judge their financial and operational efficiency in respect to its beneficiaries in the society.