Archives-May 2016

Maximising academic learning time has been identified as a critical tool for improving student achievement. The study aimed at assessing factors that influence the utilisation of teaching time allocated to primary schools, how distortions in the allocated time affect teaching curriculum, and measures in place to ensure that instructional time is efficiently utilised in schools within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis. Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Stratified sampling procedure was used to sample 63 respondents. Questionnaire and observation guide were used as instruments for collecting data. SPSS version 17 and Microsoft Excel 2007 Edition were used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics, chi square and one sample t-test were used to describe the data.

Biodiesel with diesel additives have been attaining increased attention from engine researchers in the point of the energy crisis and growing environmental issues. The present work is aimed at experimental investigation of polymer based additive are mixed in different proportions with B15 (15% of Mamey Sapote oil + 85% of diesel) bio diesel. Experiments were done on a 4-Stroke single cylinder variable compression ratio ignition engine by varying percentage by volume of SC 5D additives in diesel-biodiesel blends. Their emissions and performance results are compared with base fuel B15 bio diesel. By mixing of this additive, it is observed that cetane index number is increased. The tests conducted at full load and varying speed conditions. At full load for B15 with 2500: 5 ml blend shows that the results of HC, NOx, C0 & smoke density are reduced by 10%, 24%, 16% & 11.12% respectively. Brake power is increased 2.19% whereas brake specific fuel consumption is decreased by 9.09% and for B15 with 2000:3 brake thermal efficiency increased by 4.16%.

South Africa (SA) has the most developed and largest economy in Africa. Being one of the members of BRICS our country is recognized as a key developing market. The factors that support this are its well-structured legal, financial transport and communication regions. SA is regarded as the best facilitator in trade logistics and has an excellent transport infrastructure. However, there are a few factors that have caused stagnation such as labor policies, unemployment, poverty and inequality. A recent article stipulated that rail was 75% cheaper on average than using road transport (Signs of new era for SA rail, 2015). If SA seeks to keep ahead of its African and Asian rivals and achieve global industrial competitiveness, its transport sector needs to sharpen up its act. The total road network in SA is approximately 747 000 km and is the longest in Africa which caters for approx. 321 056 registered trucks. The building together with maintenance of 16 200km of provincial roads are carried out by South African National Roads Agency (Sanral), with the Department of Transport being overall responsible. Despite the road sector delivering freight playing a major part in our economy due to its flexibility, adaptability and speed as compared to rail, the impact on the roads due to heavy freight moving vehicles has caused the maintenance and upgrades cost to escalate whilst our traffic demands are increasing. The operators in the industry of road freight face many challenges such as increases in tariff, permits and license fees. Further the e-tolls are weakening the profit margins. Labour negotiations and industry strikes have hit the sector hard, causing many businesses to undergo major restructuring and retrenchments. During 2013 the road freight industry shrunk by 4000 vehicles, resulting in the loss of 9315 jobs in the sector (Investment still needed in transport infrastructure, 2014).

Vertical Integration remains a critical concept for organizational that seeks to own activities along the supply chain with an aim of gaining control of activities within their line of business. In most organizations vertical integration as a strategy once adopted along the supply chain, seeks to have an effect on value addition, cost reduction and control of the activities the organization has owned through vertical integration. The general objective of the project was to identify and evaluate the effects of vertical integration on the performance of agricultural commodity business. The theoretical review established the effects of vertical integration towards the performance of agricultural commodity business. The specific objectives of the study discussed the effects of ownership of warehouses; transport ownership, supplier relationship management and distribution ownership on the performance of agricultural commodity business in Export Trading Co Ltd. The study was conducted through a descriptive design to describe the effects of vertical integration on the performance of the agricultural commodity business. Stratified sampling technique ensured success of coming up with a sample size of 45 respondents from the target population of 148. Primary and secondary data was collected for the research, a semi structured questionnaires was used to collect primary data while press releases, journals, company website will provide secondary data. The primary data will be analyzed through Statistical Program of Social Studies SPSS (Version 20). The study conclusion gave percentage variations of warehousing, transport, distribution and food processing on the performance of agricultural commodity business. This provided a strong practical value from the results to assist future parties of interest within the subject of vertical integration with proper understanding of the subject.

Organizational culture is defined as an assembly of traditions, values, procedures, conceptions and attitudes which creates the context of activities in the organization. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of organizational culture on employee job performance. The study sought to determine the influence of organizational culture on employee performance at Kenya Ports Authority. Specifically it sought to determine the influence of competitive culture, entrepreneurial culture, bureaucratic culture and consensual culture on employee performance at Kenya Ports Authority. A descriptive research design was adopted to carry out the study. The target population for the study was 106 employees working for KPA and the sampling frame was a list of employees obtained from the human resource management department. The study utilized simple random sampling technique to draw a sample of 43 employees from the population under study and used a questionnaire as a tool for data collection. Descriptive statistics measures such as mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the data, while inferential statistics, and particularly regression analysis was used to draw inferences about the population under study. During the study, data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 as a tool and analysed data was presented using tables, graphs and charts. Thirty six usable responses were received and analysed. The findings reveal that organizational culture has an influence on employee performance. Competitive culture had a greater influence on employee performance from the four types of culture analysed. The study recommends that management comes up with sound organizational policies that creates enabling environment for employees to exhibit a culture that enhances employee performance.

Demand for electricity in Kenya is currently growing at a rate higher than the growth in supply. KenGen, as a major player in the electricity sector developed a strategic plan (2008-2015) which if implemented successfully would stabilize the equation for electricity supply and demand in the country, and increase its installed capacity from 912MW to 1510MW by 2015. Implementation of this strategic plan may however dwindle, with most projects running late or stalled. By the end of 2015, KenGen is expected to realize its planned project which when installed capacity figure by nearly 50%. The objective of the study was to determine the challenges affecting implementation of corporate strategies at KenGen. The researchwas to determine to what extent organization culture, resource allocation, organizational preparedness and leadership affect the implementation of corporate strategy at Kengen. The study was carried out in the 5 (five) Ken Gen operation areas in Kenya. The target population was 22 managers and 96 chief officers across the organization. A sample size of 10% was picked using random sampling from the lot of chief officers, and another 10% was picked from the lot of managers. Questionnaires were used to collect data and analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). Organizational culture, organization preparedness, strategic leadership, and financial resources allocation affected implementation of strategic plans at Kengen. Culturally, poor internationalization of mission and strategic content, lack of participation in making of rules and regulations, affected employees mobilization to executing strategic plans. Organizational preparedness in terms of training, recruitment and timely resource allocation affected corporate strategy implementation. Employee leadership influenced implementation of strategic plans through managerial involvement, employee support, downward communication, conflict resolution, and employee representation in key decision making. The extent to which management committed itself to strategy execution was not satisfactory. This yield employee resistance, meaning that management did not have super support from the shop-floor employees.

Working capital management is considered to be a crucial element in determining the financial performance of an organization. In this study, the purpose was to investigate working capital management and their effect on financial performance of the remittance companies in Mogadishu Somalia. Using descriptive research design, a total of 81 managerial and staff members from the two out-grower companies were targeted by way of completing a standardized and semi-structured questionnaire. The study adopted a regression and descriptive research design which attempted to explore the relationship between working capital management and financial performance. The performance was measures in terms of profitability by return on total assets, and return on investment capital as dependent financial performance (profitability) variables. The working capital is used three objectives which account receivable management second objective were cash flow management and last account payable management on the financial. In order to plane research finding the researcher used descriptive design and the data instrument used the study was questionnaire. The data analyze was SPSS (version 16).data was presented using by both descriptive and regression with anova and lastly the finding as the following.WCM practices were comparatively more effect on the financial performance. Specifically, it was observed that the companies’ receivables were mostly effect on the financial performance. Second cash flow management have passively effect on the financial performance and account payable like so finding to study became a number increased to account receivable in greases financial performance and also a number increased to cash flow management also to account payable add value or positively effect on the financial performance of the remittance companies in Mogadishu Somalia. Finally, there was need for the remittance companies to allow and increase their working capital management.

The board of directors and management are continually seeking ways to better achieve their visions and improve accountability. A key factor in helping achieve such outcomes and minimize operational problems is to implement appropriate internal controls. Effective internal control also helps in managing change to cope with shifting environments and evolving demands and priorities. Chapter one of this study gives the background information about micro financing, problem statement, objectives of the study stating on what the researcher intends to achieve, research questions to guide the researchers, justification of the research while chapter two is the literature review. The overall objective of the study was to examine the factors influencing internal control in the microfinance sector in Kenya. The specific objectives: The first of them was to investigate how credit management influence internal control, the second aim was to find out the impact of risk management in influencing internal control, the third was to investigate on how monitoring influence the internal control and; lastly was to determine the importance of control activities in influencing the internal control. This study was conducted in Mombasa county and focused on 4 deposit taking MFIs and 6 non-deposit taking microfinance institutions in the region. The study used primary data obtained through the questionnaires provided to different cadre of employees of those institutions. The researcher employed stratified random sampling procedure; systematic random sampling was used to identify the respondents of the study. Quantitative data collected by use of closed ended questions in the questionnaire were edited and checked for completeness and comprehensibility, summarized, coded and tabulated. The study used descriptive statistics in the analysis of demographics characteristics of the respondents and correlation and regression statistics to assess the study variables relating to the factors influencing the effectiveness of internal control in micro finance sector in Kenya with the help of SPSS 21. The study estblished that credit management provides discipline and structure as well as the climate which influences the quality of internal control, risk management enable the identification and analysis of relevant risks associated with achieving the objectives and ensured right personnel for the job are on board, monitoring helps the microfinance institutions to assess the quality of performance of the microfinance over time and finally control activities ensures that qualified and continuous supervision is provided to ensure that internal control objectives are achieved and that completeness and accuracy of information processing.

Corrective Feedback was been extensively debated in the ESL/EFL writing. Both focused and unfocused corrective feedbacks seem to have a positive effect in ESL/EFL writing. The present study examined focused and unfocused corrective feedback for the target form of articles for elementary group as anaphoric reference in written narrative of Iranian EFL learners. 60 participants were selected via the Oxford Placement Test and were assigned to two elementary and advance groups. Then members of each group were randomly divided to subgroups. One subgroup received focused feedback and another half received unfocused feedback. In other words, the focused group received feedback in the form of the correction of articles while the unfocused group received correction of articles error alongside correction of other errors. The participants were given a narrative writing with some pictures and key terms and after reading them, the narrative writing, but not the pictures, was taken away and they were asked to rewrite the narrative in their own words. This task was conducted three times, as a pretest, a post-test and a delayed post-test. This study attempted to examine whether different kinds of corrective feedback does have any effect on learning of articles for elementary level.An in-group paired sampled t-test was calculated between the scores obtained in the pre-test, the post-test, and the delayed post-test.A close examination of the results the data showed that focused corrective feedback was more efficient and significant. The findings are consistent with other studies conducted under similar circumstances.

This study assessed the health care services in relation to guardians level of satisfaction with childcare services at the Tamale Central (TCH) and Tamale West hospital (TWH), Ghana. The target populations of this study were guardians of sick children under five who visited the TCH and TWH. A total sample size of 100 respondents was used. 50 participants were each taken from the two Hospitals by using convenience sampling technique. Questionnaires was used for data collection and the data was analyzed using SPSS. A total of 41.2% of the patients were satisfied with the overall service received at the hospital. Guardians who were satisfied with the service significantly had a shorter waiting time than those who were not satisfied. In conclusion, mothers/guardians’ level of satisfaction with childcare are associated with four important dimensions namely; time spent at the hospital, relationship between health worker and parents, affordability of healthcare services and level of confidentiality that exist in the hospital. Long waiting time negatively affected satisfaction. If this is improved upon, it will lead to increased guardian satisfaction regarding the care rendered to their children.