Advances In Management

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Advances In Management






Vol. 2(1) January 2009

The Role of Cause-Related Marketing in “Co-opetition with Consumers” Approaches

1Guido Gianluigi *, 1Prete Irene M. and 2Santis Danila De

Companies can develop a special form of co-opetition, (i.e. a simultaneous cooperation and competition with company’s partners) which is “co-opetition with consumers”, by implementing cause-related marketing strategies, a type of sharing consumers’ philosophies for the sake of the public welfare. It is based on the assumption that consumers are not only the final receivers of corporate marketing programs but also individuals believing in definite values and taking care of social and environmental problems. A multiple case studies analysis shows that four major conditions allowing companies to implement this new paradigm - designing cause-related marketing programs, expressing corporate values and culture, creating virtual place to increase interaction, and adopting an “inductional” marketing approach – allow them to consider customers not only as buyers to win but also as consumers to please in their inner values.

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Numerical Analysis of DOT Shield 45° crossing the Masonry Structure Buildings

Wei Gang

Considering the intersection of building - soil – tunnel, 3D MIDAS / GTS software is used to simulate the conditions of DOT shield tunnel 45° crossing the raft foundation under masonry structure buildings. Additional subsidence and force of the building caused by tunnel construction are studied and the impact of the horizontal position change between tunnels and buildings is considered. The analysis results show that as the DOT shield machine crosses the building, the building would generate uneven horizontal subsidence, it would tilt more in the back-end than the front-end, building subsidence would be stable and slightly rebound after the shield entirely passed through the building; longitudinal differential subsidence would first increase and then decrease, at last the buildings are permanently distorted. With the increase of horizontal distance between the tunnel axis and buildings axis, the building presents a trend dumping to one side of the tunnel, the local inclination of the foundation first increased and then decreased, the maximum shear strain and the first principal stress roughly showed the same changing trend which increased first and then decreased linearly.

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Occupational Health and Safety in China

Hugo Jason, Sadler Drake, Mishra Ram and Mishra Jitendra*

Changing political and social values during the 1960’s added considerable momentum to the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) and its regulation to workplace safety. In 1969, the death of 79 coal-miners in a mine explosion galvanized public opinion and led to the passage of the Coal Mine Health Act to regulate mine and health safety. No single event is responsible for the passage of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) of 1970. The job-related accidents kill more than 14,000 workers and disable nearly 2.5 million workers annually. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) 1970 addresses more than 300,000 cases related to workplace accidents and workplace hazards. This paper covers numerous examples of workplace safety violations, legislation and implementation in China. Through a comprehensive discussion involving multiple expert opinions, case studies like SARS, recall of more than 60 million cans of cat and dog food, recall of 50,000 boxes of toothpaste, recall of more 1.5 million imported toy trains containing lead paints, recall of more than 450,000 tires because of potential tread separation, recall of tainted ginger’s from China, SARS(severe acute respiratory syndrome) 1807 cases in China and mostly in Guangdong province, Nestles baby formula pulled off the shelves because it was found to contain too much iodine etc. Recently, Chinese authorities found industrial chemicals in baby formula. More than 6,200 babies were reported to have fallen sick, many with kidney problems and Chinese news agency Xinhua reported four deaths due to fatal /tainted formula19. Chinese government has been revising the estimates of the sick children by tainted formula upwards to 50,000 infants. China’s top food-safety official, Li Changjiang resigned under pressure and took blame for supervision default. We have compiled some data that gives reflection of the current state of Chinese occupational health and safety standards. The WSJ (Wall Street Journal) reported that a senior Chinese safety director involved in product safety committed suicide (Wu Jianping). Even the China’s cherished “white rabbit candy” is found to contain melamine and got recalled around the world. Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food company is planning to relaunch “White Rabbit Creamy Candy” at the end of October 2008. With economic globalization gaining momentum, the Chinese government has taken product and food safety very seriously. Resident quality inspectors have been posted in major companies. The authors feel that these are growing pains that the worlds third largest is facing and will overcome these shortcomings, as they did during the recent Beijing Olympics. Games were seen one of the best organized ever when many skeptics believed that China was not ready for the games; but with factory closures, traffic restrictions, led to blue skies for much of the 17-day event. Beijing pollution became a non-issue and the China’s state-run sports system won most of the gold medals. According to the Nielsen on line survey seven in ten felt Beijing appeared more modern and high tech than they had expected and China’s reputation appeared to get a boost from Beijing’s hosting the Olympic Games.

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Firm Size and Capital Strength as Determinants of Firm Performance: Sector wise Analysis of Karachi Stock Exchange

1Abbas Zaheer*, 1Khan Amanullah and 2Shah S.M Amir

A hot debate is raging on among academicians, practitioners and business community on what drives firm performance? What is missing in that debate is to investigate the factors affecting performance. This paper is an attempt towards this goal. Unbalanced panel data of twenty different sectors of Karachi Stock Exchange has been empirically analyzed and contribution of various variables towards firm performance has been estimated using fixed effects model. This analysis ranges over a period of four years starting from year 2003 to year 2006. This study contributes in existing literature as it results in producing a model, which determines the drivers of firm performance. Various literatures have used various determinants of performance but main focus of researchers is on firm size and capital strength. To avoid wrong attribution of performance with only size and capital strength, dividend as a measure of financial constraints, net profit margin as a measure of cost control ability and ratio of financial charges to sales as a measure of financial burden have also been used as explanatory variables. Empirical analysis of twenty industries reveals that firm size and capital strength significantly affect the firm performance, thus, supports the theories of firm size based on economies of scale that hold that higher size leads to market power and firms enjoy the economic rents.

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Nature of Industry, frequency of trading and price volatility: Evidence from Doha Securities Market

Abdelgadir M.A. Abdalla

The objective of this paper is to find out whether the number of transactions or trade size explains significantly the price volatility in Doha Securities Market. The paper also examines how the market- wide information and the firm-specific information can affect the activities of trading. Daily data is used to conduct the empirical tests. The paper classifies the firm according to industrial type: banking, industry, service and insurance. Five regressions are run to test whether the number of transactions or trade size has a significant impact on price volatility and also to find out the relative importance of market and firm-specific information on the number of transactions. The empirical results show that the number of transactions carry more information than trade size and the relationship is positive, meaning that the larger the number of transactions, the higher the price volatility. Moreover, the findings show that the market-wide information and the firm– specific information affect the number of transactions when the market is up. In conditions where the market is down, the firm-specific information is most important factor that influences the number of transactions meaning that when the market is down, the amount of firm– specific information increases and the number of transactions also increases. These findings clearly show the investors that the number of transactions carry more information.

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An Analytical Study of Customer relationship Management in the Private Hospitals of Orissa

Mall Sunita

In the modern organization, customer relationship management CRM has developed both as a concept and a strategy. The importance of human resource and the necessity of its development make out a strong case for the evaluation of the CRM in the organizations. Health, an important factor for the prosperity of a country, is an indicator for socio- economic development. Effective and efficient management of hospitals improve the quality of treatment. This paper focuses on understanding the relationship marketing of health care services with specific reference to private hospitals in Cuttack district and Bhubaneswar, Orissa. This paper also gives emphasis on how the corporate hospitals are maintaining the relationship with their customers and also to elicit the opinions of patients on the services provided by those hospitals. The present study is based on some major private hospitals of Orissa.

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Measurement of Technical Efficiency: A Case Study of Durgapur Steel Plant

1Dutta Anirban, 1 Bhattacharya Amit Kumar, 2Sengupta P.P. and 3Chaudhuri Ranjan*

Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) in West Bengal is one of the integrated steel plants of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). With an annual production of 1.6 million tonnes of saleable steel (Source: http:/-www.sail.co.in), the plant is a major producer of Railway track materials, Billets, Structurals and Merchant products. The modernized Durgapur Steel Plant now has state-of –the-art technology for quality steel making. In this paper we have analyzed the performance of DSP with the help of the data from FY 1996–97 to FY 2005–06 by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It has been established that not only the favorable international situation but also the overall gain of Technical Efficiency (TE) led to turnaround (from loss making to profit making unit) of DSP.

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The Paradigm Shift of Retailing in India (A specific study of Two Consumer categories-Apparels and Footwear)

Sharma Nirmal

With a contribution of 10 per cent to GDP and employing 8 per cent of the total workforce (only agriculture employs more) in the country, the retail industry is definitely one of the pillars of the economy. Not only it is the largest component of the services sector, but is also double the size of the next largest broad economic activity in the services sector. The retail industry in India is often considered as one of the emerging sectors and is recognized as the “second most attractive retail destination” amongst other emergent markets. It has made India the cause of a good deal of excitement and the attraction of many other countries. As consumer’s perceptions keep on changing, Retailing in India has seen a Paradigm shift with a focus on providing better, efficient, faster and economical service to customer. The need of the hour for Indian retailers is to develop systems and processes keeping the unique nature of the country in mind. In the retail trade, change is the only constant, survival in retail will depend on the ability to adapt changes.

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