Vol. 2(7) July 2009
Some Strategic Management Practices among Small and
Medium-Size Enterprises in Malaysia’s Construction Services Sector
Ahmad Zaki Bin Hj Ismail, Mohamed Ghazali Bin Omar and Elsadig Musa Ahmed
Many unconventional management practices and styles have
emerged which are being tested. They are, in alphabetical order, A (accounting,
auditing and accountability); B (budgeting of time, financial and physical resources);
C (communication, information and technology); D (development and research of products,
markets and marketing techniques); E (environmental and ethical management policies);
F (finance, funding and financial issues); G (globalisation, regionalisation, outsourcing
and networking); H (honesty, honour, integrity and intrinsic values); I (Islamic,
religious, faith-related and moral values); and J (justice, compassion and altruistic
social values). From the study, it was observed that the “A”, “B”, “C” strategies
and other intrinsic values of the entrepreneur and faith-related management options
were most frequently adopted. These impact-giving sets of strategies may be chosen
and developed into core and job competencies. Thus, the contractors may be re-classified
into the respective capability and competency levels to match their jobs and vice
versa. Seeking fortune through trade (of goods and/or services) or business is encouraged
as a form of Ibadah with rewards for profits in this world and Falah (success).
Religious practices are very advantageous in management.
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TV or Web: Consumer Attitude and Dilemma of Advertisers
in India
Singh Gurmeet and Gautam Harish
Marketers are increasingly showing interest in TV and
Web for delivering advertising messages to the prospective consumers. They are in
a state of dilemma about the better advertising medium between the two. Although
both TV and Internet are widely used as a medium for information sharing, the success
of advertising is a big challenge because it requires infrastructure and a positive
attitude of consumers towards the advertising medium. Using a structured questionnaire
and convenience random sampling this paper reports that the Indian consumer has
a positive attitude towards Web & TV advertising with a slight preference of Web
over TV for advertising.
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BPO’s In India: Will Attrition Take Its Toll?
Rizvi Arisha Fatima and Gupta K.L.
Outsourcing has become a ‘charged’ word in today’s business
scenario. It is an important concept to understand because of its business applications
(both for Corporations and for Small Businesses) and also because of its political
implications. Firms invest in core processes but prefer to outsource critical, non-core
processes to providers who specialize in them. The intent is to outsource the work
while retaining the direction-setting part. An alarmingly high attrition level is
hurting the India based Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry and is negatively
impacting both its demand (buyers/ clients) and supply (service provider) sides.
The focus of this paper is a comprehensive insight into the growth of BPOs in India
and addresses a serious problem of attrition in the same sector.
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Customer Relationship Management Practices for Consumer
Packaged Goods
Bhatt Rajesh
Customer relationship management enables companies to
provide excellent real-time customer service by developing a relationship with each
valued customer through effective use of individual account information1. A better
appeal to customers needs better products, better communicability and consistency
in customer interfaces. By putting the ‘customs’ back in the customers, these companies
can target their customers better and can deliver persuasive information and promotions
more effectively2. In the constantly changing world CRM practices may need several
changes to ensure better functionality of data, creating a unique and consistent
approach to deal with customers etc. This paper explores through primary data, how
CRM practices in this context need to be changed in order to get sustainable competitive
advantage.
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Knowledge Management in Industry- India and other
Asian Countries
Muralidhar S.
The objective of this paper is to identify the extent
to which organizations in India are aware about knowledge management and also have
a macro level understanding of knowledge management in a few other Asian countries
like Singapore, China and Malaysia. Knowledge management has become an accepted
lexicon of the business leaders. Knowledge management is a systematic, organized,
explicit and deliberate ongoing process of creating, disseminating, sharing, applying,
renewing and updating the knowledge for achieving the organizational objectives.
Knowledge management will play crucial role in the near future, enhancing productivity,
increasing customer satis-faction and performance of the organization. The knowledge
based activities in providing goods and services through rich knowledge based marketing
leads to competitive advantage.
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Growth and Structure of Industries in Madhya Pradesh
Malhotra Gunjan
It was believed that the position of Madhya Pradesh economy
will be better after its partition with Chhattisgarh state. On the basis of the
key indicators like net value added, productive capital number of registrations
and the employment prospects in the manufacturing units of the economy are not very
encouraging. The study reveals that neither liberalization nor the bifurcation of
the state could boost up the industrial growth in the state. The relative position
of MP economy is far behind that of India in the manufacturing sector. The major
industries that have shown some improvement over the study period are beverages,
chemical and chemical products, basic metal and alloy, power, automobiles and textile
products.
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Urban Local Bodies and Management of Environment:
Role of Kolhapur Municipal Corporation (KMC) in Maharashtra
Kamble P. S.
Environment has become part and parcel of living things
in general and human beings in particular. Hence, it has become a must to protect
the environment for the survival and well being of living things as well as people
in particular. Therefore, environment protection should be on the top agenda of
a country. It is a fact that environment protection has a vast and wide scope, which
demands attempts and active participation of many stakeholders like private sector,
public sector, Government, co-operative sector and all others. Government is supreme
authority and the representative of the people. Hence, it becomes the increased
responsibility of the government to endeavor rigorously and honestly for the protection
of the environment for the well being of the society as a whole. Government works
at three levels- national, state and local in the countries like India. The problem
of environmental degradation has become of greater gravity in the urban areas than
rural areas due to growing urbanization in many countries, especially the country
like India. Hence, the 74th amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1992 has given
constitutional status to urban local governments, as well as has assigned some additional
responsibilities to them. One of them is protection of the environment by undertaking
various activities like solid waste management, public health, parks and gardens
and tree plantation, liquid waste management, supply of pure drinking water etc.
ULBs in general and the KMC in particular are attempting for environmental protection
in the proper direction. But they are lacking adequate funds.
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Effectiveness of the Training and Development Programme
in improving the HRD: A CPCL Experience
Senthamil Raja A., Velmurugan P. S. and Palanichamy P.
Training is the periscope to see the future. It is intended
to identify the future of the organization to develop and steer them to where they
belong. Development creates generalists and helps people to think strategically,
even when their present jobs do not call for such thinking. It pushes and stretches
people beyond their present function. Hence this paper attempts to study the effectiveness
of training and development programme taking the Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited,
Chennai as sample. The perceptions of the employees’ performance before the training
programmes and after the training programmes were measured. Apart from it, whether
the company was really interested in providing training programmes to the employee’s
equip the trainers with latest technologies were also measured. The results depicted
that due importance was given to the training and also the employees said that the
trainers were well equipped. The majority of the employees suggested that the training
programmes had helped them to do the job in a better way. Thus it had been concluded
that the programmes had increased the level of satisfaction of the employees in
discharging their duties, even though a small section of the employees differing
with the majority. By and large, it had been effective in developing the human resources
in Chennai petroleum corporation limited (CPCL), Chennai.
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