Advances In Management

Indexed in SCOPUS, Chemical Abstracts Services, UGC, NAAS and Indian Citation Index etc.



Advances In Management






Vol. 5(11) November 2012

Speed-Marketing: A New Strategy for Fast Decision-Making

Avichai Shuv-Ami

Marketing & Advertising Department, The College of Management, 7 Yizhak Rabin Blvd., Rishon Lezion 75190, ISRAEL shuvami@gmail.com

Current marketing literature, academic and non-academic, offers very little in the way of explaining the concept of "speed marketing". Most academic studies deal with the problem of accelerating the time necessary to develop new products in order to gain a time-to-market advantage. Non-academic papers mainly discuss how to cut the time required in developing digital marketing strategies. But speed marketing is much more than a time reduction tool. On the contrary, speed marketing is a systematic, decision-making process that attempts to deal with unexpected (positive or negative) marketing events that can affect the livelihood of a company. The current paper proposes a six-step systematic process that can provide marketing managers with the tools for operating methodically and efficiently under pressure and in sometimes chaotic situations in order to solve problems and exploit opportunities.

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The Global Trends and Development in Financial Reporting – A study

Velavan M.

Shivani School of Business Management, Trichy Dindigul High Road, Navalur Kuttappattu, Trichirappalli 620009 (Tamil Nadu), INDIA invitation@zorpia.com

The growing interest of the governments in publication of financial reports truly reflecting the affairs of the country comparable with other countries and with different periods has fuelled the interest for financial reporting reforms in the public sector. Financial reports of the governments have to be relevant, reliable and easily understandable to the common man. With the fall of Enron and WorldCom the importance of true and fair reporting was understood by the entire world. The heat of these changes is being felt by the governments and many undertook far reaching financial reporting reforms. Already a handful of countries have moved towards accrual based accounting while many more are in the migration path towards this difficult journey. New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada and United Kingdom were in the forefront of this force while the others are following the trend. International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has made a commendable commitment towards this effort by publishing International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and other study reports including Transition to Accrual Accounting.

The financial reporting has changed from Development Focus where there were no standards in the era of 1930s to the Homogenization Focus with the introduction of accounting standards in the 1970s. The financial reporting further changed to Consolidation Focus in the 1980s, Fair Earnings Focus in the 1990s and Value Focus in the 2000s, with the introduction of host of ideas such as governance, non financial reporting and sustainability reporting and value reporting (environmental value added, social value added and economic value added etc) with the current developments. Today the accounting profession is moving away from historical cost accounting and reporting to fair value accounting and reporting which is going to be a paradigm shift in financial reporting while the public sector by and large is unconcerned of these developments particularly in India.

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Institutional Framework of Public Utility Privatisation in Developing Countries

Cheng Kuo-Tai

Institute for Human Resource Development, National Hsin-Chu University of Education, TAIWAN
tigercheng@mail.nhcue.edu.tw

Privatisation programmes in many developing countries (DCs) have been slow, uneven and plagued by many obstacles. Drastic, technical and unpredictable changes in the ‘enabling environment’ that affect the initiation and implementation of privatisation programmes are required.13, 34, 37 This environment is expected to encompass the political, legal and institutional setting along with the financial and fiscal systems and thus enhance the ability of governments to undertake successful privatisation programmes.

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No-frills Accounts - An Instrument to combat 100% Financial Exclusion in Rural India

Veerakumar K.

Department of Commerce and Management Studies, SASTRA University, SRC, Kumbakonam (Tamilnadu), INDIA. Veera_8090@yahoo.co.in

As per NSSO (National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India) report, 51% of 89.3 million farmers households are excluded from both formal/informal sources. Only 27% of the total farmer households access formal source of credit (i.e. 73% of farm households do not have access to formal credit sources). More than 65% of marginal farmer households excluded from basic banking services. Only 14 out of 100 adults have loan accounts on an all India basis as well as in the rural sector. In rural areas it is just 9.5 per cent. Approximately 400 million people live in nearly six million villages and semi-urban areas waiting for small loans and other banking services. There is scope for lending Rs.45,000 crores to these people. Against this potential, only about 20 million have been served so far by the organized financial sector with total disbursements of about Rs.3,900 crore.

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The Impact of Financial Tsunami in 2008 on Temporary Labour Market - A Reflection on Higher Education

Sung Lee Ching1* and Wei Chao Chen2

1. No.510, Zhongzheng Road, Xinzhuang District., New Taipei City 24205, TAIWAN 2. No.1, University Road, Tainan City 701, TAIWAN
*chingsunglee@gmail.com

Hospitality student interns play an important role as temporary workforce of the hospitality industry. The Financial Tsunami in 2008 has imposed pressure to the temporary labour market and directly affected the hospitality internship in Taiwan. The purpose of this study was to explore the problems existed in the hospitality higher education through the impact of Financial Tsunami in 2008. The data collected in this study was conducted through face-to-face in-depth interviews. The finding indicated four problems existed in higher education: (1) Faculty members possess higher education degree but not hospitality own profession; (2) Students are managerial-level oriented educated but not entry-level oriented trained, (3) Hospitality education focuses on quantity increasing but not quality improving; and (4) Hospitality schools are academic research oriented but not practical experience pass-down.

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Dynamics of Creating and Maintaining Retail Image

Shukla Parag S.

Department of Commerce and Business Management, The M.S. University of Baroda, VADODARA (Gujarat) 390 002 parag_shukla2000@yahoo.com

Indian retail sector is poised for developments that are unprecedented not only in India but almost anywhere in the world. Economic impact will be felt across the entire economy from consumers to producers and manufacturers to service providers to retailers. The high private consumption is one of the major factors for the growing retail industry. Over 62 per cent of the private consumption share is towards the retail sector, of which 55 per cent is the contribution from the rural areas, indicating the increasing significance of retail presence in rural areas. The new demanding Indian consumer has higher needs and expectations from life in general, and retailing in particular, than ever before. This has been created by the well-educated smart shopper, a new communications paradigm, pervasive advertising, and a surplus of just about everything (wheat, money, manufacturing capacity, merchandise, retail space, and stores, etc.) except time. The result is the “I want it better, cheaper, easier, faster and now” consumer who knows that if he/she cannot have these demands met by your business there are a dozen alternatives.

In short, India is attempting to do in 10 years what took 25 or 30 years in other major markets in the world and shall bypass many stages of “evolution” of modern retail. India is likely to see emergence of several “innovative” India-specific retail business models and retail formats in the coming years.

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On the Economic Benefit of Hosting the Olympics

Levy Ben1* and Berger Paul D. 2

1. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA 2. Bentley University,Waltham, MA 02452, USA
*Benlevy68@gmail.com

Mega Sporting Events generally are classified as the Olympics, World Cup and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Championship in Europe. Since the significant positive economic impact of $2.3 billion realized by Los Angeles after the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, the number of bids by cities for these mega sporting events has increased significantly. Also, this success inspired economic evaluations of the Olympic Games to be conducted to better estimate the financial benefit to the host city. Utilizing improved methodologies, as well as superior data, models have found that, in reality, it is more difficult than anticipated to realize an economic benefit from hosting the Olympic Games. We conduct statistical analyses on the financial data for several of the Olympic cities since 1990. We also discuss data available from the British government which estimates the economic outcome of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

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Customers’ Satisfaction in Public and Private Sector Banks and their Comparison

Ayyanar G.

PG Department of Commerce & Centre for Higher Research, Yadava College (Autonomous), Madurai 625 014 (Tamil Nadu), INDIA guruayyanaryc@gmail.com

Customers’ satisfaction is an important theoretical as well as practical issue for most marketers and consumer researchers. Customers’ satisfaction can be considered the essence of success in today’s highly competitive world of business. In general, satisfaction is a person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a product’s perceived performance in relation to his or her expectations. If the performance falls short of expectation, the customer is dissatisfied; if the performance matches the expectations, the customer is satisfied. Customers become the focal point for the banking business so that bankers have to involve themselves totally in anticipating, identifying, reciprocating and satisfying their customers in a mutually rewarding manner. Latest business models have attached the highest importance to customer satisfaction for the success of an organization.

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Strengthening Intrinsic Motivation of University Students in Hong Kong

Yau Hon Keung*, Kan Man Shan and Cheng Alison Lai Fong

City University of Hong Kong, System Engineering and Engineering Management, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, HONG KONG *honkyau@cityu.edu.hk

This study is to identify the factors affecting the intrinsic motivation of the university students in Hong Kong. The factors of curiosity and external regulation with intrinsic motivation are taken into investigation in this study because it is found that the relationships between these factors and intrinsic motivation of the local university students have seldom been examined. This study adopting a survey of 137 sampled students was conducted in a local university in 2011. Findings showed that students with curiosity could stimulate their higher intrinsic motivation; but external regulation was not found to be related to intrinsic motivation.

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Impact of Services Trade on Service Sector Labor-Demand Elasticities: Empirical Evidence from China

Wei Hao*, Fu Qiang and Liu Shibin

School of Economics and Business Administration, Beijing Normal University, CHINA
*weihao9989@163.com

Through utilizing time series data of China’s services trade and service sector from 1982 to 2009, this study analyses the impact of services trade on service sector labor-demand elasticities. The empirical work yields the following main conclusions. First, no matter in the long run or in the short term, China’s services export exerts distinctly stimulative impact on the service sector labor-demand elasticities. In the long-term influence, substitution effect is much more powerful than the output effect, however, as to the short period, output effect is a little stronger than the substitution effect. Second, in the long run, we cannot reject the hypothesis of no relationship between service import openness and labor-demand elasticities of the service sector. Whereas, studying the result of the short term, trade liberalization of services import does affect the service sector labor-demand elasticity weakly.

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Another Angle on the HRM Convergence and Divergence Debate: Preliminary Evidence by comparing a Foreign versus Local Bank in China

Chan Ka Wai, Wyatt Thomas A.1, Peng Kelly Z.2, Yiu Daphne W. and Wong Chi-Sum3*

1. Department of Business Administration, University of Macau, Taipa, MACAU 2. Department of Business Administration, Hong Hong Shue Yan University, North Point, HONG KONG 3. Department of Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T. HONG KONG
*cswong@baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk

In the international human resource literature, there is a long lasting debate concerning the extent to which foreign companies should adopt local human resource management (HRM) practices. However, evidence for both convergence and divergence can be found and there is no clear answer to the trend of convergence. In this study, we attempt to provide a different angle to approach this debate. Specifically, we argue that to gain legitimacy in attracting and retaining necessary human resources, quality of work life which reflected the end results of HRM practices will be similar among organizations. For individual HRM practices, they will be affected by the interaction between specific institutional forces and the organization’s strategic choice. Using this perspective, we are able to explain the similarities and differences of the quality of work life and individual HRM practices in a foreign and local bank operating in Shanghai. There are two important implications. First, while individual HRM practices may differ among organizations, the end results of these practices – quality of work life provided – have to be similar. Second, both the institutional forces and the strategic choices of organizations have to be carefully examined in order to understand the convergence and divergence of their HRM practices.

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Book Review:
The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C.K.Prahalad

Publisher: Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd. [Pages 401. Price Rs. 550.00]

Reviewed by: Bangar Sonali and Vispute Jayashree
Vishwakarma Institute of Management, Pune, INDIA

The forgotten man at the bottom of Pyramid”- Franklin D. Roosevelt. The true meaning and use of this concept was explained by great late management thinker Prof C.K Prahalad in his book – “The fortune of the bottom of pyramid.” It analyzes how poor can be targeted as consumers by various organizations for societal improvement and profitable business. Utilizing Bottom of Pyramid (BOP) by creative and innovative ways can create various opportunities, awareness among poor, provide jobs to them and commercial success to the MNC’s thus fighting poverty. Public Private Partnership, various schemes, NGO’s participation subsidiaries, global support deregulation developed by Government are insufficient work done for them and indeed there is a great need to do something more. C.K. Prahalad in his book explains how available resources can be best used for profit maximization. He said that the poor should not be considered as a community which is underserved but an active, potentially high group or global growth and can lead in development of trade and prosperity as they constitute a large number of chunks. This has been explained by various examples taken in book like Aarvind Eye Care, Unilever etc. C. K. Prahalad elaborates that a great market can be developed with millions of entrepreneurs at grass root level at BOP. The earning capacity of them is very less that is more than $ 2 per day. A better approach like partnering with multinationals by innovative ways provides a new growth to BOP thus increasing core business and CSR. The book is divided in three different parts explaining various aspects of BOP. The first part deals with developing framework for active engagement of private sector for win-win situation. The second deals with 8 different examples showing actual process, implementing and reaping benefits in various sectors while last section details the research work done by management students.

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