Vol. 6(2) February 2013
Discrimination in the Workplace
Smith Heather, Battle Kevin and Mishra Jitendra*
Age and obesity discrimination is the fastest growing
type of discrimination in the workforce.. The federal government established The
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 which protected workers 40-years-old
and older from being discriminated against based on age (“Laws Enforced”, 2009).
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigates claims of workplace
age discrimination in workers 40-years-old and older (“About EEOC”, 2009). In 2008
there were 24,582 complaints of age bias reported to the EEOC.17 A substantial proportion
of the American public is overweight. Overweight individuals are frequently the
victims of pervasive discrimination, particularly in the area of employment. This
paper examines issues associated with age and obesity discrimination in the workplace.
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Customer Satisfaction in Banking Sector in Oman: What
do they care for?
Tahseen Arshi A.* and Al Lawati Jassim M.
The most productive output of an organization is production
of customer satisfaction. The real value lies in delivering customer satisfaction
which precedes customer retention and profits. Although most organizations understand
the importance of this stakeholder, few are able to commit themselves to achieving
customer satisfaction. For them ncustomer service is an attitude and not a department
or competency. This study focuses on investigating customer satisfaction dimensions
in service industry in general and banking sector in particular. Service quality
is measured in the banking sector in Oman using multiple item questionnaires as
the research was epistemologically committed to realist philosophy. The findings
confirm strong relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality dimensions.
The presentation of the multiple regression models explains 62% of the relationship
between customer satisfaction and service quality dimensions. If firms in the banking
sector improve their communication with their customers and commit themselves to
delivering customer service and develop necessary competencies for it, they would
be able to deliver the desired level of customer satisfaction.
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An Empirical Study to test the Explanatory Power of
the Factor Portfolios
Mirji Amit B.
The study tests whether growth in cash earnings per share
(CEPS) for a portfolio is explained by similar growth in factor portfolios like
market, SMB and HML as envisaged in the Fama and French three-factor return model
for NSE listed companies during 1996-2010. The results show that growth in CEPS
of a portfolio when regressed with the corresponding growth in factor portfolios
like market; size (SMB) and value (HML) behave in a similar way as the returns model
of Fama and French three factors.
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Are Accruals a proxy for Fundamental Risk? The Association
of Firm-Specific Economic Characteristics with Negative Accruals
Kane Gregory* and Velury Uma
The accruals anomaly has sparked an interesting debate
about the role of accruals in the pricing of equity securities. At least three possibilities
exist. First, abnormal trading profits generated using accruals as the basis for
trade may be a reflection of market inefficiency, i.e., investors do not discount
the fact that accruals are less persistent than cash flows. Second, accruals may
be an artifact of earnings management. Because investors are misled, trading profits
become possible. Third, accruals may proxy for the fundamental risk inherent in
investment securities. In this paper we provide evidence in favor of the third possibility.
Accruals seem to associated with firm characteristics known to be associated with
the fundamental risk of firms.
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Performance of SHG Bank Linkage Programme in Andhra
Pradesh
Padma A.S.* and Bharathi Vijaya G.
Andhra Pradesh is a prominent state in the Self Help
Group (SHG) movement in the country with 14.66 lakh SHGs. SHGs are small, economically
homogeneous affinity groups of rural poor (10-20) members each, voluntarily formed
to save and mutually contribute to a common fund to be lent to its members as per
the group members’ decision. SHGs can, therefore be called member - run mini – banks.
The SHG - Bank Linkage Programme (SBLP) was an outcome of pilot projects during
the 1980s for improving access of India’s rural poor to formal institutional financial
services. For banks, it was a way of reducing their transaction costs by dealing
with groups of people rather than individuals and reducing their risks through ‘peer
pressure’ and making people save.
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Attributes that best describe Successful Leaders:
A Perceptual Analysis
Spears M.C.* and Parker D.F.
Periods with visible examples of organizational failure
focus and renew attention on efforts to define successful leadership. As the world
economy struggles to recover from the Great Recession, there is often an expression
of disappointment or disgust with the leadership of leading businesses and institutions.
Are the organizations that were too big to fail also too big to lead? Or instead
did our problems arise from a failure of leadership? In the wake offinancial collapse
and reported managerial mismanagement leaders are again being examined, searching
for traits, behaviors, powers and situations that correlate with success. Although
there may be traits that guarantee leadership success, some qualities are perceived
to be more important in describing successful leaders. This study explores managerial
perceptions of attributes that describe successful leaders. Managers were surveyed
as to the relevant strength of a pool of potential Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
candidates. They were asked to assume they were on a committee to select a new CEO
for their company. They were asked to rank the submitted candidates. Sixteen hypothetical
candidates were included to provide a detailed analysis of four unique attributes
that a leaders might posses. The data allows for an allocation-type study.
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A Study on Stress Management in Coromandel Engineering
Company Limited, Chennai
Karthik R.
Stress has been on a rise in this era as science and
technology have brought tremendous changes in the life style of people. Stressful
situation at work place, disturbs the mental peace, weakens a person psychologically
and creates complexities in social and familial relationship. A survey in 2007 by
Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India also reported that work related
stress and mental fatigue is affecting the Indian employees (www.assocham.org).
People with a higher percentage of occupational stress may not be satisfied with
their job and therefore they will not feel happy working in the organization. It
becomes the responsibility of the employing organizations and the individual to
identify the causes of stress at the workplace and make efforts to reduce them for
the effectiveness and efficiency of the individual and the organization itself.
In this juncture, the present study is undertaken to address specific problems of
Coromandel Engineering employees related to occupational stress. The results of
the study give the clear picture of the stress level in the organization.
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An Analysis on Marketing Mix in Hospitals
Sreenivas T.1*, Srinivasarao B.2 and Srinivasa Rao U.3
Hospital marketing is becoming increasingly competitive
all over the world and India is no exception. The gradual shift from the selling
to marketing vis-a-vis the customer orientation is quiet evident in present day
hospital services. Hospitals become consumer centered and are expecting high medical
care and demanding quality services at reasonable prices. Under these circumstances,
age-old methods may not give us long run results. The application of modern marketing
principles would pave avenues for rationalizing and standardizing the services.
Thus marketing has become a new ‘mantra’ for the service providers in a hospital
setting. Study evaluates the innovative marketing strategies adopted by corporate
hospitals to sell their services and tries to explore the Marketing process explained
with the help of 7P’s i.e. Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Physical evidence
and Process in sample hospitals which run under different corporate managements.
For this purpose it is proposed to elicit the perceptions from the doctors, nursing
staff and administrative staff on marketing mix of hospitals. The data was analyzed
by applying different statistical tools to know whether the perceptions of respondents
are indistinguishable or not.
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Improving Organization Performance through Knowledge
Management Practices
Sen Nandita
This paper presents the need of building a knowledge
society to meet out new realities and face the challenges of our growing economy.
With the current global economic slowdown the times are no doubt tough. A liquidity
crunch, falling consumer demand and erosion of investments have put organization
under tremendous pressure to control their expenses and functions. It is the right
time to convert this situation into opportunities by converting more with less.
The increasing global presence of business and participation of multinational companies
calls focus of management’s attention to different HR practices to cope up with
impact of global changes. It is observed that change is inevitable but it is important
to recognize that managerial efficacy needs to keep a pace with such transformations.
This paper posits the two variables of knowledge retention and its management. The
human resource function can play a pivotal role in responding to challenges during
the downturn and emerge it in a better shape. “It is not the strongest species that
survives, or the most intelligent, but most responsive of change” said Charles Robert
Darwin in 1859 in his book “The Origin of Species”. Knowledge is the basis for and
the driver of our post-industrial economy. Knowledge is the result of learning which
provides the only sustainable competitive advantage. We need to be concerned with
knowledge management as it can contribute to company’s vitality, success, performance
and adaptation. To move towards a new century of growth and innovation, we need
to understand that we need to be competitively progressing in all fronts. We need
to create more opportunities for us by understanding the value goal reference knowledge.
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