Vol. 7(8) August 2014
Public Employee Union
Challenges
Crampton Suzanne M.* and Hodge John W.
Public unions are struggling today in the U.S. as they face financial problems, various state
right-to-work laws, a general decline in the public’s support of unions and
challenges in communicating and evaluating the short- and long-term impact of
their performance. This paper will examine these challenges along with the
composition of public unions today. Strategies will also be identified that
public unions can develop to more effectively manage the challenges they face.
Full Text
Emerging Issues
and Outcomes of Behavior based Safety (BBS) Implementation
Kaila Harbans Lal
Unsafe or at-risk behaviours of employees are the root cause of almost all accidents
and fatalities in organizations. BBS is a process of chaining people in safety
behaviours. This article is a case of a large gas company in India on various
processes and emerging outcomes of behavior based safety (BBS) implementation. A
set of issues and apprehensions faced by the Lead Trainers/Observers as well as
emerging outcomes of BBS implementation are reflected. Recommendations are made for
consolidating BBS implementation. This study is intended to be useful for
companies interested in implementing BBS as a significant step towards managing
zero occupational injuries and accidents
Full Text
Perspicuity of customers towards self-technology based service
encounters of a Public Sector Bank
Nalini R.1*, Amudha R.2*, Sujatha V.1 and
Radha R.1
Technology has opened a new gate for the banks to introduce uniqueness in delivery systems. Banking
is a personalised service-oriented sector where it anticipates, identifies,
reciprocates and satisfies the needs of the customers effectively and
profitably. The banks are in a position to cope with the development of
technology blended with their service. To attain the uniqueness in delivering
service to the customers, the banks have to satisfy the customers before, during
and after delivering the service. Thus the service environment plays a very
important role in attaining the customer satisfaction. The service environment
may be remote, phone and face to face encounters. The phone and face to face
encounters have a personal touch of the employees with the customers. The remote
encounters namely, ATM, internet banking and mobile banking are grouped under
self-service technologies. The study is aimed to know the customers’ perception
towards the technology based encounters of SBI.
Random
sampling method is adopted for the collection of data from the respondents. The
data collected were analyzed by using rank correlation with the help of SPSS
package. The Cronbach alpha, a measure of internal consistency obtained is 0.925
which is considered to be excellent. The study reveals that employed people are
attracted by 12 hours banking, ATMs, online banking services, core-banking
services, insurance coverage and the like. This study with technology based
services can be extended to all the service sectors namely, insurance,
telecommunication, electricity, tourism, hospitality.
Full Text
Supply Chain
Management in Construction Industry
Gohari Ali
The success
of a civil project is evaluated through parameters of quality, cost and time.
Construction companies use modern tools and technologies in order to improve the
mentioned parameters in their supply chain. The paper aims at studying the role
of supply chain management on construction industry. This is a descriptive
analytic research and the data has been gathered using library methods. The
obtained results revealed that supply chain management is crucial in different
stages of construction industry including providing materials and tools as well
as designing, supervising and execution stages. Supply chain and its
applications can be remarkably effective in each quality stage in order to
reduce the time and expenses.
Full Text
In search of the Greener Attitude: A perceptual study on Eco-friendly Products
Kumar Brajesh and Pegu Priyanka
The aim of this paper is to derive empirically the consumers’ attitude towards green in general and green products
in particular through their level of awareness and consciousness towards
environmental degradation and also through their level of awareness and
consciousness towards green products. The study assumes the characteristics of
both exploratory and descriptive research. The study was based essentially on
the primary data captured through a specially designed questionnaire.
In order to know the participants’
attitude towards green in general and green products in particular two
projective technique sessions i.e., Word Association and Sentence Completion
test were conducted on the participants.
The findings of the study indicate that most of the participants have got moral
values, commitments and responsibilities toward the environment. The
overwhelming majority of the participants have sufficient knowledge on the
adverse effects of the selected aspects of environmental degradation. The
participants possess an overall consistent positive attitude towards green in
general and green products in particular. Green business must be the new scope
for the marketers and they must target this segment of consumers.
Full Text
Emotional Regulation Strategies to influence Task and Contextual Performance in Health Care
Jun-Yen Wu, Chin-Yi Chen and Chun-I Li
Traditionally, emotions are regarded as disruptive rather than constructive in
organizational management. This study demonstrated that employee emotional
regulation highly contributes to health care performance and well-being. Valid
samples of 157 health care personnel including nurses from 15 different
hospitals and 107 managers from a variety of work settings were collected. This
study identified six emotional regulation strategies by Parkinson and Totterdell43.
These are (1) problem solving, (2) relaxation, (3) seeking social support, (4)
happiness orientation, (5) attentional reallocation—distraction/ keeping busy
and (6) avoidance.
Emotional regulation strategies were found to mediate between emotional intelligence and two types
of performance.—the “task” and “contextual” performance. The mediating
explanatory power for task performance is 24% and 28% for
contextual performance. It is important for hospital training management and
nursing practitioners to recognize the importance of various emotion regulation
strategies and to differentiate their impact on health care performance.
Full Text
How Stock Market Innovations and Deregulations affect Economy’s Business Environment?
Juan TaoIn
fact, for an individual stock that has highly positive upside beta, the return
of the stock must be high because when the market is going up, the return of the
stock also increases. Then investors would not require risk premium for bearing
upside “risk” as the payoff is already high. Instead, they may accept a discount
instead of premium for the upside deviation.
Full Text
The Role of Information Technology and Insurance Penetration
Hebbar C. K., Shenoy Sandeep S., Rao Guru Prasad and Rao Abhishek
The
developments in IT are the working wonders in all the fields of activity. It has
become possible to send and receive information almost instantaneously. If
circulars do not reach the agents on time or doubts are not cleared quickly, or
the agent does not have details of the new plans announced in the press, the
agent may face awkward situation with the prospects.
Insurance
companies face problems which can be totally ducked with the use of technology.
The insurers who were conventional have been quick to adapt latest developments
in the field of IT. The IT has constantly played a very imperative role in the
operations of every insurance company. The fact is that of all the business
establishments in the facility sector, of the life insurance companies were the
first to adopt Computerization as an incontrovertible part of their operation
all over the world.
With the entrance of private insurance players, the competition has become more
powerful and an important role is being played by the insurance sector. The use
of information technology is not new to the insurance sector, yet we may find
constricted computerization regarding the use of information technology in
various departments of the insurance companies including the major players from
past several years. The most evident departments are accounting, legal issue and
servicing, claim processing, sales management etc.
Full Text