Private Sector Companies Research Articles

Antecedents and consequences of managerial decision-making styles in the Arabian Gulf

Purpose This paper aims to examine managerial decision-making approaches, their antecedents and consequences in the Arabian Gulf context. Using recent survey data, the study offers a critical assessment of prevailing myths about decision-making styles in the Arabian Gulf. Design/methodology/approach Survey data were collected from a sample of 432 managers working in public and private sector companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A combination of statistical techniques including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and hierarchical regression analysis was used to test research hypotheses. Findings The findings of this study question the myth that UAE or Gulf managers mostly pursue consultative and participative styles of management. Most UAE managers continue to practice an autocratic and a pseudo-consultative style of decision-making, undermining the value of employee input in the decision-making process. The data revealed a strong negative relationship between autocratic management style and a range of personal and organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, performance and innovative human resource management practices pertaining to work-family life balance and diversity programs. Most employees perceived autocratic management style as a major source of job stress, absenteeism and turnover. Socio-demographic characteristics of managers and their work organizations, considered as antecedents of decision-making styles, played a limited role in shaping decision-making approaches or their consequences. Globalization and associated socio-cultural changes that UAE and other Gulf region countries have experienced over the past two decades seem to have only a marginal impact on decision-making styles. Research limitations/implications Use of perceptual survey data places some constraints on the generalizability of our findings. Future research may address this issue with multiple data sources including an in-depth case study. Practical implications The findings of this research should be of special interest to both domestic and multinational companies in seeking alignment of their management approaches with the emerging competitive business environment in UAE and other Gulf countries. Theoretically, the paper documents the value of the continuum theory of managerial behavior in UAE and the Arabian Gulf context. Originality/value The study represents a first major effort to develop and test a comprehensive conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of managerial decision-making styles in UAE, which may be extended to other countries in the Arabian Gulf region. The value-added contribution of the study may be seen in its critical analysis of prevailing beliefs and assumptions about management practices in the Arabian Gulf.

CSR Practices – Trends and Compliance a Comparative Study Between Select Public and Private Sector Companies in India

A business is a social entity. Over its entire lifetime it uses various social resources and thus, in turn, has a responsibility towards maintaining the societal wellbeing. Since in every country large corporate organizations are the highest consumers of societal resources, they are expected to discharge their social responsibility as a pre-condition for long term sustainability and growth. Keeping this in mind, regulators in different countries initiate well defined regulatory mechanism to guide and monitor the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities undertaken by corporate firms. Unfortunately, Indian regulators had largely overlooked such a requirement, though, in a developing country like India, this could have been the most important. However, with the introduction of the new Companies Act 2013, which has introduced a well defined framework in this respect, the situation seems changing significantly and in a positive direction. In this backdrop, our study attempts a comparative investigation into the trends in CSR activities undertaken by selected leading private and public sector companies of India and the degree of compliance achieved by them.

Understanding Contextual Spillover: Using Identity Process Theory as a Lens for Analyzing Behavioral Responses to a Workplace Dietary Choice Intervention.

Spillover occurs when one environmentally sustainable behavior leads to another, often initiated by a behavior change intervention. A number of studies have investigated positive and negative spillover effects, but empirical evidence is mixed, showing evidence for both positive and negative spillover effects, and lack of spillover altogether. Environmental identity has been identified as an influential factor for spillover effects. Building on identity process theory the current framework proposes that positive, negative, and a lack of spillover are determined by perceived threat of initial behavior and identity process mechanisms evaluating the behavior. It is proposed, that an environmental behavior change intervention may threaten one's existing identities, leading to either (a) integration, (b) compartmentalization, or (c) conflict between one's environmental identity and non-environmental identities. Initial evidence for the proposed framework is based on a field intervention which included a meat reduction programme in a canteen of a medium size private sector company. Semi-structured interviews and an explorative visualization method that aimed at assessing identity change were implemented with thirteen employees (i.e., intervention participants) before and after the intervention. The qualitative data was analyzed by using thematic analysis via NVivo12. Results of the visualization task and interview method provided initial evidence of direct and indirect positive contextual spillover effects, with comparatively less evidence a lack of spillover and a relative absence of reported negative spillover. This paper provides a novel theoretical approach, centered on identity process theory to enhance understanding of positive spillover, negative spillover, and the lack of spillover.

CSR Practices among Public and Private Sector Companies: A Community Development Approach in Indian context

Business environment today and the higher expectation of the stakeholders demand for good CSR programmes bringing in greater benefits. Besides the key stakeholders such as the Government, investors and customers, community come out as important stakeholders who actually provide the license to the corporate to operate. The companies have already realized that it is the communities surrounding their vicinity that they have to satisfy to maintain their operations. Through good CSR interventions the companies can attract, retain and motivate their employees. CSR practices benefit the community by enhancing their livelihood and increasing their income levels and become corporate citizens. Corporate social responsibility becomes a way of promoting good company practices wherein the private sector is encouraged to be more engaged in social mission. The paper attempts to show the CSR practices across public and private sectors in an Indian context by taking few companies as sample study. The research is carried on by secondary sources of information through the reported information of the company's annual sustainability reports. The results show that the Private sector companies are spending more on CSR and community and in a better strategic manner compared to the Public sectors that basically focus on issue based requirement of the community.

Development of technologies and processes in environmental management

Environmental management is principally aimed at the formation of ecological productivity, ecological culture and human viability. Development of technologies and processes in environmental management characterized with the principles and items which are specified on the global environmental impact. The very concept of environmental management includes many management problems related to the environmental process as an object of management. Along with governance systems (laws, legislation, rules/regulations, codes and standards etc.), education (awareness raising, capacity building, training, professional development etc.), technology (technologies, and the skills, knowledge and innovation needed to manage those technologies)forms the third and a critical pillar in a policy mix that is needed to tackle environmental problems and aim for sustainability in the long run. Developing technologies that can help solve environmental problems requires a broad range of actions that are to be taken by different “external” stakeholders, besides those that actually develop and operationalize the technologies’ private sector companies, universities and research institutions et. al High levels of pollution and gradual reduction of natural resources, inefficient system of economic incentives for environmental activities - in many cases it will be easier for companies to pay fines than to solve environmental problems.

La relación entre las dimensiones de personalidad según el P-IPG y la calidad de vida laboral percibida

Labor life quality (CVL, for its Spanish acronym) and personality conform two of the most interesting topics in human behavior research within the organization. The aim of this research was to identify whether it was possible to predict CVL as of some personality dimensions. To do so a correlational descriptive design was used. The sampling was made up of 145 workers at 5 private sector companies in the city of Bogota. Personality was evaluated through the Gordon PPG-IPG test, and for life quality, Gomez PCVL (2010) was used. The results were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and the relation between variables was analyzed through Pearson moment-product coefficients and Spearman ranges. Results show that CVL valuation is positively related to the fact that the worker shows a more positive personality in terms of greater self-steem, caution, originality, understanding, and vitality.

Az állami ellenőrzés egy sajátos válfaja, avagy a megfelelőség (compliance) és az integritás kérdésköre egyes közszféraszervezetek esetében

We have a wide range of literature sources on the state’s control functions, as it is a prominent issue in both national and international literature that how and by what means the state’s will – which can take many faces, may be a law, a non-normative regulator, an authority decision or even a public administration measure – is possible to be enforced. It is also crucial for state-owned business organizations to ensure compliance like private sector companies do. At present, there is no independent regulator in the national legal system regarding compliance control functions of publicly owned business organizations, therefore some of the rules concerning the internal control functions of the public sector are applicable in this area, as well. The question is interesting because state-owned business organizations are partly subject to property law, partly to civil law and partly to administrative law, so control over them is basically by ownership, in a closer sense by civil law – known as the guarantee of legitimate operation of legal persons – or may be policy, sectoral, public finance and authority control. The integrity of such organizations, which is closest to the compliance function known in the private sector, has been at the forefront of the State Audit Office’s investigations in recent years. In our study, these terms are clarified and the characteristics of the current national regulation are examined.

Design of a SWOT Analysis Model and its Evaluation in Diverse Digital Business Ecosystem Contexts

Investigating the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of enterprise systems is popular among business researchers in major organizations. Many establishments carry out SWOT analysis at strategic planning, quality control while formulating government policies and legislations. In the digital ecosystems scenarios, the SWOT activities need a great deal of attention, in particular, while designing and promoting new strategies of multiple industry scenarios in the Integrated Project Management context, keeping in view complex business operations. Information solutions may not have choices, failing to address priorities and provide alternate solutions. We focus on digital ecosystem methodologies, in which the business and organizational issues, challenges and priorities are addressed. The purpose of the research is designing a new SWOT model in which the elements are modelled to interrogate managers’ views to oversee new insights of a variety of business contexts that can guide SWOT analyzers and provide digital ecosystem services in multiple industry operations in an optimum manner. Issues and challenges of elements of SWOT of several public and private sector companies are analyzed, documented and modelled to evaluate unified metadata representing multiple industry views, their visualization and interpretation in new knowledge domains.

Negotiating international strategic alliances: success and failures - some closing thoughts

This special thematic issue of the European Journal of International Management focuses on the analysis of case examples of negotiation processes of strategic alliances. This thematic issue applies a multi-lens approach in which a range of theories and models are selectively applied to specific cases to gain better insight into the business case, the development of the negotiations and to identify lessons for future negotiators of strategic alliances. Negotiation theory is applied to concrete M&A as negotiations as well as to other forms of negotiations of strategic alliances, for instance between governments, between private sector companies and cross-sectoral alliance negotiations between private sector actors and other actors such as governments. Special attention has been paid to analysis of business diplomacy and trust development.

Efficiency and productivity of health insurance business of public and private general insurance companies in India: A DEA approach

The objective of the present paper was to examine the efficiency and productivity of health insurance business of public and private general insurance companies in India. The analysis was made with the help of data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity index. It was observed that mean of technical efficiency of the public sector companies was higher than of private sector companies. The total factor productivity change had decreased for all public general insurance companies from 2006-2007 to 2013-2014. While, private general insurance companies had shown tremendous increase in productivity from 2006-2007 to 2013-2014. This could be due to the fact that private companies had taken the advantage of technological change, efficiency change, pure technical efficiency change and scale efficiency change. Therefore, public general insurance companies should expand their activities and outreach in the competitive environment.

AGRIBUSINESS CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTRACT FARMING IN COMMERCIALIZATION OF SMALL-SCALE VEGETABLE FARMERS IN EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA

The study investigated the key factors that influ- ence small-scale vegetable farmers’ participation in contract farming arrangements. A sample of 70 small-scale vegetable farmers and 15 key informants of agribusiness firms involved in contract farming production of vegetables were selected in Amathole and Sarah Baartman (formerly Cacadu) district municipalities in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were chosen as data collection tools to identify the factors that influence small-scale vegetable farmers’ participation in contract farm- ing arrangements with agribusiness firms. The data was ana- lyzed using open multi-stage coding with an inductive frame- work approach. Atlas.ti was used to sort and organize data. The findings indicated availability of farm assets, hydrologi- cal conditions, farming skills and distance of producer to the markets as key determinants of contract farming participation. The use of unmarketable cultivars, inappropriate agricultural practices and inconsistent supply in quality and quantity of vegetables were found to be bottlenecks to contract participa- tion. The study recommends a more meaningful state support and incentives for agribusiness firms; otherwise, growth of small-scale farmers in contract farming is unlikely because of the financial implications for private sector companies.

Corporate Social Reporting Practices In India

"This paper aims to examine the extent of corporate social reporting practices in the annual reports of companies in India and to ascertain the differences if any, between public sector and private sector companies and to investigate what were the determinants of corporate social reporting . The study intends to answer the research questions which include: a) what variables could represent a Conceptual Model of Corporate Social Reporting consists of dependent variables and Independent variables? b) What are the factors of Corporate Social Reporting (COSOR) and how valid and reliable are these factors? c) What is the degree of COSOR by factors in public and private sector companies? d) What are the determinants of COSOR? What is the level of their influence on COSOR? A sample of 120 listed companies of National Stock Exchange of India was chosen and they were stratified in to public and private sector companies. A Corporate social reporting Index was constructed for data collection through content analysis from the annual reports. The results of the study revealed that social accounting information were disclosed in company’s annual reports, chairman’s speech, directors’ reports, notes to accounts, schedule to accounts and auditor’s report. The degree of corporate social reporting varies between public sector and private sector companies. The public sector companies have disclosed more corporate social reporting information than the private sector companies. The study found that higher the level of capital employed, earnings before depreciation and taxes, total assets and total sales higher was the level of corporate social reporting. However, the degree of influence of determinants on corporate social reporting was different among public and private sector companies. Most of the companies have disclosed corporate social information on voluntary basis. To improve the understandably, uniformity, and comparability of corporate social information, this study suggests making it mandatory. A standard format for disclosure of corporate social information shall be prescribed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs by amending the Indian Companies Act. The concept of social accounting is relatively new in India. This study suggests to include it in the commerce curriculum and also in the curriculum of CA/CWA/CS. Corporate Social Reporting is such a vast area of research that no single study can cover different dimensions related to it. Though some studies including the present study have been conducted on Corporate Social Reporting Practices in India, but still there is much potential of research in this area. Future research in this area will hopefully bring more brightening result measuring and analysing social costs and benefits data by manager as well as by other concerned. Since the subject is in the primary stage, an in-depth research is needed to be done in different sectors such as banking information technology, manufacturing etc. The results are specifically applicable to sample companies and generalisations can be made with caution. The results of the study are based on the data collected from published annual reports of sample companies using content analysis method. Corporate social reporting in company websites, brochures etc are not covered. Social cost and benefit analysis is not covered in this study.

THE ROLE OF HUMAN CAPITAL IN GAINING AND SUSTAINING COMPETETIVE ADVANTAGE OF COMPANIES

In today’s global competitive arena the term “knowledge economy” is no mere slogan. It points to the very real fact that economic activities are increasingly knowledge intensive and that in this globalized world, success will come to those that are able to generate and harness knowledge in order to stay ahead of the pack. Research shows that in economies that do not have sufficient infrastructure, natural resources or may be designed as high cost base locations, comparative advantage has shifted to knowledge-based activities that cannot be transferred around the world without a significant cost. High knowledge and skills based economies will most likely be able to attract and retain investments in industries with a strong future. It is no secret that good education lies at the heart of economic growth and development. At the same time, improving the quality and relevance of education is enormously difficult not least because there is no one single policy measure that will do so effectively.Macedonia is not exclusion to this fact. The Macedonia’s employers and employees face a huge talent management dilemma. Analyses by all relevant institutions (World Bank, NGOs) and interviews with multiple representatives from the private sector companies indicate that while the labor pool is growing (supply side), it does not provide the skills needed by employers (demand side) so, that they could be competitive and further grow in today’s market. Employers are nearly unified in their criticism of an education system that produces graduates with limited practical experience and no soft skills transferable to the workplace. This is largely due to a lack of experiential education, competency based curricula, pragmatic guidance, which fails to meet the needs of the business community. The burden falls most often on employers to provide practical training, usually on the job. While in-company training is good practice, the scale of the skill gap requires a cost and internal training capability that many enterprises cannot afford, creating a disincentive for businesses to hire new employees.The dilemma has impacted job seekers (official unemployment in Macedonia is around 28% as of December 2017) and contributes to lower overall economic growth. It is especially problematic for micro and small enterprises (MSEs), which make up a large proportion of employment in Macedonia. MSE size and limited capacity makes their employees skills, experience and multitasking capabilities that much more critical for growth. Additionally, MSEs often lack the resources necessary to effectively train and maximize the productivity of their staff. As a result, sustained employment growth within Macedonia must include the development of a pipeline of skilled employees for microenterprises, including bolstering the capacity of small businesses to organize and train their workers. On the other side, the formal education institution dislike they way the private sector manages their employees. According to many of them, this is due to the fact that companies believe that their performance in the market is not directly linked with the human capital performance. In addition, education holds to the belief that private sector companies are not engaged enough in creating the next pool of talents in Macedonia. When they are invited to participate in the classrooms as expert of guest speaker, hire or engage students they show little interest. To conclude, the education institution believes that private sector companies in Macedonia consider the investment in human capital as a cost and not an investment.

Malaysia: National Language Policy and Employability

Malaysia’s public–private sector university graduates are facing an employment crisis and their employability rates “remain poor and unimproved.” The low graduate employability is primarily due to their poor command of English, weak professional competency, lack of critical communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills, and a lacklustre work attitude. The mismatch between demand and supply of high-quality human capital from local universities is hampering the country’s aspiration to be a developed nation by 2020. Unemployable graduates are absorbed into the highly bloated public service, while private sector companies are recruiting almost exclusively among returnees of top overseas English-medium universities.

Effective Internal Controls for Asian Countries

The purpose of this article is to formulate an internal controls framework for instituting effective internal controls for the Asian countries private sector companies and public sector organizations. This research formulates recommendations for company management and governmental organizations of Asian countries regarding effective internal controls. Latest trends formulated from modern industry’s best practices, private sector companies and public sector organizations including U.S. DOD can be utilized by the Asian countries as a useful document to design a suitable internal controls for the company management and governmental organizations. The recommendations of this research may also assist the investors to assess the financial health of a company prior to undertaking investment decisions. Based on findings of this article a company can formulate a course of action for the company management to guarantee effective internal controls to prevent assets misappropriations, fraudulent financial statements reporting and general financial frauds. The internal controls assist the management of an organization through preventive and detective controls. The internal controls contribute in accurate financial statements preparations, conclusive and error free financial records, fraud detection, prevention of unlawful acts and misappropriations, successful and efficient business operations, and assets’ conservations .

The New HHS Kidney Innovation Accelerator: When Innovation Stalls, HHS Says Floor it!

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes

The Dutch aid and trade policy: Policy discourses versus development practices in the Kenyan water and sanitation sector

Recent aid and trade policies reveal a ‘paradigm shift’ in which traditional donors have moved away from a focus on poverty alleviation and returned to an approach firmly aimed at economic growth. In prioritising economic growth in their development agenda, donors encourage the private sector as an active partner in development. Dutch development aid is exemplary in following this international trend. By examining development projects financed by Dutch development aid in the Kenyan water supply and sanitation sector, this article analyses to what extent these projects achieve the policy objectives of increasing private sector involvement and investment in development projects. This analysis reveals that both private sector involvement and investment do not materialise in practice. Instead the policy impacts the landscape of non-profit development organisations by pushing them to adopt and incorporate behaviour and practices usually associated with the private sector or to pursue projects targeting the private sector. Rather than leading to increased private sector involvement, the policy thus stimulates a hybridisation of development organisations in which the boundaries between non-profit organisations and private sector companies become increasingly blurred. This process of hybridisation is supported by the Dutch Government as it needs these hybrid organisations to claim success of its aid and trade policy. What results is a rather paradoxical situation where hybrid non-profit organisations are needed to claim success for a policy fostering private sector involvement.

Broad online learning EdTech and USA universities: symbiotic relationships in a post-MOOC world

ABSTRACTFrom 2012 USA universities entered new partnerships with private sector companies including Silicon Valley start-up Coursera. Coursera spearheads a new broad online learning segment of the fast growing global ‘educational technology’ (EdTech) sector. They offered free ‘massive open online courses’ (MOOCs) for global, universal learner audiences. Since 2015 several USA universities and Coursera expanded into ‘post-MOOC’, paid, accredited online modules and full degrees. We frame these post-MOOC developments as shaped by dynamic EdTech/university relationships and argue universities have been actively, and willingly, re-shaping higher education with EdTech; they are not passive victims of a potentially disruptive global ‘MOOC phenomenon’. Our argument builds on interviews at six highly committed USA universities and at Coursera. These reveal rationales for post-MOOC developments related to: actions and attitudes of university actors; university resources; differing teaching subject areas; and exclusivity and longevity in relationships. We suggest that post-MOOC EdTech/university relationships are symbiotic, with three possible variants: commensal (neutral); mutualistic (positive); and parasitic (negative). We finally question whether current relationships may yet change from largely mutualistic to parasitic, given the apparent ambitions of Coursera and the wider global EdTech sector.

The impact of ethical leadership on member s creativity and career success: the mediating role of leader-member exchange

Purpose- The aim of this study is to investigate possible direct and indirect effects (through leader-member exchange-LMX) of member’s ethical leadership perception on their career success and individual creativity. Methodology- Survey method was used to test the hypothesized effects in the proposed model. A total of 212 employees from private sector companies in a province of Turkey participated in the survey. Survey results were analysed by structural equation modelling. Findings- The results show that ethical leadership affects LMX positively and in turn LMX has a positive and significant impact on creativity. Thus, ethical leadership was found to have only indirect effect on creativity through LMX. On the other hand, ethical leadership was found to have a positive and statistically significant direct effect on career success. Conclusion - Working with an ethical leader brings close interaction between employee and the leader, fosters employee’s loyalty to the leader and commitment to the organizational tasks beyond formal requirements. In turn, high leader-member exchange leads to an increase in employee’s creativity. Moreover, if employees believe that their leader adopts ethical beliefs and performs ethically, they would be satisfied with their improvement in achieving career goals regarding promotion, salary and work success regardless of the quality of their relationship with the leader.

A Study on Corporate Governance in Indian Railway PSUs

Corporate governance has assumed great importance in recent times. Corporates have realised that it is not possible to achieve sustained growth without adherence to corporate governance norms at least partially. CG is the surest way of preventing corporate frauds and misrepresentations. Based on recommendations of various committees, the Indian Govt. has prescribed CG norms both for public and large private sector companies. The present study seeks to ascertain extent of adherence to CG norms in large Indian Railway Public sector companies. It is found that though there is commitment to adhere to these norms, yet these firms have still to go a long way, there is insufficient adherence to norms of Independent directors on the board, etc.