International Journal of Business and General Management

6

Authors: JITHIN MATHEW GEORGE & DAVE HINKES

The key processes (motivational, cognitive and social) are influenced by the type of leadership process that emerges within self-managed teams in an organization. Exploring the relationship between organizational leadership styles applied to self-managed teams (SMTs) and its effectiveness, educators and industry can better understand the type of leadership roles necessary for achieving a highly effective team. New approaches are required to deal with the increasing interdependence, complexity, and uncertainty in the environments of these organizations. Utilizing self-organizing teams will also require a complete shift from existing processes that impact employee motivation, compensation and evaluation. SMTs have the autonomy to make important decisions concerning their team processes. They present perhaps the most visible modification to the traditional bureaucratic work organization. Through implementing self-directed teams, organizations are challenging the hierarchical and functional divisions of the bureaucratic workplace, decentralizing decision-making, and creating and maintaining work units that involve a diverse group of employees. SMTs are praised for bringing about results such as increased productivity, accelerated new product development and process improvements, increased worker participation and decreased hierarchy. Relative to teams that relied on leader emergence, teams that rotated leadership among members had higher levels of voice, cooperation, and performance. Overall, results of the study demonstrate the potential importance of team-design decisions in self-managed teams.

21-28

Authors: A. ASHOK KUMAR, M. POORNASHRI, A. KARUNYA PRIYANKA, G.ARUN & D. GOWRISHANKAR

The main objective of this study is to know customers’ opinion towards the various promotion schemes offered by ICICI Bank at Dharmapuri town in Tamilnadu. Since most of us started using credit cards and its benefits, banks are also very eager in providing offers and to attract more number of customers. This study has been conducted on 320 respondents. Convenience sampling technique which comes under non-probability sampling method was used for the purpose of survey.

37-64

Authors: YU SING ONG

This study examines the prevalence of private commercial schools in Singapore, many of which may not have met the regulatory requirements if strict monitoring actions were to be applied to them. The majority of private commercial schools in Singapore are small and have no proper facilities including libraries, student recreation facilities and computer labs. While over 600 schools have been deregistered since 2009, either voluntarily or involuntarily, following the introduction of the Council for Private Education Act which in 2009, over 300 schools are still operating. Of these 300 schools, only less than one-fifth can be considered to have proper facilities. This first part of this paper explores the possible reasons why some private commercial schools are still in operation despite not meeting the recommended regulatory guidelines. It suggests stricter actions could be taken by the Council for Private Education to ensure that private commercial schools contribute to the improvement of the overall education landscape in Singapore and makes recommendations where the Council for could increase its vigilance on these schools. It also recommends a framework relating to the monitoring and review of the current audit process of private commercial schools. The second part of the paper explores the failure of private commercial schools to deliver quality education to their students and the reasons students are still choosing the private education route as an option for their studies. Contrary to popular assumptions, private commercial schools in Singapore pose no significant competition to public schools. Teachers at private commercial schools had not receive as much training and development as those in public schools. Profit seemed to be the main driver for these commercial schools.

81-96

Authors: TAKESHI NAKAYAMA

Though Japan boasts the third largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, it still falls far behind other countries in terms of new business entry rates. In order to raise the number of entrepreneurs, we must make evident the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial intention. Yet, these factors are not uniform across all countries. In this paper, we set out to test seven hypotheses based on factors derived from existing research. We then examined the results of surveys that target university students to test the seven hypotheses and were able to find significant differences among university students based on gender and the existence or nonexistence of entrepreneurial parents. We also found that, on the one hand, (1) entrepreneurial self-efficacy, (2) having a specific business idea, and (3) entrepreneurial education has a great impact on entrepreneurial intention. However, on the other hand, the risks associated with business failures and managerial or personal instability was at the root of why certain students were not interested in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the study also suggests that it is more effective to find ways to reduce risks and tailor entrepreneurial education to concrete business idea creation as a means for elevating the number of entrepreneurs.