IMPACT : International Journal of Research in Business Management

1-10

Authors: K.S. RAM& M. MUNIRAMI REDDDY

In this study pilgrims buying products at pilgrim places are examined, besides motives of pilgrims visiting, economic activities at these pilgrim centers, specifically available products at these centers, and existent shops in the pilgrim locations.

17-28

Authors: MADHAVI GUPTA & SUMAN PANT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of gender on decision making determinants in purchase of clothing of middle age Indian consumers. Survey study was conducted on 600 respondents belonging to 40-60 years age group. A questionnaire was designed to collect data by face to face interview. Chi square was calculated to know association between sex and decision making of respondents. The result showed significant difference in fashion awareness and conformity to clothes.

1+8

Authors: NEEL RAI & RAJEEV SIJARIYA

In the emerging scenario of the business and competitive environment of the future, organizations must be flexible, adaptable, and more responsible to market needs. The nature of the paper is conceptual and link with corporate entrepreneurship to service quality which increase service related organizational performance. Corporate Entrepreneurship enhances a company's success by promoting product and process innovations. The empirical evidence provides that Corporate Entrepreneurship improves company performance by increasing the firm’s pro-activeness and willingness to take risks, and by pioneering the development of new products and services. Entrepreneurial orientation with innovation has provided core competitive advantage in an ever-changing market place. An organization’s performance underlying market value will be determined by its ability to innovate. Management should promote a entrepreneurial culture and a climate within their organizations that is encouraging innovation, and pragmatic approach towards service delivery witch lead to better service quality in the customer centric era.

25-30

Authors: A.S.MYTHILI

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is an important novel in many aspects including visions. This is a novel with a definite visionary quality and it depicts a terrifying annihilistic and futuristic vision. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is cast in the form of visionary fiction, which is presented as a women’s dystopia. The novel is a brilliant indictment of the twentieth century life as a whole in a totalitarian state. The Handmaid’s Tale projects a grim vision of the plight of women in the foreseeable future, a vision which broadens almost into an apocalyptic one. The paper attempts to reflect the vision of Atwood in the socio-cultural and socio-political condition of the Gilead period, which exhibits the conflicts and tensions, fear of uncertainty, violence and insecurity among the people.

1-6

Authors: HIMANI AGARWAL & R.K SURI

The efforts would be an how MOOCs can be a disruptive strategy for the institutes of higher education and therefore why such institute should do planning to adopt MOOCs in a new business model and what necessary could be the challenges and opportunities for the faculty members working in the area of higher education and why it has become important to understand about MOOCs would be answered by highlighting the motivation for MOOCs, MOOCs can be adopted for any level of education but this paper try to emphasize on what MOOCs can contribute for higher education

19-32

Authors: XIAO ZHOU

2015 became a significant landmark for new media industry development globally, especially in China. Tencent has become the China's largest media platform, just as that Facebook has become the first big user entry of American news media. We need change our way to think about and use those social media platform. First of all, we need understand the evolution of our economy system brought by new media. This article uses the SCP (structure - conduct - performance) model to analyze the cross overlap areas between China's top 100 internet enterprises and China's capital markets. And author creates a 4×4 matrix tool with 16 interactive communication modes to analyzes the changing path of user preference on digital social platform from C2C to S2S mode as its internal logic. In conclusion, this article finds three important changes of China's new media industry and proposes some systematic, reasonable and feasible management strategy: First change is the comprehensive platform developing tendency. Second change is the growing expanding investment merger accelerates the cross-shareholdings and strategic cooperation between platform type enterprises, and help the small micro content enterprises creating a large "long tail"; Third one is imperative and destined internationalization, which helping China's manufacturing industry to upgrade and to meet the increasing demand of Chinese consumers

37-46

Authors: OGBAN, MICHAEL E & AKUJURU, VICTOR A

The environmental condition that brings about reduction in the value and marketability of property and sometimes those adjacent it is known as stigmatization. It could also be considered as diminution of value associated with increased environmental risk and Residential properties located in close proximity to dump sites are mostly affected. This paper studies the impact of stigma on the value of residential properties located adjacent to a waste dump by reviewing relevant literature and surveying Estate Surveyors and Valuers and property occupants near the Rumuolumeni dump site in Obio/Akpor local Government area of River state. Data were obtained from the respondents and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the results showed that properties in close proximity to waste dump site suffer a diminution in value due to the impact of the dump and recommend amongst other things the need for government to construct a well engineered sanitary landfill to reduce or possibly eliminate health and environmental risk associated with waste dumps.

55-62

Authors: T. SRINIVASAN & M. MOHAMED ISMAIL

Quality of work life indicates a proper balance both in work and personal life which also ensures the organizational productivity and employee’s job satisfaction. It is one of the major parts for the employees’ motivation in an organisation. It may reflect the working conditions and employees’ mind set to accept the prevailing conditions in the organisation. The intervention in the quality of work life makes full use of a worker’s potential, it ensures greater participation and involvement of workers, and it can make work more easy, quality improvement and increasing the efficiency. In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the quality of work life and the level of acceptance in public and private sector bank employees in Madurai district. This research attempts to correlate the nine dimensions of quality of work life and demographic variables of employees in both the public and private sector banks in Madurai district. The opinion was collected from 600 employees, and a detailed analysis is made to arrive at the conclusion.

1-12

Authors: PETER KARUME MUREITHI, NEMWEL N. BOSIRE & GEORGE KARANJA

Economic Stimulus refers to the use of monetary policy to stimulate the economy. Various projects were identified for implementation under the ESP initiative various sectors of the economy across the country including education, public health, local government, industrialization and provincial administration offices. Studies indicate that implementation of ESP initiatives in Kenya has been very low. The current study therefore attempted to establish the factors influencing effective implementation of ESP projects in Olkalou Constituency, Kenya. The study employed a descriptive design using quantitative approaches. The target population was all 130 project beneficiaries, management committees and constituency planning and development officers in all ESP projects. The study used closed ended questionnaires to collect data. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 23 was used to analyze the data and the results obtained was presented using tables. The R2 value obtained of 0.6388 implies that 63.88% of the variations in the effective implementation of ESP projects can be explained by the variations in independent variables. This therefore means that other factors not studied in this study contribute 36.12% of effective implementation of ESP projects. It was also established that project financing had the greatest influence on effective implementation of ESP projects while management skills had the least influence on effective implementation of ESP projects. The study recommends that stakeholders should enhance usage of funds, that the funds provided should be disbursed on time and that there should be effective monitoring and evaluation of fund utilization in order to enhance effective implementation of ESP projects

25-34

Authors: JABIULLA & BASAVARAJ C.S

Transfer Pricing plays an important role in international trade and commerce, the growth in number and size of MNCs has brought a number of opportunities, a part from faster economic development. At the same time, the MNCs have also brought a number of problems to face. The scope of MNCs has widened in recent years so much that now more than 60% of the international transactions of the globe belong to MNCs. This has constrained the governments to keep in place proper mechanism to plug the leakage of tax revenue as a result of manipulative pricing policies adopted by these related parties (MNCs). The study shows that the business and industry in India is comfortable about the specific and general issues studied in the paper. However, as regards to audit procedure, time period of 8 years to maintain documents and cooperation of Transfer Pricing authorities while dealing with assessees there is negative response and hence, these issues need thorough investigation and necessary modification in the structural aspects of the provisions under study. If this suggestion is implemented the Indian Transfer Pricing provisions positively contribute to the growth of the international trade

45-54

Authors: LILLIAN N. BULLAH & JOSPHAT KWASIRA

Employee performance is a very important facet of modern day human resources management. Employers adopt strategic human resource strategies to continuously enhance their employees’ performance. Employers have adopted human resources policies and practices with an aim of improving their employees’ performance. However, despite such policies and practices, it remains unclear why employee performance has been perennially low. Therefore, the study assessed the influence of human resources strategies on employee performance at KRA offices in Nakuru with a view of increasing employee productivity. The study employed a descriptive research design. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample. Data was collected using questionnaires which were administered by the researcher at KRA offices in Nakuru. Data analysis was done with the aid of SPSS. Hypotheses were tested using the p-value approach at 95% level of confidence and the results were presented in tables. The coefficient of correlation for the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable is 0.792, which shows a strong positive correlation. The value of R-square of 0.627 implies that 62.7 % of the variation in employee performance at KRA is explained by the independent variables. The study established that quality training strategies had the most influence on employee performance while bonus payment strategies had the least influence.

71-82

Authors: PINRATTANANONT R, LERTWORAPRACHAYA Y & LERTWONGSATIEN C

This study aims to investigate the relationship among strategic IT alignment, IS capabilities, IT support for core competencies, and organization performance. Samples are 161 organizations which are selected through the Stratified random sampling method from the name list of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Survey research with structured questionnaire and recommendation form are used as the instruments in collecting data. The structural equation modeling (SEM) is assigned to test hypothesis with PLS (Partial Least Square). The measurement model uses factor analysis with EFA to explore the set of variables, and uses CFA to purify each construct and measurement model with PLS. Composite reliability is applied to ensure reliability by examining convergence and discriminant validity of the constructs. The results assert strongly support on our research model that strategic IT alignment and IS capabilities positively influence IT support for core competencies. Usage IT support its core competencies positively influence the organization performance. Finally, it confirms that the integrated model between strategic IT alignment and IS capabilities positively affect on the organization performance through IT support for core competencies as the strong mediator of the model.

91-96

Authors: NIDHI & F. L. SHARMA

IPM refers to an ecological approach in pest management in which all available necessary techniques are consolidated in a unified programme, so that pest population can be managed in such a manner that economic damage is avoided and adverse side effects are minimized. The goal of IPM is to control population of the pest below level that result in economic damage. Ideally, this is achieved through the integration of all suitable control techniques in a compatible manner. The present study was conducted in Badgaon and Girwa tehsils of Udaipur district of Rajasthan. Four villages from each selected tehsil were taken and 12 respondents were selected randomly from each selected village for the study. Data were collected through prestructured interview schedule. The study revealed that out of total respondents 39.58 per cent respondents were from the middle age group of 35 to 44 years and the study clearly also showed that 46.87 per cent respondents of the total sample were educated up to primary level.

1-36

Authors: HALA EL ZAHED

The image represents a message transmitted of one individual to another. It can be about gender, minorities or ethnic groups or countries. Image or reputation describes the way in which a country and its policies may be perceived by others. Images are powerful political statements… they may be transmitted by the use of words. ( ) “The image of a person needs to be recognized as a positive one. So are countries which are made up of people and are run by political elites. Historically, political leaders have recognized that images matter.”( ) This study endeavors to discuss how Western press portrays the Egyptian Revolution and accordingly affect policy-making. Imperatively, the majority of the people have no chance to personally see what a foreign country is like but they see images of these countries in the media. Mass media have always been responsible for image building and formulating public opinion. Particularly, newspapers have constantly been labeled for their authenticity and; hence, they affect people’s attitudes concerning a country’s local and international affairs. Newspapers do not only transmit information, but they have also become a tool directing people and creating their ideological, political and social dispositions. Newspapers play a pertinent role in shaping, formulating and impacting public opinion and, consequently, a country’s decision-makers’ policies

43-48

Authors: JAMES BAIRD, CAHI, FACHE

We are living in an era with some of the worst leaders in the history of business in the United States. During challenging economic times this leads to: greed, hubris, unethical behavior, poor relationship development, weak leadership styles, inadequate employee engagement and empowerment, as well as despicable behavior and treatment of employees. This will then lead to decreased productivity and eventually disaster. The impetus inevitably falls on the leader to figure out how to manage successfully amidst chaos. This paper explores ways to accomplish this through challenging times without being ruthless or demeaning.

55-66

Authors: R. KRISHNAKUMAR

A temporary worker is a person with an organization who is on a third-party (staffing company) payroll. A well-accepted norm in global companies, many large Indian organizations are now hiring a part of their workforce from employee leasing firms. The reason is not too difficult to guess, as organizations focus on their core business strengths in a highly competitive environment, the non-core functions are outsourced. The manpower for the latter is provided by the employee leasing company. The contracts can range from three to six months, and there are no hassles normally associated with recruiting and retaining people. The project report analyses the potential of the temporary staffing in India and also provides an insight into the Indian Staffing industry overview. India being second highest populated country in the world having over 1.25 billion population has to deal with the employment issues and meanwhile this huge human resource can be a boon to India’s dreams of being an economic superpower. This study undertaken at Randstad India, has analyzed the real challenges and opportunities for the company to grow and be competitive. Professional staffing, recruitment process and flexi staffing trends are still in infancy stage in India. But now these concepts are being welcomed by many industries as they have started to realize the importance of professional staffing needs. There are good signs of manufacturing sector growth so it is the right time for professional HR solution providers to hit this hot rod and make the most out of it. There is lot of challenge ahead for staffing companies in India. In this regard the report has analyzed the client satisfaction level for Randstad India (North Karnataka region), which will provide deeper insights into the practical challenges and issues during the staffing contracts. Also the report has information on what clients expect from staffing companies and efforts have been done to address these challenges by giving recommendations and new initiatives