110 research outputs found
Strategic human resources management/ Edit.: Jonathan H. Westover
No full textviii, p. 218: ill.: tab.; 28 c
Strategic human resources management/ Edit.: Jonathan H. Westover
No full textviii, p. 218: ill.: tab.; 28 c
Stakeholders' perspectives on effectiveness
No full textThe microfinance industry in Vietnam, particularly those sponsored by non-government organisations (NGOs), has experienced rapid expansion in recent years. Yet in spite of this growth, an analysis of their effectiveness has been lacking. In a bid to help address this shortcoming, this paper reports on a subset of data that was obtained during a survey and interview process that incorporated various stakeholders including financial donors, NGO-sponsored microfinance institutions (NMPs), village leaders and NMP members and nonmembers. Perceptions of NMPs effectiveness are discussed from the standpoint of various stakeholders. NMPs are found to be at a critical juncture. While their activities are widely perceived to contribute to poverty alleviation, their future viability is clouded by donor requirements that they become financially self-sufficient and at the same time certain government policies are making achieving this goal difficult
Microfinance in Vietnam
No full textA large amount of donor money and government money is spent on microfinance programs in developing countries around the world. However, there is very little quantitative research available on the relative efficiency of these programs. This research investigates the efficiency of the microfinance industry in Vietnam through a survey of 46 schemes in the north and the central regions. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods are used to assess the technical efficiency and scale efficiency of the microfinance schemes. Given the lack of previous studies in this industry, we review the various approaches to variable selection used in the financial institutions literature and amend the socalled “production” approach to accommodate the poverty reduction focus of microfinance. The empirical results reveal that the average technical efficiency scores of schemes surveyed is 80%. A second stage regression analysis is used to assess the impact of a variety of environmental variables upon the efficiency of the schemes. The age and the location of the scheme are found to have a significant influence upon efficiency
Case Study 4: Education Doctoral Student - "An Exploratory Study of Online Social Networking within a Doctorate of Education Program"
No full textIntroduction\ud
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The professional doctorate is specifically designed for professionals investigating real-world problems and relevant issues for a profession, industry, and/or the community. The focus is scholarly research into professional practices. The research programme bridges academia and the professions, and offers doctoral candidates the opportunity to investigate issues relevant to their own practices and to apply these understandings to their professional contexts. The study on which this article is based sought to track the scholarly skill development of a cohort of professional doctoral students who commenced the course in January 2008 at an Australian university. Because they hold positions of responsibility and are time-poor, many doctoral students have difficulty transitioning from professional practitioner to researcher and scholar. The struggle many experience is in the development of a theoretical or conceptual standpoint for argumentation (Lesham, 2007; Weese et al., 1999). It was thought that the use of a scaffolded learning environment that drew upon a blended learning approach incorporating face to face intensive blocks and collaborative knowledge-building tools such as wikis would provide a data source for understanding the development of scholarly skills. Wikis, weblogs and similar social networking software have the potential to support communities to share, learn, create and collaborate.\ud
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The development of a wiki page by each candidate in the 2008 cohort was encouraged to provide the participants and the teaching team members with textual indicators of progress. Learning tasks were scaffolded with the expectation that the candidates would complete these tasks via the wikis. The expectation was that cohort members would comment on each other’s work, together with the supervisor and/or teaching team member who was allocated to each candidate. The supervisor is responsible for supervising the candidate’s work through to submission of the thesis for examination and the teaching team member provides support to both the supervisor and the candidate through to confirmation.\ud
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This paper reports on the learning journey of a cohort of doctoral students during the first seven months of their professional doctoral programme to determine if there had been any qualitative shifts in understandings, expectations and perceptions regarding their developing knowledge and skills. The paper is grounded in the literature pertaining to doctoral studies and examines the structure of the professional doctoral programme. Following this is a discussion of the qualitative study that helped to unearth key themes regarding the participants’ learning journey
The impact of supervisory status on job satisfaction for hospitality and non-hospitality workers/ Maureen Snow Andrade, Doug Miller and Jonathan H. Westover
No full textJob satisfaction contributes to organizational success. Workers in supervisory positions have stressful responsibilities and long working hours; however, they may also enjoy greater autonomy, higher salaries, and other advantages than non-supervisors. Hospitality workers, in particular, are subject to conditions that contribute to work-life conflict. This study compares job satisfaction for hospitality industry supervisors and non-supervisors as well as supervisors and non-supervisors in all occupations. Findings indicate that hotel industry supervisors are more satisfied than non-supervisors with some exceptions within specific hospitality occupations. Both hospitality supervisors and non-supervisors are less satisfied than their counterparts in all occupations
Leading Change in Organisations: A Focus on Quality Management
No full textIn contemporary knowledge driven economies, local organisations must aim to be competitive, in part, through ensuring the delivery of high quality in their goods and services. Changes in the social environment where customers are more mature and better informed have forced these organisations to consider alternatives to traditional methods of running their business. Consequently, Total Quality Management (TQM) has attracted the attention of many organisations as a potential system to improving their competitiveness and efficiency. Implementation of a TQM system necessitates transformation away from conventional ways of deliver- ing business objectives by changing the way in which people deal with internal or external work processes. TQM looks at change within the organisation as an inevitable process which should be managed flawlessly. Unfortunately, TQM initiatives often fail when implementation begins, with the proportion of successes in TQM implementation only within the range of 20 to 35 per cent, according to Brown (1992 cited in Redman & Grieves 1999). The reasons for failure were associated with the problem of sustainability of leadership and purpose, absence of strategic communications and teamwork for quality improvement and the lack of total commitment to the TQM philosophy and practice. These were attributed to poor under- standing of the TQM philosophy by senior management and a lack of employee opportunities to relate training activities with company vision. This paper thus evaluates the dynamics of organisation change with a view to understanding causes of success and failure. The research aims to review earlier studies and, through the results of those studies, analyse the role TQM plays in organisational change management
The Case for Social Enterprise
No full textThe bottom of the pyramid (BoP) approach popularised Prahalad (2004) as well as other writers such as Hart (2005) and London (2007), calls for the engagement of business with the bottom segment of the global income pyramid, and has attracted considerable attention and debate. The BoP lens is applied chiefly to communities experiencing ‘extreme poverty’ in low income countries with little reference to the growing number of people living in ‘relative poverty’ in high income countries. For the purpose of stimulating academic debate this paper seeks to explore the role of the so-called fourth sector, a domain for hybrid business ventures of social (and, in the case of this paper, Indigenous) entrepreneurs, at what we refer to as ‘the bottom at the top of the income pyramid’ in Australia. Using examples of Indigenous and social entrepreneurship within disadvantaged communities, we seek to highlight the scope for fourth sector enterprises at the lower end of the income spectrum within developed countries. It is suggested that the business models found within the fourth sector offer promising, alternative approaches for addressing the economic as well as social and cultural needs of those living on the fringes of today’s increasingly fragmented high-income societies
An Islamic Perspective on Economic and Social Justice
No full textOne need only turn on the news or briefly peruse the daily headlines to see countless examples and evidences of ethical failures in all aspects of our daily lives. The impacts of these ethical missteps can be far reaching, often with everyone in society paying the price in some way. Furthermore, with an increasingly interconnected and complex globalized world, we have communication technologies that allow for the instant sharing of information, along with a citizenry hungry to consume the next big scandal. Once more, increasingly complex technological integration of previously isolated systems has created ever more complex systems that are increasingly sensitive to the surrounding environment. This can often result in a chain reaction effect of one seemingly small and isolated ethical blunder that can then have wide-ranging societal impacts
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