Issue #2 (Volume 14 2016)

Non-communicable diseases are the most frequent causes of death in most countries in the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, South-East Asia, and the Western Pacific. In the African Region, there are still more deaths from infectious diseases than NCDs. WHO projections show that NCDs will be responsible for a significantly increased total number of deaths in the next decade (WHO, 2014). In this context, the market of illness insurance is strongly being developed, allowing policyholders to reduce the financial impact of diseases. Indeed, critical illness insurance typically provides a payment of a lump sum in the event of the person insured suffering a condition covered under the policy. In other words, the insured receives a fixed sum on the diagnosis of a specified list of critical illnesses. The contract terms may also be structured to pay out regular income cash-flows on the policyholder. In general, since the policy face amount has to be paid on diagnosis, the incidence rates or diagnosis rates have to be accurately estimated. The research is here developed around the following focal and original points: • the estimation of the diagnosis rates by means of an analysis by cause of death for obtaining cause-specific diagnosis rates: in particular, the author modelі the probability of death by cause as a proxy of the estimate of the diagnosis rates; • the cause-specific death rates are modelled by a stratified stochastic model for avoiding the durable problem in literature of the dependence among different causes of death; • a fair valuation framework is adopted for pricing a specific product of critical illness insurance. The analysis is completed by empirical findings

Huge monetary investments are made towards private-public partnerships (PPPs) in an effort to develop South Africa. These PPPs are based on emulations from international benchmarks. Many developed countries benefit from skillful use of PPPs. The paper is based on concerns that, in South Africa, many PPP projects do not reach finalization. Others only reach finalization from additional funding after exhausting initial invested funds. Some causes of barriers of success of these PPPs are reported. Respondents are 39 past PPP participants. A self-administered unstructured questionnaire was used to collect qualitative data. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the data. The results show negligence and wrong deployment as main causes of the failures in which the government side is a grave wrongdoer. Recommendations found to be necessary for improving PPP performance are suggested

The main objective of this research study is to investigate the extent to which business intelligence, competitive intelligence and marketing intelligence are used within the mining industry. Business intelligence, competitive intelligence and marketing intelligence are the management tools used to mine information to produce up-to-date intelligence and knowledge for operative and strategic decision making.
A structured questionnaire is used for the study. A total of 300 mines are randomly selected from a research population of mining organizations in South Africa, Africa and globally. The respondents are all part of senior management. A response rate of 64% is achieved. The results indicat that more than half of the respondents do not have real-time intelligence and proper data mining tools to identify patterns and relationships within a data warehouse. Although a large proportion agrees that their organizations have systematic ways of gathering these different types of intelligence and use them for strategic decision making, there is a significant proportion that did not have any systems.
Statistically and practically significant positive relationships with a large effect are found among the dimensions of business intelligence, marketing intelligence, competitive intelligence and perceived business performance

Empirical results state that large number of Eastern Asia managers in Banten province lack of technology mastery. It causes low employees productivity. The purpose of this study is to search for explanation of causality among variables to assess research hypotheses. Population used in this study is employees in an organization led by foreign managers from Eastern Asia. Purposive sampling technique is used to decide samples. Criteria to determine samples are: 1) operating in Banten province; 2) employing foreign workers, and 3) having at least 300 workers. There are 200 distributed questionnaires in this study, and 138 manageable questionnaires are left.
Main results from this study state that technology transfer motive influences the strength of relationship, local employee personal capacity and technology mastery. Also, it impacts the strength of relationship and local employee personal capacity in the enhancement of employees productivity, yet, technology mastery cannot improve employee productivity. It is in line with the results by Argote and Ingram (2000), yet, it contradicts with Nonaka’s study (1994) which states that technology competence influences productivity

High failure rate of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has been partly attributed to the use of inappropriate performance measures. This study seeks to determine the types of performance measures employed by SMEs, purpose for which performance measures are used, perceived effectiveness of performance measures used and factors that may inhibit SMEs from using both financial and non-financial performance measures.
Data are collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of this study reveal that most of the sampled SMEs measure their performance using both financial and non-financial performance measures, albeit financial performance measures are used more frequently than the non-financial ones. Of the financial performance measures, the most popular ones are sales growth, cash flows, operating income and net profit margin. The most popular non-financial measures are customer focused. These include response time, customers’ satisfaction, percentage of repeat customers and customers’ complaints.
The findings also reveal that performance measurement reports are used by the sampled SMEs mostly for monitoring the business, gauging the performance of the business, improving business processes, identifying problems and optimizing the use of resources. The findings further reveal that the performance measures used are perceived to be effective but that the lack of awareness, qualified personnel, top management support, required resources such as computers, had, to some extent, inhibit SMEs from using the appropriate performance measures.
This study not only fills in the gap in the literature on performance measurement by SMEs, but also provides invaluable insights on the extent to which these entities use different performance measures. These insights could inform future government interventions meant to avert the high failure rates of these entities and also aid SMEs to gauge their performance measurement practices with a view to adopt the best practices or avoid factors that could inhibit them from using these practices

The failure of business entities across the globe has continued to draw the attention of stakeholders of those entities. Due to these problems, different countries issued corporate governance regulations to avoid the repeat of the past. Part of the aims of these CG guides is to increase firm value. In Nigeria, similar guidelines issued for firms are referred to as codes of CG. However, arguments exist between stakeholders on whether those corporate governance mechanisms increase the value of shareholders. Some investment analysts suggest the consideration of governance mechanism before investment, while some argue that CG practices are not necessary for Nigeria. To address this problem, this research empirically examines the effects of female directorship, director compensation and managerial shareholding on price-earnings multiple of Nigerian firms. The research uses data from 100 firms listed in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). The study used the generalized method of moments (GMM) to estimate the regression due to endogeneity problem amongst the variables. The study reveals a significant positive association between female directorship, director compensation, managerial shareholding and price-earnings multiple at 10%, 1% and 10%, respectively. Therefore, it recommends additional females on board, compensation for directors and more managerial share ownership

In this contribution, a concept of the integration of spatial predictive analytics and mathematical programs for spatial decision making – namely, advanced spatial analytics and management – is outlined. In particular, selected methods for spatial predictive analytics are discussed, including spatial econometrics and discrete choice analysis. Then, the integration of spatial predictive models in mathematical programs (prescriptive analytics) for facility location and districting is demonstrated. The paper includes illustrative applications which stem from health care, retail, marketing, logistics, and transportation. Based on the discussion, future research perspectives are developed

Many studies show that industrial clusters have been successfully promoting the progress of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, many governments around the world, including Indonesia, enthusiastically perform comparative studies of cluster policy. Thus, it is important to understand the characteristics of the business of small and medium industries as input in formulating the policy of industrial clusters. Research objectives are focused on the early stages of analysis as to whether the cluster of wood and rattan furniture industry which has existed long enough in Jepara, Central Java, Indonesia, has formed a pattern of awareness among employers in considering the benefits proportionally between cooperation and competition. In various scientific literature reviews, this issue was named by the term coopetition. Thus, the benefits of this research are useful in formulating policy toward strengthening the industrial cluster furniture and rattan towards a more integrative of industrial clusters, and supporting industries involve complex, well integrated backward (backward linkage) and integrated into the front (forward linkage). In the end, it is expected that increasingly mature industrial clusters of wooden furniture and rattan will be transformed into a form of industrial agglomeration and positively impact on strengthening the competitiveness of the furniture industry widely influential in regional and national economy.
The test results show that nearly all of the dimensions of a differentiator (discriminant factor) are significant by influence on differentiating into three patterns of interaction between companies in the cluster of wooden furniture and rattan, while there is only one dimension that is not significant, i.e., the horizontal dimension of cooperation. These results indicate that the industrial cluster of wooden furniture and rattan in Jepara have long formed, where the cycles and patterns of cooperation are factors that could indicate variations in differences concerning perceptions of entrepreneurs in the wood and rattan furniture cluster. Results of the analysis with the approach of the discriminant also show the forming awareness of employers about balancing the important role of competition. It is, as well as cooperation in the industrial cluster wood and rattan furniture from Jepara being already cycle of clusters, characterized by maturity. The cooperation is characterized by bilateral, multilateral, and vertical indicating that the cluster is ready to metamorphose into a form more complicated than an agglomeration. This condition needs to be examined further to see the impact of the maturity cycle of an industrial cluster and more complex patterns of cooperation towards the formation prerequisite agglomeration, and its impact on industrial performance and competitiveness clusters in the aggregate, as well as the economic development of the region

The problem in organizational change projects is that people often resist organizational change. Many change projects in organizations do not reach their goals. The question is why? This paper investigates how prospect theory can be used to explain people’s resistance to organizational change. Prospect theory is based on research from Kahneman and Tversky. If we know why people resist organizational change, we as leaders can do something to promote the change project. The objective of this article is to advise managers and leaders on ways of reducing resistance to organizational change. The authors identify seven propositions that explain how managerial strategies reduce organizational change. They recommend seven measures that may be employed by management to obtain support for projects implementing organizational change

A model to measure the employee engagement was developed by researching historical employee engagement models. These models, consisting of employee engagement constructs and their measuring criteria, have been empirically validated and factorized into seven employee engagement factors. The seven employee engagement factors (of which factor one consists of two sub-factors) were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis to ensure the inclusion of the factors in the validated model to measure employee engagement. The model was also tested for goodness of fit, and the model shows good fit indices with the Comparative Fit Index (0.799), while the good model fit of the secondary fit indices RMSEA (0.078 within a narrow margin of 0.004) and Hoelter (113 at p <= 0.1; 111 at p <= 0.05) also show satisfactory model fit. Management can use the model as diagnostic tool to measure employee engagement and to apply it in managerial decision-making. On the other hand, academics could apply the model to extend their research in employee engagement

The current study aims to predict the optimal amount of independent audit fees based on the factors influencing audit fees. To identify the factors influencing audit fees, the stakeholders of 30 auditing firms, members of the Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants in Tehran selected randomly, were interviewed. Finally, the linear programming model for audit fees and its determinants is defined and sum of squared error is used to solve the function with minimum. Also, given that the data are quantitative and comparative and normally distributed, Pearson’s correlation coefficient is used to test the research hypotheses.
The results show that a positive significant correlation exists between the variables of expected time to perform audit procedures, the number of accounting documents, audit operation risk, complexity of operations, existence of specific rules and regulations governing the activities of the entity