Human being is the biggest social animal on the earth becoming more and more powerful and reaching to the moon, space and playing a key role in the universe, still he is helpless in the hands of uncertainty or risks. Risks may affect any life, property or even a business organization, often risk creates lot of hurdles and wounds the lives of many in society. This question makes us to think how to assist these unfortunate people. The only way to tackle such situation is through insurance. Insurance has been used as a risk mitigating tool by us. This paper aims to reemphasize the usefulness of insurance and how it helps us in managing the risks faced in almost all aspects of our daily life. By referring to the descriptions of risk by several researchers and its historical development, it can be summed that insurance is the backbone to mitigate majority of risk encountered by us.

Banking industry is a backbone of any country’s economy. The crisis in banking sector will consequently cause the whole country’s financial crisis. Due to the nature of banking industry, risk is inherent in its activities and it should be managed with due care. Market discipline theory highlights the important role of information disclosure because investors will be well informed about the performance of the company and able to monitor and discipline the management. Thus, we believe that among the different types of information disclosure, the most significant information disclosure for the banks is related to operational and liquidity risk management. However, the research in this aspect is limited, especially in Malaysian context. The research is to explore the operational and liquidity risk information disclosure practices by Malaysian listed banks. The sample period covers from 2002 to 2011 for 5 listed banks. The findings show that overall, the disclosure on both operational and liquidity risk information disclosure is increasing over the sample period. It is expected that this research will be the interest of the investors, industrial players and regulators because the findings show the disclosure pattern of risk information disclosure. Since this study is an exploratory in nature, we do not observe the determinants which influence on information disclosure. The future research should focus on it.

Insurance is used as one of the risk management tools and it becomes more important in our daily lives due to the complicated business activities. However, the non-Shari‟ah compliant elements such as interest, gambling and uncertainty involved in the insurance make the insurance prohibited from the Islamic perspective. As an alternative, Shari‟ah scholars have introduced takaful (Islamic insurance). The purpose of this paper is to highlight the history, Shari‟ah and operational aspect of takaful. Secondary data is collected from the articles, books and internet resources and then library research is used to get the secondary data. This paper highlights the Shari‟ah background and validity of takaful, its models and management of the takaful risk funds. It is expected that this paper will be the interest of industrial players, consumers, regulators and investors.

Value creation to stakeholders is determined as the main objective of every organization. However, the environmental changes affect to take many risks. Risk affects to achieve organizational performance and stakeholders. Enterprise risk management is different from traditional risk management in order to create challenging opportunity, eliminate failure, and create benefit for all stockholders. Risk management is a part of management control system. Also, organizational performance is come from management control system that associated to contextual factors. From previous studies, organizational culture is identified as a crucial key in contextual factors to the success of enterprise risk management. Unfortunately, to study of the linkage among organizational culture, enterprise risk management, and organizational performance is rare. The purpose of this study is to propose the conceptual framework of organizational culture and enterprise risk management affect to organizational performance in Thailand. The contribution is mainly beneficial for private sectors and government to support organizational culture associated with enterprise risk management. It is also advantage for organizational performance. Moreover, in academic aspect, it can contribute the relationship of organizational culture, enterprise risk management and firm performance.

Under the circumstance of high competition in any business nowadays, it is necessary to assess corporate reputation by stakeholders. The understanding of stakeholders’ requirement is able to force the administrative to make good relationship to both internal and external. This implementation is able to create value of firm namely, reputation and brand loyalty. The purpose of this study was to examine the construct of corporate reputation and effect of corporate reputation to brand loyalty on perceptions of employees and customers of banks in Thailand. The systematic random sampling was taken on 385 employees and 385 customers of banks. The questionnaires were distributed and explained to the respondents by author for better understanding to respond. This study found that employees and customers have different view in factors and perception of reputation to brand loyalty. In side of employees, the construct of reputation are emotional appeal and competence. The reputation on employee’s perception in competence has more effect than emotional appeal. In side of customers, however, the construct of reputation are emotional appeal, quality of product and service, corporate responsibility and performance. The reputation on customer’s perception in emotional appeal has effect on brand loyalty but other factors not significant.

Travel planning process usually take place few months prior to our travel. The main and crucial element in tourism expenditure is accommodation especially for disabled tourists. Disabled tourists need to pay more attention in selecting the accessible accommodation because if they don‟t get a good rest, they do not enjoy the pleasure of their entire travel.
The main aim of this paper is to investigate the level of accessibility in accommodation sector provided in Malaysian tourism especially in Endau-Rompin and Ledang Hills National Parks. This paper does not only focus on disabled tourists, even all categories of tourists, comprising children, teenagers, adults and even the elderly. The methods used in this paper are observation and visual-method. From the study, it is found that all the accommodation provided here do not meet the requirement of people with disabilities as recommended by Tourism Services-Hotel and Other Types of Tourism Accommodation (MS1926:2006) and Code of Practice on Access for Disabled Persons to Public Buildings (MS1184:2002). The main aspects were tested are demographic information of the hotel, accessibility of the hotel, transportation, parking, reception, elevator, hallway, room, bathroom, bar, restaurant and recreation area. From the observation, it is also found that national parks‟ staffs are not aware of the guidelines and the standards provided by the
Malaysian government regarding tourism accommodation. Barriers keep away disabled community from experiencing opportunities in the travel and tourism industry. These barriers can be reduced with further research explaining the significance of providing barrier-free environment in public recreation accommodation.

Plantation sector in Indonesia gives a great contribution to the economy development. This becomes a great opportunity for investors to invest their money in this sector. This study is a quantitative research which aims to investigate the impact of interest rate, inflation rate, and exchange rate of Indonesia Rupiah toward Dollar, as well as GDP on Plantation sector’s stock price index at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) for the year 2008–2012. Analysis data technique used in this research is multiple regression analysis. The data used in this research is derived from the data recorded by Indonesia Stock Exchange, Central Bureau of Statistic, and Bank of Indonesia. The results suggest that only GDP significantly influences the stock price index of plantation sector. The other variables such as interest rate, inflation rate, and exchange rate of Indonesia Rupiah toward Dollar do not give any significant influence to the plantation sector’s stock price index. By analyzing the condition of GDP in Indonesia may help investors in deciding whether it is the right time to invest or not.

Utilization of information technology, media and communication has changed the behavior of human society and civilization globally. The development of information and communication technology has also led the world into a relationship without boundaries (borderless) and causing changes in the social, economic and cultural significant. According to article 4 of Law No. 11 of 2008, the use of technology and electronic information held by the purpose among other; the intellectual life of the nation as part of a world information society progress is so fast. The role of information in an organization is divided into a decision-facilitating role and Influencing a decision (control) role. The population in this study was the operational manager of state bank in the city of Bandung. Quality of management accounting information systems, management accounting information quality, service quality of information systems affect the user satisfaction of information systems and user satisfaction management accounting information system affects the decision-making process by 62%.

As a result of the increasing tendency towards a global economy and the interdependence of countries for goods, growth of international trade and travel, consumers are increasingly confronted with foreign products and services. But some negative attitudes towards foreign products can arise from several factors such as previous war, policy, economy and ecology. Thus, consumer animosity have become important constructs in international marketing research. Despite the importance of attaining consumer behavior, there has been limited study on the relationship between marketing mix and the way firms are organized to achieve consumer behavior and it does not imply the lack of regard to consumer animosity as access to mind of individuals and relational consumer purchase decision constitute a key complement of consumer psychology. This research presently has been focusing more on consumer behavior. This has created a gap in body of knowledge and between the theoretical and practical aspect of managing consumer behavior that is from the perspective of consumer animosity and marketing mix. The objectives of this research were to study the relationships of consumer animosity and marketing mix to perceived product quality, consumer satisfaction and intention to purchase of consumer behavior of Laos consumers effect to Thai products.

Due to uncertain of current economic situation, manufacturers must revise their ways to survive in their business. Manufacturing capability assumes that firms are more effective than their rivals at deploying resources. It is suggested that better performing firms are more likely to address multiple manufacturing capabilities simultaneously. In developing countries, manufacturing capabilities is a new concept. There is lack of awareness on the importance of upstream manufacturing capabilities such as product development and design. This paper provides an analysis on the relationship between knowledge transfer and manufacturing capabilities among local manufacturers in Malaysian Northern Region.

Generally, manufacturing capability is the important factor in running and developing business. Hence, this research is aimed to identifying the relationships of critical factors and make sure the companies can survive in the northern region of Malaysia. Those identified factors are manufacturing practices and manufacturing capabilities. Through the email survey, a total of 89 companies representing various industries had responded. The hypotheses involved were tested using correlation and regression techniques. The results of the study support all the hypotheses. The multiple regression analysis indicates that there are significant relationships among the factors on each criterion to manufacturing capabilities. While hierarchical multiple regression analysis was carried out to test the role of moderating in the relationship between independent variables with dependent variables. The results of the hierarchical multiple regressions indicate that training moderated the relationship between manufacturing practices, knowledge sharing to manufacturing capabilities. It is believed that results of this study will be beneficial for shareholders and directors of companies to apply these manufacturing capabilities.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the integration of resource-based view and dynamic capacity to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The case study of three petroleum industries was selected purposively by considering in resources’ involvement. The semi structured individual depth interview with three supervisors responding in strategic planning and management were employed for gathering data. The findings reveal that to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, the resource and capability identify into four main types such as knowledge management capability, technological capability, innovative capability, and human resource capability. However, dynamic capacity plays moderately role on resource and capability to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Generally, Business faculty of various universities offering integrated learning methods with the application of information, technology, communication and management (ICTM). In fact, the need for the implementation of all those three aspects need to be collaborated and integrated across a variety of subjects studied by students in order to have more interdisciplinary linkages. The purpose of this study is to produce a constructive approach based on teaching and create a more active learning environment of business management knowledge by conducting peer evaluation among businessstudents. The data based on theanalysis method that uses descriptive analysis and explanatory study to compare the measurement of student activity score and the average assessment of student assignments of integrated business experiencein-experimental exploratory model. Sample of this research comes from an experimental class consisting of 36business students in the five subjects as the source of the research analysis; Marketing Management; Business Ethics, Data Management, Business Statistics and Economics by using ANOVA test if the data were normally distributed and the alternative using the Kruskall Wallis test when the data is not normally distributed. Statistical significance of the results is determined by the value of p

In this study, trade unions, economic freedom and its impacts on economic growth in Pakistan is examined by using unit root test with structural break, co integration and causality tests. Empirical findings demonstrate that there is an equilibrium relationship between growth, unionization and economic freedom. Unionization affects economic growth and economic freedom in long run positively and significantly for the case of Pakistan. Causality test results illustrate that there is unidirectional causality among trade unions and industrial output. Economics of freedom cause or affect output (GDP) but in return GDP does not lead to an increase in Economic freedom so this cause does not means that if output is increasing then this will lead to an increase in economics freedom rather we can say that economic freedom lead to an increase in output. Furthermore this economic freedom leads to an increase in investment which finally results in increase in output.

The aims of the study are: First, to study components of the support of government, components of the competitive environments, and components of the success for implementation. Second, to study the relationship among the support of government, competitive environments, and the success for implementation. This study used quantitative method and utilized the questionnaires. Data were collected 338 respondents who are the sole proprietorship e-commerce entrepreneurs. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor and path analyses. The results show that the components of the support of government, the findings revealed that the policy and support of government was focused at the highest priority, followed by laws related to e-commerce, respectively. Components of the competitive environments, the findings revealed that the competitive environments of competitors was focused at the highest priority, followed by bargaining power of customers and bargaining power of suppliers, respectively. Components of the success for implementation, the financial was found the most important components of the success for implementation, followed by learning and growth, customers and internal process, respectively. The relationship show that the support of government is associated with the success of implementation, and the competitive environments were associated with the success of implementation. The support of government were associated with the success of implementation at the highest priority followed by the competitive environments..

Manufacturing is one of the main sectors that contribute significantly to the development of national economy and hence the efficiency of manufacturing companies gains significance. From an economics perspective, efficiency is used to measure a company’s performance. In this research work, effort has been made to measure the technical efficiency of the listed manufacturing companies in Nairobi stock market using DEA technique as it takes into account the multiple inputs and outputs. Data of listed manufacturing companies were gathered from their annual reports and financial statements. DEA model is applied using both the Constant Returns to Scale (CCR) and Variable Returns to Scale (BCC) models. The correlation between inputs and efficiency performance was assessed by regression analysis. The results under CRS technology show that only two manufacturing companies namely Vipigo and Williamson were considered technically efficient while the overall average technical efficiency varies from 0.6916 to 0.92. The inputs have a significant and positive relationship with companies’ technical efficiency in Kenya.

Based on the extent of control and internal external tendencies of the organisation, various values are created. The highlighted value become dominant in the whole organisation and it can be combined with management activities in knowledge chin model and reinforce them. Despite the importance of values, there is no theoretical model that can expound their critical role on the management activities of the organisation. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that can use the dominant organizational values status and its contributing or facilitating factors of management activities of knowledge chain. This model has been developed based on the content analysis literature review and integrates management activities of knowledge chain and competing value models. This model will enrich the knowledge chain activities literature, especially on KM activities, while being the basis for other researchers and authors to develop the organizational values as well as knowledge management activities.

The need of social innovation keeps increasing by time. Social innovation is expected to give some ideas in the activity, thus the activity could bring creative ideas and produce innovative activities that meet a social goals. The aims of this paper are to know how the social innovation is conducted and what kind of factors which influenced in the process of generating the idea. This paper will discuss about the model in generating social innovation that could give a contribution to knowledge. The paper is based on case study in Agritektur community in Indonesia. Agritektur community develops idea related to agricultural product, where young generations are expected to know and love green environment. At the end how they develop their creative idea into innovative products that utilized as agribusiness. This paper will describe and map the social activities that produce social innovation on Agritektur community. There are several factors that influence the activities in social innovation which can be recognized or even well accepted by the society. Ultimately this research could deliver a model which is able to formulate the social innovation activities. This paper will provide the model of generating social innovation starts from the idea, and ends in how the social innovation is conducted. Hopefully this paper could provide scientific model for a new research program.

The rapidly changing in the world has make everything should be adapt into new condition including business in Indonesia. In Indonesia, part-time worker is less favourable to be employed than full-time worker although in other countries part-time worker has significant contribution to economic growth. In addition, students are potential to be employed as part-time worker and can support entrepreneurship development in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Unfortunately, there are few chances for them to access part-time in many companies. The aim of this study is to explore possibility in hiring student as the part-time worker in order to enhance small and medium enterprises in Indonesia. In many previous literatures, it had been established that the highest sector in employing student as part-time worker is public service sector especially on food retail sector. The object study of this research are companies in food industry in Indonesia and college student who works in food industry. Data for this research is obtained by conducting interview and secondary data. The findings of this research are several interesting comment between employer and employee on their agreement especially in working time and contract. The importance of this research is to change stakeholders’ mind sets to start developing part time worker in Indonesia in order to support economic growth particularly for Small and Medium Enterprise. In conclusion, management has admit it if student is potential part time worker because they have flexibility and extra profitability in order to help the company to growth.

This research purposes to examine the relationship between the youth consumers shopping style (perfectionism, brand-consciousness, impulsiveness, confusion by over choice, and habitual consumption) with their attitude toward the environmentally-friendly food products in Thailand whereas they are live in different society and geographic. The result found that young consumers who have often eaten the environmentally -friendly food products are different. Young consumers, who live in the land fulfil l of quality and quantity of these products such as Chiang Mai province, have perfectionism, brand-consciousness, and habitual consumption shopping style differentiate from Songkhla province. On the other hand, young consumers who never eaten the environmentally -friendly food products are similarly in each kind of shopping style. Furthermore, shopping style of young consumers, who have eaten these products, associated with attitude toward the environmentally friendly food products.

This study analyses the current decision variables of the decision-making process by multinational organisations when selecting their offshore locations as extended operations. The study proposes an additional dimension to the current decision model used by multinational organisations by explicitly addressing the knowledge-sharing requirements of the parent company as a relevant concept in today‟s knowledge-based societies. The theoretical foundation of the study is based on recent studies in inter-organisational knowledge sharing (IO-KS) as well as the recent findings in international business studies in offshoring. The study asserts that among other things, the knowledge-sharing requirements of multinational companies need to be explicitly addressed when selecting an offshore location as a subsidiary, and proposes a decision model for multinational organizations when selecting an offshore location. The organization under study is a South East Asian multinational organization which is both a parent organization, and at the same time, a subsidiary of another organization.

This study examines the effect of chronic stress on learning orientation. In particular the study focuses on employees (N=158) and university students (N=123) in the Kingdom of Thailand. Due in part to the long-lasting world-wide recession, the American Psychological Association has found that there has been a sharp spike in individual chronic stress levels over the past five years. It is well known that high stress impairs one’s ability to learn, and thus reduces motivation. However, the results of this study show that Thais may be unique as chronic stress was not found to significantly impact learning orientation. Thais have previously been given the title of “the master’s of relaxation” and typically adapt to change with an easy-going attitude. The findings suggest that adopting characteristics of Thai culture would help to negate the impact of stress on learning orientation.

Indonesian manufacturing companies recognize the importance of technological innovation to improve their competitiveness in the global competition. They need a measurement tool, to assess and improve their innovativeness, which is suitable for Indonesian context. The study focuses on manufacturing sector due to its substantial contribution of Indonesian economy and its big challenges. A measurement model, as a function of the activities in the technological innovation process and the management of the innovation, and its measurement tool to assess the innovativeness of a company have been developed using cases in four companies in Pharmaceutical and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Industry. Consequently, the measurement tool is expected to help Indonesia’s manufacturing companies to recognize their state of innovativeness and eventually improve it. This paper describes the pilot testing of the measurement tool, using questionnaires sent to manufacturing companies in Indonesia, which classifies company’s innovativeness into CLAS-category: Creative, Lucky, Automatic, and Superb. The measurement tool has predicted that most of companies in Pharmaceutical and ICT Industry are classified in Superb-category. It has also predicted the innovativeness categories of other companies reasonably well.

Nowadays, a lot of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) become more exist in Indonesia, but some enterprises existence cannot stand for a long time. One of the reasons comes from employee condition which has role in developing enterprise. Human capital index of the enterprise can be a tool to measure the employee condition in the enterprise so we can know which part of enterprise that should be fixed. This study is going investigate two small and medium enterprises (SMEs) human capital index that influencing the enterprise development by using qualitative method by doing semi-structured interview. From this study, we find that higher educational background, ability to keep enterprise health and well, controlled employee management, and supported infrastructure of human capital index give positive impacts to enterprise development making of employee gives positive effect to the enterprise development. The purpose of this study is to give information about the impact of certain human capital index in SMEs to enterprise development. The contribution of this study is to give description to practitioners and stakeholders about the human capital index situation that usually happen in SMEs so that they can make some preparation and improvement to develop their SMEs.

The aim of this research is to define the development of women leaders as well as the impact of women leadership style towards the goals of the company under their supervision. The study will mainly observe of how women leaders both empower themselves and their subordinate in several companies in Indonesia. In this research, the main questions that will be defined are how women leader struggle for their position and how they empower subordinates towards the company’s strategic goals. Further variable that will be reviewed also includes the organizational performances under their management. Proven achievements mentioned may be used as a measurement whether these leaders have had shown efficacy leadership styles towards the initial target of the company. It may also illustrate how well employees affected by the leadership style in accordance with their work performances. The method used in this paper is literature studies. This is a conceptual paper built from literature review of women leadership. This research is expected to be a scientific suggestion for further research in leadership area, especially for the empowerment of women as leaders.

Partial discharge (PD) online monitoring is an effective tool of examining the conditions of insulation and detecting faults in power transformers. From literature it is acknowledged that, the PD detection is not adequate to take a decision about intervening, so the location of fault is necessary to evaluate the hazard for corrective actions. The aim of this paper is to determine the location of antenna to obtain the strong PD signal. The method used in paper is experimental work, a sample of two horn antenna model was made. One antenna is considered as a PD source (transmitting antenna) and other is used as a receiver. The height of transmitting antenna is 25cm, measurements is taken by changing the distance between antennas from 15cm and 30cm and also varying height of receiving antenna from 3cm to 45cm.. From the result, it is found that the strong signal is received when height of the both antennas are 25cm. Otherwise receiving antenna catches weak signal if the height of receiving antenna is lower or higher than 25cm. In short, receiving antenna only receive strong signal when both of the antennas are at equal height. Study concluded by saying that many horn antennas must be used in locating the PD source in power transformer so that PD location can easily be located. The closer the distance of antenna, the higher will be the amplitude of received signal and vice versa because distance influence by the interference of air.

There has been an increased in the prevalence of occupational noise-induced hearing loss globally. Countries such as the US, India and Malaysia are adopting 90 dBA as the permissible exposure limit. Aims:The aim of this study is to explore occurrence of temporary standard threshold shifts on adopting different permissible exposure limits: 90 and 85 dBA. In this intervention study, there were 203 participants from two factories. They were exposed to noise levels above action level which is 85 dBA in one factory and 80 dBA in another factory; the permissible exposure limits were 90 and 85 dBA, respectively. The sample size required was 52 in each factory. Noise level was measured using personal exposure noise dosimeter and sound level meter. Data on hearing threshold levels were measured using manual audiometer. Hearing protection devices with appropriate noise reduction rate were used to reduce noise exposure among participants. There were no differences in terms of occurrence of temporary standard threshold shifts among participants between the two factories, based on intention-to-treat analysis and as per-protocol analysis according to Factories and Machinery (Noise Exposure) Regulations 1989,OSHA regulations and NIOSH recommended standard. This study concludes that there were no differences in terms of standard threshold shifts among employees who adopted 90 or 85 dBA as permissible exposure limits. Based on the current findings, countries adopting 90 dBA as the permissible exposure limit need not review their policies on lowering the limit, but rather implementation and enforcement of the legislations should be more appropriate.

There is new and vivid phenomenon among entrepreneurs and practitioners in Indonesia called OPTIMIZer. OPTIMIZer is a person who learn Optimization skill. There are 22 branches of Optimization skill, such as Optimization in search engine, social media (facebook, twitter, etc.), mobile devices (Blackberry, Android, IOs), community web, web TV. All of them are technologies which born from Internet which is an innovation in entrepreneurship context. The aim of this paper is to investigate what factors that affect OPTIMIZer in accepting the technology (optimization skill in search engine). OPTIMIZers play an important role in today‟s Indonesian entrepreneurial, because they become a „bridge‟ between the entrepreneurs, targeted consumers, and reality of Information Technology which always changing. To reveal the factors of acceptance and understand the constructs and relationship among them, data collection from interviewing six key informants (Founders of Optimization skill, Mentor, OPTIMIZers) being anayzed using multiple case studies. Previous research from related context such as Entrepreneurship, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and Technology Acceptance will be reviewed. The expected contribution is to give fresh insight about new concept of nowdays entrepreneurship, and also to fill the knowledge gap for technology acceptance in entrepreneurship context related in Information Technology field.

The study examined ethical decision-making of hospitality and tourism students in Southern Thailand. Thai H&T students perceived higher level of moral intensity in social and economical scenarios and showed lower awareness on ecological ethics. They generally decide according to justice and relativism theories, give a little weight to duties and obligations (deontology theory), and are less teleological when making decisions in ethical situations. The findings provided support for gender differences in evaluation of ethical dilemmas but there were no considerable differences between males and females in using different theories in ethical decision-making.