Published: March 28, 2017

“Employee turnover” as an expression is broadly used in business organization. Despite the fact that several studies have been performed on this topic, little research has been conducted on examining the causes and leading factors of turnover as well, as advising some feasible approaches, which can be applied by bosses to ensure that employees will continue in their respective organizations to enhance organizational effectiveness and productivity. The main purpose of this study is to determine the reasons and key factors in the perspectives of the relevant literature and identify to the intention of employee turnover. This conceptual paper also suggests …

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Published: Oct. 15, 2016

The main purpose of this study is analyzing the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and market orientation. This study is an applied research in terms of the purpose based on a descriptive correlational method. The statistical population included all employees of Agricultural Jihad Organization of Mazandaran province consisting of 1923 persons. 391 people (male and female) were selected using random stratified sample. Data were collected through two standard questionnaires: Podsakoff’s (2003) organizational citizenship behavior (24 questions) and Fazel’s (2012) organizational performance (13 questions). Validity of questionnaires was confirmed by experts and reliability of them was confirmed using Cronbach’s coefficient alphabet. …

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Published: June 13, 2016

Time after time, different economies, such as the world economy or a national economy, are exposed to diverse fluctuations of various origins. The reasons for this can be multifold. Thus, in the context of an economic crisis, staying ahead of competition is vital for any company’s survival. In addition, each year, the global competition becomes tougher. The fundamental question of modern management of an enterprise is how to achieve competitive advantage and hold it. Consequently, the effective management of an enterprise, based on a rational use of resources, comes to the fore. The goal of this research is to analyze …

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Published: June 1, 2016

The French Ecole Supérieure Libre des Sciences Commercial Appliquées (ESLSCA) in Paris is one of the most important global culturally diverse private business schools in terms of its number of branches and its history. ESLSCA has had a branch in Cairo in Egypt for about 17 years. This qualitative study seeks to focus on ESLSCA-Egypt branch to investigate the extent to which cultural diversity is included in its MBA curricula. The main methods for collecting data are document analysis, a number of semi-structured interviews, and a review of relevant literature. The study findings have meaningful implications for the practices of …

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Published: May 11, 2016

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 …

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Published: Dec. 15, 2014

It has been widely advocated that SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. However, studies from both the developed and developing world have shown that only a small amount of SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. These set of SMEs have been termed high quality firms that grow and create the much needed jobs. While studies from the developed world have identified a number of factors that depict the quality of a firm, there is however, little empirical evidence from the developing world on firm quality. This study has as main objective to determine the …

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Published: April 10, 2015

This paper investigates how action-based entrepreneurship training influences entrepreneurial knowledge and personal attitudes, which in turn reportedly develop individuals’ entrepreneurship intentions. A cohort of students who had undergone social entrepreneurship training under the auspices of Enactus South Africa was studied to determine the relationship between these three key variables associated with entrepreneurship tendencies. The study, in particular, addresses the question of whether practical entrepreneurship training bears any consequences on developing students’ personal attitudes, entrepreneurship knowledge, and entrepreneurship intentions. Stratified sampling techniques were utilized to collect data from 355 Enactus South Africa students from the constituent 27 colleges and universities that …

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Published: March 11, 2015

Business failure may be the result of either voluntaristic (internal) firm actions/decisions, deterministic environmental (external) events or both given causes (integrative approach). This study examines the prevalence of these causes of business failure. Results indicate that the largest proportion of firm failures is explained by the integrative approach, although two other perspectives hold a prominent role also. Moreover, internal causes of failure are more frequent than external. The findings based on multinomial logistic regression revealed that the causes of failure also vary with the size and age of firms. The implications of the results for research and practice are discussed

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Published: Sept. 18, 2014

Since its introduction more than 20 years ago the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has garnered the interest of both academics and practitioners. In the ‘official’ practitioner-oriented literature the BSC’s main proponents Kaplan and Norton have touted the concept’s potential performance enhancing effects. Academics have been more skeptical, and have not found a clear-cut relationship between the use of the BSC and organizational performance. It appears that some uses of the BSC may increase performance, while other types of BSC use might decrease it. Still, research has shown that the concept is widely used in practice, more than 20 years after its …

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Published: Oct. 8, 2011

This paper presents the most recent evolutionary lines in operational research, through a review of the basic principles that guide this field of research. In broad terms, some emphasis is given to the fact that Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (or Aid) (MCDA) takes into account that decision-making processes are complex and composed of several actors with different perceptions and value systems, stressing that this approach highlights the limits of objectivity, and considers the possibility that some problems may not have an optimal solution. In this vein, it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the modeling of particular …

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