This study tries to figure out the difference between the physical productivity and the financial efficiency among major airports in the Asia-Pacific region using the data of 11 airports for the period 2001-2013. Based on the superSBM, 4 different efficiency scores are measured and the origins of the differences of them are identified through the calculation of correlation coefficients. Another findings are that the market in the region is led by the airports in China and neighbors in terms of efficiency, and that the efficiency in the region is getting improved over time.

The present work aims to offer a contribution to evaluate whether to adopt strategies based on state support or, alternatively, on the managerial autonomy of local bodies in financial trouble. The research, after analysing the main guidelines at European level, presents the results of an empirical investigation on the economic effects produced on local economy by the financial default of the Municipality of Taranto. The choice of the Municipality of Taranto is due both to the significant magnitude of the ascertained debt, which was one of the highest in the history of Italy, and to the considerable economic effects caused by the recovery procedure. Specifically, with reference to the companies admitted to the passive mass, we determined, firstly, the economic losses they suffered and, secondly, we took into consideration the survival state and the strategies adopted by the companies involved in the insolvency procedure which were located in the local area of reference. From this work can be drawn some major conclusions. In general, it can be said that the relevant legal standard proved to be ineffective, as it does not define the recovery ways and the timing for the closure of the procedure. In particular, it does produce relevant economic effects on local enterprises, only in part mitigated by the diversification strategies adopted by the enterprises.

Advances in technology have allowed for Internet retailers to share information across the supply chain. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to not hold physical inventories, while others may keep inventory management in-house. In this paper, we identify the factors that may persuade firms to outsource fulfillment capabilities. The results support use of drop shipping by retailers in lieu of holding physical inventories in an e-commerce market.

New technology has impacted more benefits to firms to enhance their products and also to compete with other competitors in the global setting. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the subjective norms, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the product towards the MIS competency to maximize the utilization of resource management on global SMEs in Iran. The correlation test as well as regression analysis are performed using SPSS to identify these relationships. The empirical results revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between subjective norms and perceived usefulness towards the MIS competency .The present study contributes to the better understanding of the importance of the MIS strategy and competency in global SMEs.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether future organizational leaders considered behaviors associated with workplace bullying to be ethical. The research question is; Is there a difference between female and male Canadian university students‟ perceptions of the morality of workplace bullying behaviors? During a 6-month period, 300 undergraduate university students completed an online survey. The findings suggest that certain bullying behaviors are morally unacceptable and others as not.

In this paper we explain the crucial role played by the processes of internalized motivation in the development of organizational commitment.  Our research not only shows that the idealized influence transformational leadership style is causally linked to organizational commitment, but also that an internalization process of motivation operates as an explanatory causal mechanism. We focus on two forms of motivation: identified motivation and intrinsic motivation, which are associated with the internalization process and are closest to self-values. Based on recent findings concerning the positive behavioral outcomes of normative and affective commitment, we modeled organizational commitment as a formative construct consisting of normative and affective commitment forms. Data was gathered from an Australian manufacturing organization in early 2014. 89 responses were received. Our findings show that both intrinsic and identified motivations have a significant effect on the development of willing organizational commitment.  In our model the relationship between leadership idealized influence and employee intrinsic motivation was totally mediated by identified motivation. This finding highlights the importance of the internalization process of motivation, and articulates its role in explaining the causal link between idealized influence leadership style and employee organizational commitment.

The number of building projects contemplating the integration of modern building methods such as Industrialised Building System (IBS) into their strategic plans and daily operations is continuously increasing. In order to evaluate competitive aspects that will effect IBS decision-making, this paper presents the test results of an IBS decision-making model. The rationality of this study is to explore the applicability of a three dimensional IBS decision model, defined as the symmetrical process, for decisionmaking within the building projects. This decision model was based on the results of a related qualitative analysis and practice in the area of construction business practices. The resulting IBS decision model is applied to construction stakeholders within a northern region in Malaysia to illustrate its utility as a research transfer strategy. Specifically, this paper presents research evidence using a quantitative method through questionnaire surveys for ranking the influence of competitive factors on IBS decision-making, with attention to the hierarchy of each competitive aspect and outcome measures reported. It is concluded that the significant competitive factors are risks, technology alternative, profit margins and collaboration. It is recommended that the decision model is tested using a greater number of research participants.

Greater numbers of companies and individuals now work in the international business arena.  Companies operating abroad inevitably hire and retain individuals with varying cultural backgrounds.  Understanding how to manage these differences presents opportunities for gain. A thorough literature search indicates that no research to-date has explored the concept of organizational commitment and culture in an international business context, and thus this article is offered as a beginning point for new and potentially valuable investigation.

The Alpine Ski industry is largely populated by a seasonal workforce that provides a range of skills from customer service to logistics and resort management. Increased economic uncertainty following the global financial crisis has resulted in a downturn in skiing participation and this has increased pressures on the availability of seasonal work within the Alpine industry. Furthermore, climate change is having a detrimental impact on the amount and quality of snow cover effectively reducing the length of the ski season addition further pressure on seasonal employment. The purpose of this research is to provide insights into how seasonal workers in ski resorts around Niseko in Hokkaido Japan assess economic uncertainty and how this affects their decision to return to a particular resort each season and whether they seek greater certainty in their employment contract.

The process of urbanisation brings a number of environment and transportation challenges to fast growing economies such as Vietnam. With a total number of 6 million registered vehicles (more than 80% are motorbikes), transportation is one of the biggest issues to deal with in the cities. Apart from daily traffic congestion and high accident rate, the sources of air pollution in its capital city, Hanoi have been proven to come mainly from motorbikes.  It is also the most polluted city in South East Asia and is chosen as the research context. Many developing countries face similar challenges as a result of urbanisation and they have conducted extensive efforts to build a more sustainable environment using public transportation. This paper aims to find out factors influencing road users’ intention to use public transportation in Hanoi. A survey was carried out by randomly selecting 600 road users. Among the 525 completed questionnaire, around 83% of the respondents used public transportation before. However, only 30% of them are frequent users. Result shows that personal belief on ease of use of public transport and service satisfaction provided by Hanoi City Bus influenced their intention to use public transportation. On the other hand, environmental impact caused by the usage of private vehicle does not draw them to public transportation. The findings show that Hanoians were less motivated to use public transportation even they are living in a polluted environment caused by private vehicles. Policy makers are urged to improve on the accessibility, reliability, safety and responsiveness of public transportation to encourage private vehicle users to switch to public transportation. In addition, social influence was also found to influence the intention to use public transportation. Though ‘motor biking’ is a deep-rooted culture in Vietnam, policy makers can create a new culture of using public transportation that emphasis on social wellbeing to increase the conversion.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which PMS influences employee behavior, organizational capabilities, and organizational performance. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 223 managerial employees of Sri Lankan Water Board. PMS was tested against employee behavior, organizational capabilities, and organizational performance via regression analysis. The findings of this study revealed moderate positive relationship between PMS and its consequences. The relationships were statistically significant. Consequences were categorized as employee behavior, organizational capabilities, and organizational performance. This study offers an understanding of existing literature relating to PMS and its consequences. The study was instrumental in testing the relationship between PMS and its consequences by using the survey data collected from Sri Lankan Water Board.

The use and application of social media in the healthcare industry is attracting the attention of the researchers worldwide. The usage and application of social media in health communication has presented a new dimension in healthcare for potentially improving health outcomes. However, there has been widespread critique of its application due to the lack of sufficient information, and grounded with a common myth that social media is limited to social interaction and has not found a beneficial usage of its application in the industry. This paper focuses on identifying the real time benefits and limitations which include the social, ideological, and technological usage of social media in the healthcare industry unlike other industries where-in a widespread application has changed the dynamics. The diverse range of social platform which entails collaborative projects, content communities, social networking sites, virtual games and social worlds have been in use already in the healthcare industry but lacks the wider acknowledgement as deserving. Information Technology acceptance has been widely researched in the extant literature. However, studies focusing on the acceptance and usage of social media from the perspectives of healthcare professionals are sparsely represented. To add to the growing work in this arena, we propose a conceptual model appropriate for determining the drivers and barriers of social media usage in the healthcare industry. The study applies unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model by identifying the existing gaps in the prevalent literature.  Some modifications to the extant model were required to fit the purpose of the study. The study shall entail the examination of the drivers and barriers of social media usage of healthcare professionals with some key recommendations for future research. The results of this research will contribute immensely to the limited research available in literature and will have significant implications for practitioners and healthcare professionals in Australia and comparable parts of the world.

This study is conducted to examine the role of job satisfaction and perceived organizational support as a mediator in the relationship between training and service quality. The data of this study has been collected from 222 public sector employees in Malaysia and their supervisor through survey. The results from data analysis shows that both predictions were not supported by the analysis. However, this study found a significant relationship between training and job satisfaction, and between training and perceived organizational support. Although the main objectives of this study was not supported, however, this study provides empirical evidence of the direct effect of training on perceived organizational support and job satisfaction, particularly in the Malaysian public sector context. The results support the importance of training in producing positive work attitude and behavior found in previous studies, and demonstrates the applicability of this management concept to non-Western settings (Malaysia), and to the public sector more generally.

Previous studies proved that there are similarities between regulatory focus and self-construal. The motivations of independent self-construal state are similar to promotion focus, while interdependent self-construal state shares motivations with prevention focus. In the present study, contrasting research findings on the relationship with pro-environmental marketing and receivers’ regulatory focus, and self-construal were uncovered. In the research findings on the relationship between pro-environment marketing and receivers’ regulatory focus, promotion-focused people were more affected by proenvironment messages, and were positive toward green consumerism. Meanwhile, in motivation of self-construal factor, interdependent self-construal people were more affected by pro-environment messages, and thus positive toward green consumerism. Although there was a difference between previous studies' interaction between regulatory focus and self-construal and the results of the present study regarding pro-environment messages and green consumerism, there is a shortage of research about the relationship between self-construal and regulatory focus. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between receiver’s regulatory focus and selfconstrual as consumers’ characteristics, and to determine what characteristic have the most positive effect on acceptance of green consumerism messages. Online surveys were given to 275 South Korean participants using several scales to measure receivers’ regulatory focus, self-construal, and green consumerism. Participants were divided into 2 X 2 groups by self-construal (Independent / Interdependent) and regulatory focus (promotion / prevention) status. After division, two-way ANOVA was used to determine the relationships between the two independent variables (Self-construal, Regulatory focus) and a dependent variable (Green consumerism behavior). As a result, there was a main effect of self-construal; however, independent people were more positive toward green consumerism, in contrast to previous research. In addition, there were no main effects of regulatory focus or interaction effects between self-construal and regulatory focus on green consumerism behavior. The implications were discussed.

Virtual community produces a new social model and consumption actions, which greatly affect an individual's network consumption behavior. This research investigated electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) in virtual communities and examined the influence of negative EWOM on the switching behavior of consumers. Based on the analysis of the extant theory, we proposed the elements of virtual community involvement, negative EWOM’s strength, consumer brand switching behavior, and complaint reaction. Subsequently, we postulated hypotheses. To explore the specific relationship between the variables further, we conducted an empirical test of the assumptions and the model using a questionnaire survey. Contrary to prior research findings, we found that virtual relationships cannot improve the reliability of negative EWOM, and that negative EWOM retransmission has no correlation with brand switching behavior.

Cross-culture management scholars have suggested that contextual factors such as culture can impact one’s leadership orientations. This paper uniquely investigates the leadership orientations, which include task and relationship orientations, of people in the Netherlands and Oman. Through the analysis of 396 responses including 208 respondents from the Netherlands and 188 respondents from Oman, it appears that Omani working adults are more taskoriented than Dutch working adults. Gender is not a factor in both the task and the relationship orientations of respondents. There is a significant interaction in the relationship scores based on gender between the two cultures: Omani male respondents are more relationship-oriented than their Dutch counterparts while Dutch female respondents are more relationshiporiented than their Omani counterparts. In this paper, implications for management, recommendations for future research and limitations will also be discussed.

In today’s changing business environment, supply chain management is a significant source of gaining competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be obtained by virtue of competing on price, quality, and time to deliver, which can be attained by exploring and elimination of the sources of waste in different stages of the production process. This paper focuses on studying the impact of implementing Just in Time (JIT) technique in a dyadic supply relationship on inventory, cost, and profits. System Dynamics approach of modeling and simulation consisting of a supplier and manufacturer is developed and simulated for the study of multiple scenarios. A comparative analysis is made to study the impact of JIT on inventory, cost and profit. The simulation results indicate that JIT deliveries would enhance the operational efficiency of the firm and helps the firm to gain a competitive edge. Based on the findings, implications have been drawn for effective implementation of JIT.