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September 2018 (International Review of Business Research Papers)

September

2018

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September 2018 (International Review of Business Research Papers)

Total Articles - 9

Pages 1 – 23

Author: Bello Ayuba and Ibrahim Ali Aliyu

This study examines the causes, consequences and control strategies of unethical business practices in Nigeria. The main objective is to investigate unethical business practices and its implications on the Nigerian society. The study employed both primary and secondary sources of data which were analysed using descriptive statistics, regression analysis and t-test to analyse the formulated hypotheses in line with the objectives of the study. A sample of 1,124 respondents representing 94% of the population (1,192) was used for analysis in the study. The study found that most customers’ complaints on ethical abuses were common in the mobile telecommunication, health, manufacturing and automobile sub-sectors where unethical business practices were caused by a combination of three broad factors namely; external factors, personal characteristics and improper control which include, greed, poor compliance with the legal requirements for doing business in Nigeria, aggressive competition, insufficient legislative enforcement and lack of effective supervision by the business regulatory bodies. The study also found unwholesome activities such as the proliferation of fake and substandard materials, misleading advertising, price collusion, discriminatory pricing and hoarding, diversion, overbilling, petroleum products black racketeering and poor service to disadvantaged consumers as among the factors with major consequences. Some recommendations were made among which are the need for adequate laws with stiffer penalties against violation of business ethics so as to help in ridding the society of all forms of unethical conduct in business. The study concludes that; with effective supervision by business regulatory agencies, stiffer penalties and strict compliance with legal requirements for doing business in Nigeria, the spate of unethical business practices characterizing the Nigerian environment will be eradicated or reduced to the barest minimum which will subsequently, result in economic growth and development of the country.

Pages 24 – 44

Author: Md. Faruk Hossain

This study aims to explore the effects of reform in internal corporate governance mechanisms issued by Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission in 2012 (specially changes made in appointments of independent directors to the board) on firm performance for a sample of 45 non-financial listed firms on Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) during 2010-2015, splitting into two periods (pre-reform periods: 2010-2012; and post-reform periods: 2013-2015). This study is highly concerned to control for any possible endogeneity problem inherent in OLS regression model. Therefore, satisfying endogeneity and over-identification tests collected data are finally analyzed by OLS regression model rather than 2SLS regression model since no statistical evidence of using 2SLS regression model was found in Hausman test results. In this study, after controlling for firm specific factors, internal corporate governance mechanisms such as board size, board independence, and CEO duality are found to have significant effects on both accounting based performance measures and market based performance measure of firm during the post-reform periods; larger boards are negatively associated with firm performance; board independence is strongly and positively associated with all measures of firm performance; and CEO duality is significantly and negatively related to the accounting based performance measures.

Pages 45 – 55

Author: Roslina Ab Wahid

Operational excellence (OE) is not something new to the manufacturing and services; including private higher education institutions locally and abroad especially in the US, UK, Canada and the Scandinavian countries. However, for the public universities in Malaysia, it is something of a novelty. As the largest public university in Malaysia with more than 160,000 students, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) has taken the initiative to spearhead the operational excellence in the country’s higher education. Moreover, in the face of reduced funding from the government, UiTM must be responsive and transforms to become more process-centric as it is through operational excellence that strategic outcomes can be achieved. The aim of this paper is to investigate the implementation of operational excellence through process improvement by the university; its achievements; and challenges faced pertaining to the implementation. The university adopts the concepts of Lean and Six Sigma DMAIC approach to process improvement in its journey to achieve operational excellence. The process improvement data was recorded in an ‘Online Process Improvement Register’ (OPIR).Sofar, the university has been able to train 5.9% of its 18,188 staff in doing process improvement. The findings showed that as a result of doing improvement on some of its processes, the university has managed to save 48.99%on cost. Apart from that, the university has been able to reduce the time taken on the processes, the number of manpower needed for the processes, the number of complaints, and also improve customer satisfaction. Some of the challenges that have been identified during the implementation are department and staff engagement; inadequate manpower; and lack of knowledge on the part of some of the Quality Managers and OE Trainers.

Pages 56 – 75

Author: Kursia Jahan

The present study is intended to explore and compare the food demand analysis of 1282 households combining of four dynamic socio-economic groups. A Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System Model has been considered for estimation. To observe the impact on budget share, the set of predictors has been extended by using various household characteristics. A chronology in demand pattern has been observed according to the economic hierarchy. The necessary foods of the rich are found as the luxury one to the poor. Lastly, the study can be viewed as a lively portrait of the vulnerable situation of chronically poor people.

Pages 76 – 102

Author: T. Shawn Strother and Michael S. Pagano

Information provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding potential terrorist attacks significantly affects U.S. equities. When the government announces heightened terror alert levels, investors’ perceptions of risk increase as measured by both conditional volatility of equity returns and implied volatility on Standard &Poor’s 500 Index options. We also find evidence that informed traders are more active when there is an increased threat of an attack; however, equity market responses to these threat-related announcements have declined monotonically over time.

Pages 103-129

Author: Liang Tang, George Xiang and Larry Zhang

Asset returns are involved with multi-dimensional risks and therefore any good risk-adjusted performance measure (RAPM) should incorporate these risks. We extend the risk-adjusted performance measure theory developed by Xiang, Liu and Wang (2012) to include multiple risks. The following models are derived in this paper: a RAPM with skewness under individual equilibrium for an individual investor, a RAPM that comprises the skewness under market equilibrium for all investors using a three-moment asset pricing model. Both the individual and market RAPMs show that investors prefer a positive skewness to a negative skewness, ceteris paribus. We prove that the RAPM is the Sharpe ratio when the return doesn’t show any skewness. Finally this paper provides a theoretical justification to the relationships between investment choices, an asset pricing model, an individual RAPM, and a market RAPM.

Pages 130-148

Author: Saidi Atanda Mustapha, Bibiana Oluhukwu Njogo and Lawrence Imeokparia

The paper investigates the role of both systematic volatility (SVol) and idiosyncratic volatility (IVol) in asset pricing over the sample period 2005 to 2017 in the Nigerian Stock Market. Systematic volatility is measured by the standard deviation of past daily price returns and idiosyncratic volatility is measured by the standard deviation of residuals from the Augmented Fama and French three (A-FF3) factor model. The paper adopts a parametric methodology consisting of the least square estimation technique (Fully Modified-OLS and OLS). Findings suggest that investors could increase their portfolios’ returns by using IVol strategy to sort stock portfolios rather than using SVol strategy, the reason is that the effects coming from macroeconomic factors outweigh that of the market factors. The paper also validates the positive relationship between idiosyncratic volatility (systematic volatility) and stock price returns for Nigeria, this is in line with the results of Malkiel and Xu (2006) and Fu (2009) using US stocks, and Drew et al (2002) and Brockman et al (2009) both for Hong Kong stock market. The policy implications of these findings reveal that investors (domestic and international) can increase portfolio returns, rather than dropping stocks, by going long on high IVol stocks and short on low IVol stocks in the Nigerian Bourse.

Pages 149-160

Author: Farzana Alamgir and Sakib B. Amin

Corruption creates friction in the economic system and acts as a barrier to economic development and progressive social change of an economy. However, there exists conflicting views in literature regarding the effect of corruption on development. The purpose of our study is to investigate the effect of corruption on the economic as well as social development of an economy. Based on a sample of four countries in South Asia, namely, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for the period 1995-2015, and using the Vector Error Correction (VEC) model and panel cointegration technique, we show that there is a negative relationship between corruption and socioeconomic development in the South Asian region.

Pages 161-177

Author: Devjani Guhathakurata and Sakib B. Amin

Economic openness especially in developing countries like Bangladesh greatly contributes to an increase in the country’s welfare through the increase in standards of living, education, as well as health status. Through globalization, the positive effects of health is prominent as access to health technologies are readily made available which can go a long way to increase life expectancy as well as reduce infant mortality rates. This research paper empirically examines the cointegration and causal relationship between economic openness and health status of Bangladesh economy by using annual data from 1980 to 2014. As the economy becomes more open, investments in health sector also increases which facilitate improvements in health. To further explore this relationship, Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test has been used to check if the variables are stationary. The Johansen cointegration method has also been used in order to check the robustness of the relationship among the variables. Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) has been estimated in order to determine the short-run dynamics of this behavior followed by the Granger causality test. The results reveal that long-run bidirectional causality runs from economic openness to health and vice versa, which provides support that rise in economic openness is both a cause and a consequence of increased health status of Bangladesh.

Total Articles- 9

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