Impact of Intellectual Capital on the Organizational Performance of Airline Industry in Malaysia

This chapter aims to examine the role of intellectual capital in order to enhance the organizational performance of airline industry in Malaysia. Five components of intellectual capital, namely human capital, customer capital, structural capital, technological capital, and spiritual capital, were used to investigate the role of intellectual capital in airline industry in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire was used to gather the required data from Kuala Lumpur, Sultan Ismail Johor Bharu International Airport, and Kuching International Airport. A total of 195 out of 200 useable questionnaires were collected. Multiple regression analysis was employed to test the proposed research hypotheses of this study. The findings show that two variables, namely customer capital and spiritual capital, appeared as significant contributors while the remaining three variables, human capital, structural capital, and technological capital, appeared as insignificant contributors. This is a preliminary study and it could be a milestone for further studies.

Social Networking

This chapter aims to explain the impact of social networking websites on the youth of India. Their usage pattern being the focus which would go on to establish the efficacy of usage of social networking websites to expand the business. The build-up of the chapter is not only theoretical but also provides an analytical opinion derived from the results of a study. For the purpose of the study, questions were administered to around 500 avid users of social networking websites from Delhi University (150 completed questionnaires were received). The representative sample would go a long way in forming an opinion on whether it is worthwhile to use social networking to promote brands to the segment studied or not.

An Empirical Analysis of FII Movement and Currency Value in India

India opened its stock market to foreign investors in September 1992 and has received portfolio investment from foreigners in the form of foreign institutional investment in equities and other markets including derivatives. It has emerged as one of the most influential groups to play a critical role in the overall performance of the Indian economy. The liberalization of FII flows into the Indian capital market since 1993 has had a significant impact on the economy. With increased volatility in exchange rate and to mitigate the risk arising out of excess volatility, currency futures were introduced in India in 2008, which is considered a second important structural change. This chapter examines the impact of the Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) on the exchange rate and analyzes the relationship between FII and Indian Rupee-US Dollar exchange rates.

Development Strategy in the Northern State of Jalisco from the Institutional Perspective

The regionalization process in Jalisco occurred in the nineties leading to the decentralization of regions and formulating a regional development plan for each of them. Currently, despite the measures taken to establish regional plans, it appears that there are disparities in regional development, being the most affected, the North Zone of the State. The aim of this chapter is to analyze a key factor, the ratio of the institutions with the development of the Northern region of the State of Jalisco, with a brief analysis of the role of institutions from economic, political, and social perspectives. The method used is a review of the existing literature on institutional theory and the development of the Northern Zone of Estado. It concludes by stating a strategy to promote the development, evaluation, and strengthening of the institutions involved in this process.

Surplus Labour in the Unorganised Sector of India

Disguised unemployment is the wastage of labour resource of a country. For a country like India that wishes to move towards a fast growth tract, disguised unemployment is a serious setback to the growth path. Several theoretical justifications have been provided to contextualize disguised unemployment. They all assume homogeneous production structure across firms. However, the informal sector in India is a conglomeration of different firm types. In India, the NSSO data subdivided firms into family enterprises (Own Account Enterprises – OAE) and commercially motivated (Establishment). The authors require a theoretical justification following this line. In this chapter, they generalise the argument provided by Georgescu-Roegen (1960) for this purpose. In this chapter, an attempt is made to measure surplus labour in the informal sector of India using NSSO data. For this, the concept of sub-vector efficiency as developed by Ray (2005) is used. The authors calculate surplus labour in OAEs and EST firms separately.

Relationships among Information Technology, Service Quality, and Overall Satisfaction of the Customers in Life Insurance Corporation of India

At present, customers are fully aware of their needs and requirements, expectations, and information technology-enabled services. Based on the several factors, customers are evaluating the quality of perceived services offered by their service providers as well as estimating their overall satisfaction with their service providers. As customer satisfaction has now become the ultimate goal of the different service providers, considering different factors, organizations are trying to move their focus from product to the customers. Like any other sector, in life insurance sector the insurance companies are trying to provide better quality of services to their customers with the help of information technology not only to satisfy them but also to retain them in the competitive insurance market. In this chapter, the author studies the significant relationships among the information technology, service quality, and overall satisfaction of the customers in Life Insurance Corporation of India in Burdwan.

A Novel Technique for Securing E-Commerce Transaction

The emergence of online businesses along with the use of the Internet as its basic network has brought new concerns and risks to the e-commerce environment. It is essential for the online companies to gain customers' trust to retain their existing e-commerce market share and provide for growth, because e-commerce transactions take place in an open environment that cannot be trusted since the network is highly vulnerable to outside security threats. The main problem of e-commerce transaction is anonymity. One may steal another's identity and get access of his confidential information such as banking password, credit card details, etc. very easily. The most convenient way to prevent such kind of identity theft is digital certificate. But that is very expensive. In this chapter, a novel attempt is made to prevent identity theft using Visual Cryptography and Steganography during e-commerce transaction, in a very cost-effective manner.

Infrastructure Development in Developing Countries

Physical infrastructure development projects mobilize a huge number of diversified workforce, their associates, and relatives to and from the project sites and surrounding areas from initiation of the projects to post-completion period. This chapter focuses on Nepal government's National Plan and reviews the Plan's priorities of the last 60 years concerning project tourism at one part; and the opinions of key informants, socio-cultural patterns, project specifications, and tourism statistics on the other. The analysis indicates a clear fragmentation of the plan, cultural configuration, and infrastructure acceleration efforts. It concludes with a notion of urgency of integrating infrastructure project specifications with the cultural configuration of the actors. It proposes a strategic tripartite model for tourism development in order to achieve sustainable economic growth in developing countries.

Measuring Performance of Hotels in Kolkata

Intellectual capital is the most complicated element of management and the same is more important in any service sector including hospitality and tourism. Airlines, hotels, restaurant chains, and tour operators have been focusing on human resources for enhancing technical and functional qualities of services. Here, the study is confined to the measurement of service quality of Indian hotels in Kolkata through intellectual capital (human capital and structured capital) and its comparison with the physical capital over the years. Value Added Intellectual Coefficient Method (VAICTM) is applied for measuring the performance of hotels. Corporate performance through quality services of intellectual capital has been measured through profitability, return on equity, and sales growth. The findings suggest that the performance of a hotel's intellectual capital can significantly explain corporate value creation through quality services.

Application of Supply Chain Management through SAP in Agriculture of SAARC Nations

The prime source of income of the different countries in the SAARC region comes from the agricultural sector. Currently, this sector is facing several challenges in this entire region, threatening its growth and sustainability. Hence, if the policymakers need to improve the economic conditions of the nations, then the only way to do that is to improve the agricultural sectors of this region. This can be achieved by successful implementation of Supply Chain Management (SCM). This chapter is concerned with the concept of SCM and how it can play a vital role in developing the agricultural sectors in the SAARC countries. Another aspect of this chapter is concerned with the effectiveness of the application of SCM in agriculture; it can be implemented by using a fully integrated software package like SAP ERP. By the application of this IT software package, SCM can be made more efficient and lead to time and inventory reduction.