A Conceptual Framework for Achieving Flexibility at Strategic Level in Large- and Medium-Scale Indian Manufacturing Organizations

Manufacturing organizations have to cope with hypercompetitive, uncertain, and increasingly dynamic environments these days. This increased dynamism is created by the rapidly changing needs of the customer, the fast changes in technology and market, etc. Developing flexibility in manufacturing organizations better prepares them to respond to dynamic market conditions and rapidly shifting customer needs. Manufacturing organizations today tend to improve and implement manufacturing flexibility at a strategic level. In this chapter, different strategies to achieve flexibility at strategic level are identified. Further, the type of strategies to be adopted for a particular flexibility dimension at strategic level and under particular market environment are studied. In this chapter, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Set Theory (FST) are applied to develop a framework for achieving strategic flexibility in manufacturing organizations.

Government Policy Interventions and Performance of Indian Engineering Industries

The Indian industrial policy made a major transition towards liberalization in the mid-1980s with the proponents of liberalization expecting not only a general increase in the efficiency of Indian industry but also improvement terms of innovative performance. Extensive industrial studies, as well as macro-level data, suggest that liberalization in the field of industrial licensing and foreign technological collaborations has resulted in large-scale entry of new firms across different segments of the economy. In this context, this chapter makes an attempt to review the promotion-oriented industrial policies of the Indian Engineering industry and also trace the industrial growth from 1950-51 onwards. It has been observed that there were mainly two breaks (kinked points) during this period, one in 1965-66 and the other in 1984-85. A review of policies suggests that these breaks were associated with major shifts in policies of the government. The study indicates that the first break came through industrial policies of the government with a focus on the heavy industries during the initial phases, while the other break came during 1984-85, which could be attributed to changes in policies from a restrictive one in the mid-'60s and '70s to a liberalized one in this sector in the '80s.

Alliance-Adding Cluster Means Icing on the Cake

For firms, entering industrial cluster means obtaining more opportunities for tacit knowledge transfer and informal communication, while forming strategic alliances can get a wider range of technical cooperation and strategic resources. Using innovation networks in the communication equipment industry of China, based on the impact of network density on innovation performance, we give firms dynamic characteristic in the geographical position to study the impact of regional location and the moderation effect of geographic proximity on the relationship between network density and innovation performance. The results of negative binomial regression method indicate that regional location do not have a significant effect on innovation performance, while geographic proximity has a significant effect on innovation performance, and geographic proximity can positively moderate the impact of network density on innovation performance. Then the authors further analyze some conditions concerning alliances of the Chinese communication equipment industry and offer some related suggestions.

From Ancient Chinese Sages to Modern People Management Principles

This chapter reviews the legacy of several ancient Chinese sages (i.e. Guanzi, Hanfeizi, Shangyang, Xunzi, and Yanzi) and explores their thinking of ruling the state and managing the people. The thoughts of the old are compared with those known in the mainstream Western management texts. Striking similarities in thoughts and key organization and management issues of old and new are identified. For contemporary organizations to be successful, essential people-management principles must be espoused to sustain organizations for a long term as to preserve ancient states. Nonetheless, the world is in ceaseless change, dynasties and nations rise and fall as organizations acquire, merge, die, or emerge as new. Despite perpetual principles, management techniques require constant adaptation to meet modern challenges.

Huawei's Battle

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the causes and reasons for these actions and to ascertain what key strategic approaches and positioning lie behind the high-level political tension. This is a conceptual chapter that looks at Huawei, the giant Chinese telecommunications company that has become the focus of contract exclusion and finger pointing by certain Western governments. The finding of this chapter suggests that the argument of “national security” used by the US and Australia in refusing Huawei's NBN contract is controversial. The chapter provides the causes behind this argument. This chapter makes valuable contribution whether it be due to Cold War legacies or business competition; the exclusions do not sit well in this globalised economy.

Using a Hybrid System Composed of Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms for Financial Forecasting

The possibility of applying artificial neural networks in different areas determined the discovery of more complex structures. This chapter describes the characteristic aspects of using a back-propagation neural network algorithm in making financial forecasting improved by a different technology: genetic algorithms. These can help build an automatic artificial neural network by two adaptive processes: first, genetic search through the data entry window, the forecast horizon, network architecture space, and control parameters to select the best performers; second, back propagation learning in individual networks to evaluate the selected architectures. Thus, network performance population increases from generation to generation. This chapter also presents how genetic algorithms can be used both to find the best network architecture and to find the right combination of inputs, the best prediction horizon and the most effective weight. Finally, this study shows how the results obtained using these technologies can be applied to obtain decision support systems that can lead to increased performance in economic activity and financial projections.

Are You Ready for Change?

This chapter discusses the factors that influence the decision of Guangdong residents to purchase Chinese-brand automobiles. Based on the well-known theory of planned behavior, this chapter builds a predictive model to explore the determinants of the intention of Guangdong residents to buy Chinese-brand automobiles. The findings reported in this chapter can help automobile manufacturers and distributors to formulate effective business strategies. According to 125 sets of figures, multiple regression analysis indicates that high correlation exist between two independent variables (attitude toward behavior and perceived behavioral control) and dependent variable, whereas subjective norm does not have significant correlation with intention. The authors make several corresponding managerial suggestions based on the results.

Intellectual Capital in Malaysian SMEs

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the concept and application of intellectual capital in the food industry in Kuching, Malaysia. There is no doubt that intellectual capital is a most important strategic asset for the success of organizations. In a competitive business environment, intellectual capital has been a vital element of success, particularly in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to examine the role of intellectual capital in order to enhance the business performance of SMEs operating in the food industry in Kuching, Malaysia. In this chapter, three components of intellectual capital, namely human capital, customer capital, and structural capital, are employed to examine the role of intellectual capital in SMEs. A structured questionnaire with a five-point Likert Scale was used to gather the data from the targeted respondents by using a convenience-sampling technique. A total of 200 questionnaire sets were distributed to the targeted respondents. From the total distributed questionnaires, a total of 194 respondents gave their feedback. Four research hypotheses were addressed to find the objectives of this study. To test the proposed research hypotheses, multiple regression technique was used. The findings of this study show that the three components of intellectual capital collectively and individually have positive and significant relationships with the business performance of baking SMEs. Subsequently, the four hypotheses of this study were supported. This chapter is a preliminary study about the baking SMEs operating in the food sector in Malaysia.

An Importance Sampling Method for Expectation of Portfolio Credit Risk

Simulation is widely used to estimate losses due to default and other credit events in financial portfolios. The accurate measurement of credit risk can be modeled as a rare event simulation problem. While Monte Carlo simulation is time-consuming for rare events, importance sampling techniques can effectively reduce the simulation time, thus improving simulation efficiency. This chapter proposes a new importance sampling method to estimate rare event probability in simulation models. The optimal importance sampling distributions are derived in terms of expectation in the normal copula model developed in finance. In the normal copula model, dependency is introduced through a set of common factors of multiple obligors. The intriguing dependence between defaults of multiple obligors imposes hurdles in simulation. The simulated results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach to solving the portfolio credit risk problem.

Relationship between Company's Intellectual Capital and Performance

This chapter examines the relationship between Financial Reporting of Intellectual Capital and Company's Performances in Indian Information Technology Industry. The sample consisted of 60 companies listed on NSE for a time period of 1999-00 to 2008-09. Value-Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAICTM) method developed by Pulic (1998) was used for the analysis of the data. The chapter uses VAICTM model and regression equation for the evaluation of intellectual capital and their relationship with productivity, profitability, and market valuation of the companies. The result of the chapter supports the hypothesis that profitability of the company can be explained by the intellectual capital. However, there is no significant association of intellectual capital with productivity and market capitalization of the companies for the selected time period of year 1999-00 to 2008-09.