Search results

Human resource management; Employee benefits management.

It can be used at undergraduate or postgraduate level for students at institutions of higher learning taking courses related to employee benefits management or human resource management.

The case is about the intention of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in purchasing health insurance for its employees in early 2011. For this purpose, a tender for group medical Takaful for UUM staff was placed in two major Malaysian newspapers on 20 February 2011. Then, after the tender closing date, a report was prepared and sent to the bursar of UUM, En Amron, on 28 April 2011. Ten companies had submitted their tenders; thus, En Amron had to identify the optimal group medical Takaful offered by the tenderers, so that he could put forward his recommendation to UUM tender committee board for its consideration and approval before the matter was brought to higher authorities for endorsement and implementation.

This teaching case will enable students to explain the reasons why an employer provides health insurance, to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of providing health insurance programme as non-contributory and contributory plans, to conduct company and plan assessment in making decision to purchase group medical Takaful and to evaluate either to purchase group health insurance directly from life insurer or to engage insurance broker.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

This case uses agency theory and decision usefulness approach to justify whether the change in accounting standard from IAS 17 Leases to IFRS 16 Leases favourably or adversely affects AirAsia’s financial reporting.

This case was written based on secondary data contained in industry reports, company annual reports, company websites, news reports and accounting standards. The case has been classroom-tested with undergraduate students taking advanced financial accounting and reporting module.

AirAsia Group Berhad (AirAsia), a Malaysian multinational low-cost carrier, was required to adopt IFRS 16 Leases (equivalent to MFRS 16 Leases), effective from 1 January 2019. The new standard, superseding IAS 17 Leases, was expected to provide investors and creditors with a richer insight into AirAsia’s leasing transactions and financial situations. In view of AirAsia having a substantial fleet of leased aircraft, the adoption of IFRS 16 Leases would change the way AirAsia had to report its borrowings which could subsequently have an impact on its bottom line. Thus, this case requires students to examine the financial implications of adopting IFRS 16 Leases by AirAsia and to determine whether the change in accounting standard favourably or adversely affects AirAsia’s financial reporting.

This case is intended for use in intermediate and advanced financial accounting and reporting modules at the undergraduate level.

Technology is the lifeline for the logistics industry, and it has been immensely disrupted by the emerging blockchain technology. This paper has two main objectives. The first is to explore how the current blockchain technology can be implemented in the logistics industry with the aim of improving logistic services amongst the network of logistics service providers (LSPs). The second is to propose the development of a blockchain model for the small and medium logistics service supply chain.

A prototype blockchain-based logistics system has been created and tested in a case study with a real logistics company. The primary technologies for developing a blockchain model on the Hyperledger platform as well as how the system is designed based on the logistics service flow are explained.

The study has resulted in the successful implementation of the proposed prototype blockchain-based logistics system. In particular, the case company has managed to fully utilise the developed tracking and tracing system. Whilst utilising the prototype, the participants have been able to fulfil their responsibilities in an effective manner. The performance of LSPs has improved following the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) criteria.

This paper contributes to current research in the application of blockchain technologies in the domain of logistics and the supply chain to progress LSPs towards Logistics 4.0. The current frameworks for Logistics 4.0 and how blockchain as a disruptive technology revolutionises logistic services are reviewed. In addition, this paper highlights the benefits of blockchain technology that LSPs can leverage to further improve their performance based on the LPI criteria.

Cultivating customer loyalty is extremely crucial for fast-food players to remain competitive in the industry. This research is discovering the path to cultivate customer loyalty through experience that is built based on auditory, gustatory, haptic, olfactory and visual cues.

Quantitative research has been conducted by distributing survey questionnaires to customers at selected fast-food restaurants in urban areas. The collected data has been analyzed by descriptive and structural equation modeling analysis.

The customers' loyalty to fast food can be cultivated through gustatory, haptic and olfactory cues. However, auditory and visual are not functioning as marketing cues to cultivate customer loyalty.

The fast-food players may emphasize gustatory, haptic and olfactory marketing cues to cultivate customer loyalty. These cues can be shared through experience.

This study has discovered the potential ways to cultivate customer loyalty in dining at fast-food restaurants within the Malaysian market.

This paper examines the relationship between traditional timber frame structure and the diasporic identity of the Southern Fujianese Chinese community in West Malaysia. It analyses the cultural semiotics of Southern Fujianese traditional Chinese temple timber frame structure architectural language. This study addresses the under-examined domain of Chinese cultural identity representation through the architecture of traditional Chinese temples in Malaysia. It seeks to understand its underlying structure and process involved in revealing its disposition within the cultural phenomena from the perspective of Chinese cultural semiotics.

Selected Southern Fujianese traditional Chinese temples in West Malaysia built between the 18th to the 19th century that retain the traditional timber frame structure were investigated through field survey and focused publication review. Historical interpretive analysis and typological analysis supplement the cultural semiotics analysis to assess the timber frame structure attributes concerning architectural language expressions.

Findings reveal that the architectural language signifiers of the structural disposition of the timber framework and its corresponding formal articulation establish a clear statement of the Southern Fujian Chinese cultural identity.

The evaluation of the cultural identity signifiers helps to understand the underlying structure and process of the Chinese cultural semiotics in architecture. Results of this research substantiate the significance of timber frame structure in preserving the architectural heritage of the Southern Fujianese traditional Chinese temples. They provide important references for conservation and cultural studies of such building typology.

The purpose of this work in designing a wideband ring voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) based on programmable current topology. It occupies a very tiny area yet achieving a good phase noise performance, which is suitable to be implemented in cost-effective and wideband frequency synthesizers.

The tuning range and gain are improved by dividing the VCO tuning curve into multiple curves controlled by programmable current sources without introducing additional parasitic capacitance.

Fabricated in 130-nm standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology and occupying an area of 0.079 mm², the VCO is tunable from 2.05 to 4.19 GHz, with a tuning percentage of 68.5 per cent. The VCO measures a phase noise performance of −96.7 dBc/Hz at an offset of 1 MHz from a 4.19 GHz carrier while consuming an average current of 6.5 mA, achieving figure of merit (FoM) and FoM_T of −158.9 and −175.6 dBc/Hz, respectively.

The proposed design uses programmable current topology without introducing parasitic capacitance, hence achieving wideband operation. It also occupies a tiny area and achieves a good phase noise performance.

The roles of small and medium‐scale industries (SMIs) are well‐documented (see Ragayah Haji Mat Zin, 1996). SMIs not only continue to be the majority of enterprises everywhere and exist side‐by‐side with large industries in developed countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy and the United States of America, they are also regarded as the engine of growth in the Newly Industrializing Economies (NEEs). In the developed countries, SMIs are said to be able to generate more employment relative to large firms as well as plying a complementary role to the latter. In Japan, for example, of the 430,393 enterprises in the Japanese manufacturing sector at the end of 1991, 99.1%, or 436,455, were small businesses, which also accounted for 72.1% of the employees and 51.8% of the value of shipment in this sector (JFS, 1993). They are seen to play a wider role in developing countries. In addition to the above, many studies (see for example Chee, 1985, 1990; Levy, 1993; and Rahmah Ismail, 1995) have shown that SMI entrepreneurs can mobilize savings, SMIs can act as seedling beds for entrepreneurial training, as well as improve income distribution.

To propose a generic method to simplify the fuzzy logic‐based failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) methodology by reducing the number of rules that needs to be provided by FMEA users for the fuzzy risk priority number (RPN) modeling process.

The fuzzy RPN approach typically requires a large number of rules, and it is a tedious task to obtain a full set of rules. The larger the number of rules provided by the users, the better the prediction accuracy of the fuzzy RPN model. As the number of rules required increases, ease of use of the model decreases since the users have to provide a lot of information/rules for the modeling process. A guided rules reduction system (GRRS) is thus proposed to regulate the number of rules required during the fuzzy RPN modeling process. The effectiveness of the proposed GRRS is investigated using three real‐world case studies in a semiconductor manufacturing process.

In this paper, we argued that not all the rules are actually required in the fuzzy RPN model. Eliminating some of the rules does not necessarily lead to a significant change in the model output. However, some of the rules are vitally important and cannot be ignored. The proposed GRRS is able to provide guidelines to the users which rules are required and which can be eliminated. By employing the GRRS, the users do not need to provide all the rules, but only the important ones when constructing the fuzzy RPN model. The results obtained from the case studies demonstrate that the proposed GRRS is able to reduce the number of rules required and, at the same time, to maintain the ability of the Fuzzy RPN model to produce predictions that are in agreement with experts' knowledge in risk evaluation, ranking, and prioritization tasks.

The proposed GRRS is limited to FMEA systems that utilize the fuzzy RPN model.

The proposed GRRS is able to simplify the fuzzy logic‐based FMEA methodology and make it possible to be implemented in real environments.

The value of the current paper is on the proposal of a GRRS for rule reduction to enhance the practical use of the fuzzy RPN model in real environments.

The aim is to explore the potential of a hybrid genetic algorithm‐partial least squares (GA‐PLS) modeling approach to understand the important promotional spending variables that influence physicians' prescribing habits and to help leverage managers' insight to plan better spend on their promotional activities.

A GA was used as a variable‐selecting tool, and PLS analysis was employed for correlating these variables with the observed variation in the volume of prescriptions. This approach is illustrated using database from a marketing consultant on four major brands in the US antibiotic universe.

Good statistical models were derived that permit simpler and faster computational prediction of the effects of physician‐directed promotion. All final models established had r² values ranging from 0.835 to 0.922 and cross‐validated r² (q²) values ranging from 0.791 to 0.911 whereas the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values were confined within 5 percent range on averaging all brand models. Further, thorough statistical analyses revealed the usefulness of promotional spending as a variable and the robustness of GA‐PLS as a correlation tool.

Modeling frame was comprised of only antibiotic category, which may limit its general utility.

Managers can become more adept at interpreting the effects of promotion on prescribing behaviors of physicians and are able to build predictive models that would help identify where and how their curious blend of promotional cocktail would yield the highest future returns. Moreover, if the impact of individual promotional spending element can be measured, then this is perhaps a testament to the way the efficacy of interventions to reduce the harmful consequences of pharmaceutical marketing could be validated given a growing number of public beliefs that physician‐directed promotion has grown too heavy‐handed and is undermining medical professionalism.

This area of research has not received much attention in the pharmaceutical marketing literature until recent years, and hopefully this study will stimulate some interest.

This paper seeks to address the value relevance of summary accounting measures and fundamental income statement variables in the market valuation of biotech firms.

A biotech firm's stock price was related to its underlying financial accounting variables. Using the Ohlson model, the linear function of book value and earnings was employed, and the basic model was augmented with additional accounting variables. These accounting variables may provide information relevant for forming an approximation on the present value of expected future abnormal earnings.

Results show non‐linearities in the pricing of accounting variables Both book value and earnings are value relevant, but positive earnings are positively priced while negative earnings are negatively priced. R&D spending and selling, general and administrative expenses are also priced as assets for loss‐reporting firms, and as expenses for profit‐reporting observations. Including analysts’ forecasts of future earnings and long‐term growth rate in the model results in an insignificant increase in the explanatory power of the regressions.

Future research could attempt to examine the role of non‐financial variables which can proxy for the soft variables and intangibles like strategic alliances and product pipeline. Decomposing revenue into product sales, interest income and collaborative research revenue may further enhance our understanding on the determinants of the market value of biotech stocks.

This paper provides insights into the valuation of biotechnology stocks. Results show non‐linearities in the pricing of summary accounting measures and fundamental income statement variables.