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The topic whether management skills are communicable has been the topic of scholars' debates and broad examination through literature in the last decades. However, there is less literature focusing on solutions for successful management education. This paper, not only takes up a position that management can be taught and learned, but also examines how the learning process is approached. The paper discusses characteristics of successful management educators and determine their impacts on management development. The paper determines the qualities and skills that modern managers must develop, especially in this time of globalization and rapid change in the business world. It suggests educating managers in “soft skills” such as interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and not merely concentrating on the “hard skills”, such as analytical skills. Additionally in this work, the need for managers with international exposure and cross‐cultural experience is emphasized. Finally, a proposal for management education curricula is tabled and address the issue of limits of management education is addresed.

Strategic alliances can be effective ways to diffuse new technologies rapidly, to enter a new market, to bypass governmental restrictions expeditiously, and to learn quickly from the leading firms in a given field. However, strategic alliances are not simple or easy to create, develop, and support. Strategic alliances projects often fail because of tactical errors made by management. By using a well managed strategic alliances agreement, companies can gain in markets that would otherwise be uneconomical. Considerable time and energy must be put forth by all involved in order to create a successful alliance. It is essential that corporations enter into strategic alliances arrangements with a comprehensive plan outlining detailed expectations, requirements, and expected benefits.

Presents a longitudinal field study which compares changes in perceptions of productivity and attendance behaviours for participants in a drug‐testing programme in a manufacturing firm in the mid‐western USA. Employee efficiency, productivity and absenteeism changes related to the implementation of the drug‐testing programme were measured by collecting and analysing actual organizational data. Data for each of the measures were collected for a 42‐month period, ranging from 18 months prior to the implementation of the programme to 24 months after the programme began. The attitudinal results provide, at best, circumspect support for the claims of drug‐testing proponents that the programme reduces drug abuse in the workplace and improves overall productivity. The performance results, however, document a positive and substantial impact of drug‐testing initiative on employee productivity and absenteeism rates.

This paper aims to explore current management attitudes towards benchmarking and its implementation within small business‐to‐business service firms in order to enhance a deeper understanding of benchmarking within such contexts.

The paper uses in‐depth case analysis of small architectural services to collect empirical data on benchmarking initiatives, attitudes, key characteristics and constraints on benchmarking.

Findings suggest that there are significant variations in the receptiveness of small business‐to‐business firms towards the adoption of benchmarking. There may be an inherent distrust of benchmarking, as it is primarily perceived as being a tool for larger organizations, where productivity improvements are the main driver. Evidence of perceived constraints in both the implementation of benchmarking and in the definition of what constitutes best practice highlighted a cultural difficulty for small architectural firms when adopting a business process orientation. Traditionally, when evaluating their services, architectural practices are oriented towards professional design criteria, often with creative rather than business process priorities. Results suggest less cumbersome measurement models than key performance indicators (KPI) are needed to allow organically developing firms, such as architectural services, to apply benchmarking and quality ideas flexibly.

Research on current management attitudes towards benchmarking or actual implementation of benchmarking techniques in small business‐to‐business service firms is scarce. This paper addresses this by developing a deeper and richer contextual understanding of benchmarking within such contexts.

The aim of the study is to develop a TQM model of academic excellence and empirically establish a relationship between TQM implementation and students' satisfaction of academic performance.

A sample of students from ISO and non‐ISO engineering institutions from South India has been taken for the study. Statistical measures like mean, t‐test, correlation and regression analysis were used.

The results reflect that ISO 9001:2000 engineering institutions are moving towards the path of TQM offering better quality of educational service than the non‐ISO institutions. A relationship between the five TQM constructs and students' satisfaction of academic performance has also been established.

This study has been conducted in higher engineering education from the students' perspective only. The study is limited to the privately funded engineering institutions. Research relating to other types of institutions namely the government institutions and the deemed universities can be taken up in future.

The academic excellence model developed in this paper can be effectively implemented in the higher educational institutions to enhance the quality of education and students' satisfaction.

5C TQM excellence model is unique. Suggestions to educational authorities interested in improving the quality of education are valuable.

Global outsourcing is a management strategy by which an organization delegates major, non‐core functions to specialized and efficient service providers. Global outsourcing represents a significant shift in the way organizations manage and staff their business support activities. While global outsourcing has received considerable attention from practitioners and consultants, there has been little empirical research published on global outsourcing. This study explores why and how organizations are using global outsourcing and identifies problems that effect global outsourcing success. The results showed that organizations generally considered themselves successful at global outsourcing. However, while they achieved significant improvement in organizational effectiveness, they were not achieving the order of magnitude improvements ascribed to global outsourcing.

The introduction of employee empowerment through a self‐managed work teams programme into an organization further requires the introduction of multifaceted changes in person‐job relationships and the whole organizational hierarchy. The self‐managed teams concept can be seen as a strategy to increase motivation, quality, productivity, customer satisfaction and to sustain high performance. Self‐managed teams serve as the main building blocks of the organization. However, they are not simple or easy to create, develop and support. Companies must realize that it takes time, training and resources to implement teams and reap their rewards.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the largely unexplored conceptualisation of the brand-as-a-person metaphor in small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by examining its potential relation with the SME owner-manager, the pathways to its creation and development and the intuitive nature of this relationship.

A grounded theory approach was used, and data were collected through a set of 36 semi-structured interviews with 30 SME owner-managers in various sectors in Mexico.

The results indicate that SME owner-managers intuitively humanise their brands. The study revealed four pathways to develop the brand-as-a-person metaphor in the SME context: through personality traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, all suggesting that SMEs’ brand-as-a-person metaphors are largely an extension of their owner-managers.

The paper presents a theoretical framework that illustrates the four pathways to the creation and development of brand-as-a-person that are derived from the brand’s relationship with the SME owner-manager. The results of cross-industry semi-structured interviews are limited to a single culture context.

SME owner-managers should first undertake an introspective personal assessment of their intuitive and conscious decision-making, as SME owner-managers often make decisions in an intuitive way. The results suggest that they should act in a more conscious, responsible and rational way when formulating their brand strategies.

This is the first study to clarify the profound influence of SME owner-managers’ personal characteristics, including personality traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, on the brand-as-a-person metaphor. This study also confirms the intuitive learning strategy formulation of SME owner-managers’ branding practices and SMEs’ need for a more rational approach to branding.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to elicit perceptions of senior officers on the overall financial sustainability of their institutions; and, second, to examine senior officers’ perceptions on important revenue diversification and cost management practices.

The study employed a questionnaire survey with senior academic and administrative staff of the 20 public universities in Malaysia. In total, 275 questionnaires were distributed and 69 were returned, yielding a response rate of 25.09 per cent. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the general perceptions of the survey respondents on public university financial sustainability issues.

The study suggests that respondents are receptive of the financial sustainability challenges faced by their institutions. Respondents agree that increasing tuition fees may not be a feasible revenue enhancement strategy for public universities. Instead, all respondents agree that full utilisation of resources will be a key strategy that the universities can apply.

This study contributes to the limited research on the financial sustainability of public universities in developing countries. Findings of the study have implications for the financial management and governance of public universities in Malaysia and other countries facing similar fiscal challenges. The findings of the study also provide important empirical evidence for future work in the area.