Abd Rahman Ahmad

Driving and Fostering Strategic University and Industry Collaboration: Perspective from the Food Manufacturers

Universities are fostering links and facilitating technology transfer with industries. Industries are transforming rapidly to sustain and ensure businesses prosper well. These have created a dynamic approach by stakeholders towards university-industry collaboration (UIC). However, there is a lack of studies which focus on how the process of formation of the partnerships are developed and coordinated effectively. This case study examines the drivers of change in fostering collaboration of a Public University, an anchor institution located in a town with its surrounding food processing companies. Data were collected from 5 Chief Executive Officers of the food processing companies, as they are among the key decision makers who are able to influence the future direction of UIC of food industry. Face-to-face interviews were used to collect the views of the industry foresight into the year 2025. The rate of technology adoption and policies are the two key drivers of change driving future UIC between UTHM, an anchor institution in the Town with its surrounding food processing companies. This paper has made recommendation for future of the University and Food Industry collaborative linkages.

Influential Factors in Construction Industry of Yemen

Delay in the construction industry is a global phenomenon and are considered as one of the most persistent problems throughout the world. Its persistence lie in its significant cause to cost overrun which most often than not lead to abandoning the project. Although such in present more in some countries as against others, the construction industry of Yemen is no exception to it. The key controlling features of project success—time, cost, quality and safety—for a project are adversely affected by the impacts of such delays. The time extension in construction projects has many after effects among which the main are time extension, cost overrun, disputes, arbitrations and litigations. Previous studies have mostly emphasized on the major causes or the effects of project delays. The main purpose of this study is to identify the influential factors negatively affecting project successful completion on time. Using a picked set of 33 factors, this investigation at first recognized the key components influencing project completion in Yemen. A study has surrounded the reason of this survey and distributed to study. The result covers that the 5 critical factors which significantly impact to project successful completion including money cash flow during construction, the conflict between owners and other parties, delay in running bill payments for the contractor, poor project management, and slow decisions from the owner. The impact of (IF) contrarily impacts to time extension cost overrun, adversely influence to the fulfillment of the stakeholder, adversely influence to specialized specification and adversely influencing to satisfaction all meeting all the project goals/safety. These revelations are required to be basic obligations to Yemen construction industry in controlling the time and cost overpower being created.

SMES are embracing innovation for business performance

SMEs are embracing innovation in enhancing their business competitiveness. Innovation which is vital for a firm competitiveness is embedded in the organizational structures, processes, products and services within a firm. This empirical study has investigated the relationships between the products, process, marketing and organizational innovations of SMEs with its innovative, operation and financial performances. The main contribution of this study is the comprehensive analyses and testing of innovation-performance relationship based on empirical data to uncover the effects of the different types of innovations on firm performance. It is also expected to help the SMEs in the understanding of the key variables which influence their business and financial performance grounded base on resource-based theory. A total of 43 duly completed forms out of the total of 381 questionnaire survey forms that were e-mailed to owners or managers of the SMEs in the state of Johor, Malaysia were analyzed using the SPSS software package. It was found that the firm innovation has a significant and positive relationship with financial, operation and innovative performances. This is with the exception of marketing innovation which indicated no significant relationship with financial performance. Firm innovation explained a total of 39.4% of financial performance, 48.4% of operational performance and 57.5% of innovative performance. Another important point is firm innovation which is strongly and positively related to firm innovative performance. By focusing on organizational innovation, SMEs are able to enhance their firm financial performance.

An Integrated Technical and Marketing Approach to E-Banking Customer Satisfaction

The use of e-banking services has increased competition for on-line customer satisfaction. Previous research works were done basically in terms of customer satisfaction from either the marketing or technical perspective. While each viewpoint has helped to improve understanding of online customer satisfaction, a framework to unify these views is lacking from the current literature. This study explores customer satisfaction of e-bank service via the integrated technical and marketing perspectives. The data collected from a total of 150 on-line e-bank customers were analyzed to test the hypotheses formulated using SPSS statistical package. Reliability analysis, descriptive and regression analysis were performed. There are seven main variables of marketing and technical factors. The results indicated that although these factors do have a tremendous influence on customer satisfaction, however, not all of them exert the same effect. Therefore, it is very important for researchers to take an integrative approach to determine customer satisfaction with e-bank online. The results of this study offer ideas on further enhancing e-bank customer satisfaction by improving technical and marketing of customer service.

Information system key success factors and student behavioral intention to use M-learning

Key success factor is a planning tool use in designing information system that meet the need of user. Mobile technologies for learning is an emerging tools in education evolution where the learning process occurs through integration of electronic learning and mobile technologies. Higher education institutions around the world will need to consider how to make the most of these new opportunities to be competitive in the market. Most previous studies have been focusing on social factors that influence behavioral intention to use m-learning while there is a lacking on finding technological factors such as system quality and information quality on behavioral intention to use m-learning. Thus, the current study was carried out to investigate technological factors that influence behavioral intention to use m-learning among students at the Malaysian technical universities. The research model was formulated using the constructs used in IS success model. A total of 400 duly completed survey questionnaires was collected via purposeful structured random sampling and self-administrated survey questionnaire. The hypotheses formulated were then tested using SPSS AMOS. The result revealed that the mean tendency of perceived usefulness, information quality, system quality, learning interaction was scored at high levels. Perceived usefulness and learning interaction have positive influence on behavioral intention to use m-learning, while information quality and system quality indicated negative relationship towards behavioral intention to use m-learning. Findings of this study add new understanding as regard to technological factors of m-learning and the level that it influences student learning behavioral intention to use m-learning among higher education students.

Turning industrial visit into rich learning experiences

Industrial visit is able to provide a graduate with added advantage of gaining the better understanding of the key elements implicitly emphasized in the production and operations management course. It enables the student to relate their theoretical knowledge with practical aspects of their study covering the curriculum related to operations management of competitive industrial operations, capacity, process technology, design concepts, supply chain, and other operations management aspects of safety, health, environment, society, and its relations with operations performance. This research is in the assessment and evaluation of student’s experiences and learning gains from their industrial visit. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this research. Assessment of the students learning experience and different skills they gained throughout industrial visit were analyzed. The result shows that the levels of learning experiences, learning gains and student satisfaction with their study visit were all rated high. Exposure of students to study visit equips them with relevant industry knowledge, skills and conceptual learning. With enough insights and awareness of an actual working setting upon graduated to work in an industrial environment, students will be able to quickly adjust to real situation upon joining the workforce.

Export Promotion, Sales and Profits: A Structural Equation Modelling

Export promotion can be a differentiator for sales and profits. More research works are needed to explicitly delve into developing concrete models and multi-dimensional scales to strengthen the theoretical foundations for measuring export performance. This study uses SEM to model on export promotion, firms quality reputation, product and service quality for generating sales with profit. The respondents were the Johor State manufacturing exporters selected from the Federation of Malaysia Manufacturers Directory based on Krejcie and Morgan sampling plan. Respondents answered a self-administered survey questionnaire. Results indicated that the observable variable of export promotion comprises of management of sales promotion activities, selecting and participating in relevant trade fairs, preparation of product literature, and evaluating channel performance. The latent variables that have loaded highly into enhancing firms quality are improving products, providing better service quality and gaining reputation. The latent variables of sales performance that loaded in the observable measure of export sales are export sales efficiency and export sales growth. Profits measure was found to comprise of export profitability and profit margin. Structural equation modelling of good fitting has shown that export promotion enhances firms quality and will lead to higher sales with profits. Future research and practical implications are reported. Keyword : export, export promotion, products, service quality, export performance

Analysis of the higher education funding systems

This paper presents general aspects of funding system at higher education sector. Funding is not simply a mechanism to allocate funds to finance HEIs but an instrument for the government or public authorities to ensure the HEIs administration have the same goals with them, other than that the funding adopted by the government to influence the behaviours of agents. n response to the development of society and economy, the pattern of distribution of public funds in the education sector particularly HE experience a change in the context of increasing competition for public funds because of pressure from the community to enhance quality of education

Balanced scorecard in higher education institutions: What should be consider?

The purpose of this concept paper is to explore factors influence BSC implementation in higher education institutions. Changes in educational systems in todays competitive global environment have prompted several countries to restructure their strategy aligns with the demands for more accountability through financial planning and actual performance. In general, the BSC perspective includes of financial, customer, internal business process and learning and growth perspective. BSC is an innovative performance management system that has been widely applied in large organizations in the world. In fact, Higher education institutions are already using this performance measurement system effectively. BSC may assist organization to monitor the overall performance while simultaneously monitoring the excellent results.