Business Administration

This paper researched on the causes, current consequences and potential implication of the European debt crisis.
The crisis was found to be a result of factors including international trade imbalances, the effects from the global crisis
2007-2012 and the failure in bailout approaches to cure Europe from the global financial distress. This has caused panic
across the world due to the fact that negative financial situations in peripheral countries in Europe might further demolish the
global financial markets. Even though significant growth was presumed from the introduction of Euro, the financial crisis
resulted in sharp rise in bond yields, CDS, cross-correlation and spillover effects across bond markets of the Eurozone. Yield
curves of the GIIPS countries acted as a cluster; differentiating from stronger and more stable economic forces. In addition,
crisis resulted in significant dip of market confidence on Euro and depreciation of Euro against major currencies. Commodity
prices i.e. spot price of gold rose to almost 300% over the time crisis period, utilized by governments as a defense mechanism
against the economic downturns. Potential problems that might arise from this severe crisis and financial prospects of
European states as well as governments over the world are also assessed and discussed.

Job satisfaction is an important aspect for an organization’s success. A successful organization is the one
with satisfied workers. This research report tried to find out the main factors of job satisfaction and whether
they have any impact on the job satisfaction of the employee of private companies. Firstly the factors
responsible for job satisfaction were identified through a literature review of various articles related to job
satisfaction. A focus group discussion among employees and an exploratory research were also conducted.
Nine Factors were found. Then to analyze the effect of these nine factors, a quantitative research was done.
The employees were selected through convenience sampling. After conducting pretest the main survey was
done. The result indicated that four out of nine factors (Coordination and Leave Facility, Reward & Future
Opportunities, Vision of the Company, Work Process, and Health & Insurance Policy) have significant
influence on Job satisfaction. The study concluded that an effective organization will make sure that there is
a spirit of cooperation along with coordination among employees and sense of commitment towards
achieving the goals and satisfaction within the sphere of its influence.

Contradictory views persist among neoliberals, social democrats and social liberals regarding relationships
between free market and the nation State. In one hand, neoliberals suggest that the development of the free
market puts constraints on the role of the state. Yet empirical evidence to support this view is lacking and range
of commentators show not only resilience but even the expansion of state spending. Moreover, the article
highlights that the State has welcomed globalization for the betterment of the society and subsequently it is
restructuring itself to accommodate the changes to be effective on a desired way.

Often we observe that the third world countries always top the corruption indices compare to the developed West.
This incident naturally leads to the question of why - Is it because the third world countries are significantly
more corrupt than the developed countries? Or, is there any other reason behind this issue?--these are the
questions that are explored in this article. To be more specific, this article critically explores contemporary
arguments regarding inherent issues of corruption and various aspects of measurement techniques of corruption
indices (e.g. definition issue, identification problem, clandestine nature of corruption, perceptual problem,
validity and reliability of corruption data). Thus, by examining the innate complex nature of corruption, the
article argue that, in many cases, in comparison to the developed West, corruption of developing nations may not
be as deep as the corruption indices, which are also contested, accuse. In addition, the article emphasizes that the
corruption issue is specifically targeted towards the third world countries more so than the developed countries.

Islamic banking is based on profit and loss mechanism where the use of interest is prohibited. Unlike conventional banks, these banks do not charge a specific rate of interest, rather provides financing in exchange for profit sharing. However, there are studies claiming that, in practice, Islamic banking is same as conventional banking with regard to the use of interest. It is also claimed that, Islamic deposits are not interest-free, but are closely attached to conventional deposits. On this background, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between pricing in Islamic banks vis-à-vis conventional banks by taking the case of Bangladesh. We have used monthly data during the period of 2009-2013. The findings of the study showed that, there is no statistically significant difference between the monthly average lending rates of Islamic banks and conventional banks. However, there is significant difference between deposit rates. The existence of causal relationship was inconclusive, and requires further analysis.

Economic Value Added (EVA) is a value based performance measure that gives importance on value creation by the management for the owners. Profit maximization as a concept is age-old, wealth maximization is matured and value maximization is today’s wisdom though somebody is prescribing cash economic value added and some other related ideas that are obviously offshoot of EVA. Stern Stewart’s EVA raises storm in corporate world and gives a new way to think about rewarding management. But, using EVA is not so simple as traditional information system will not provide sufficient information to compute true EVA. For implementing EVA as a performance measurement tool, most of the organizations need their tailored (customized) EVA that is very much industry specific and for doing all of these accurately, an EVA team is required who has expertise over this rich value based measure. In this paper, I have tried to explain EVA theoretically; its origination, definition, ways to make it tailored, adjustments required, scope and some other related issues. The paper may be termed as EVA Manual where a layman will learn what he/she should have to do to install an EVA system in their organization in place of traditional systems.

Vendor selection is a strategic issue in supply chain management for any organization to identify the right supplier. Such selection in most cases is based on the analysis of some specific criteria. Most of the researches so far concentrate on multi-criteria decision making analysis. Though many approaches have been proposed, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is the most well known as it can deal with a very complex criteria structure. In AHP, the selected criteria are ranked and organized in a hierarchical order from generic to specific to formulate the problem. Though this order of ranking is acceptably logical, it incurs a huge computational complexity when a large number of alternatives are considered as the selection criteria. Moreover, the AHP may generate wrong selection due to computational error. To address these limitations, a novel model namely vendor selection using fuzzy c-means algorithm and analytic hierarchy process (VFA) is presented in this paper by integrating the fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) algorithm with analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The outcome of the proposed VFA algorithm is compared with the basic AHP algorithm and VFA outperforms the basic AHP and reduces the computational complexity of AHP by a factor of 7.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting is an embracing issue today that becomes the social perspective of accounting and reporting. Still, the international standard setters are lagging behind to bring this issue within the legal framework of accounting and reporting. As there is a huge demand from the stakeholders for such information, it becomes a common area of voluntary disclosure at the time of reporting. The paper targets to highlight the improvement of CSR reporting in Bangladesh over a period of 6 years through the content analysis of financial statements of DSE 20 companies. Content analysis has helped us to identify a couple of common categories where most of the firms do social reporting. The analysis is based on secondary sources of information; i.e., published financial statements of DSE 20 companies for the year 2000 and 2006. Different descriptive statistics are used to organize and analyze the findings of the study. It concludes that the pattern of such reporting is far away from expectation; still, there is a positive indication that the volume and quality of reporting is increasing.

Vendor selection methodology is a highly researched area in supply chain management literature and a very significant decision taken by supply chain managers due to technological advances in the manufacturing process. Such research has two basic dimensions: one is related to the identification of variables affecting the performance of the vendors and the other deals with the methodology to be applied. Most of the research conducted in this area deal with the upfront selection of vendors. However, it is very common to have a list of dedicated vendors due to the development of sophisticated production technologies like just in time (JIT), a lean or agile manufacturing process where continuous flow of materials is a requirement. This paper addresses the issue of selecting the optimal vendor from the internal database of a company. Factor analysis, analytical hierarchy process and regression analysis is used in an integrated way to supplement the vendor selection process. The methodology presented here is simply a proposal where every possible room for adjustment is available.

Global Financial Crisis is not a sudden and recent development. It is the darkest chapter of extreme capitalism that the whole world witnessed and permitted throughout the last couple of years. It becomes urgent refinement of the concept but the way it is heading was unexpected. The turmoil in the international financial markets of advanced economies that started around mid-2007 has exacerbated substantially since August 2008. The financial market crisis has led to the collapse of major financial institutions and is now beginning to impact the real economy in the advanced economies. As this crisis is unfolding, credit markets appear to be drying up in the developed world. With the substantive increase in financial globalization and deregulation, how much will these developments affect India and other Asian emerging market economies is really matters for the policy makers today. This paper addresses this issue explicitly to look at the impact of global financial crisis on different sectors of South Asian countries with special focus on India and Bangladesh. It also considers the policy makers attitude towards the measures taken combating the financial crisis. Globalization exerts a significant threat due to the requirement of selective measures taken across different sectors depending on the extent of damage. The conceptualization stage of the paper is originated from the facts as prevailed in the market and finalization comes from the critical reasoning though in economics it is believed that every explanation may be true.

In Bangladesh, the fundamental problem behind arresting the revenue deficit is the rising expenditure unmatched by corresponding means of finance. Of total revenue, the revenue from non-tax sources is nearly one-fifth and its share in GDP has shown a stable trend over the years. This paper mainly focuses on the study of non-tax revenue performance in Bangladesh. The contribution of non-tax revenue, although erratic in terms of growth rate, has shown substantial increase in terms of absolute amount over the period, 1997-98 to 2006-07. Although, various reform initiatives have been taken to improve the tax performance, the initiatives are highly insignificant in case of non-tax revenue. The performance of non-tax revenue can significantly be improved through effective and efficient policy measures, which may help the country to cope with the fiscal imbalance in resource mobilization.

IFRS 4 is the first international guidelines for insurance industry issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) on 31 March 2004 as the first step in the IASB’s project to achieve convergence of widely varying accounting practices in insurance industries around the world. It applies to contracts in which an entity takes on insurance risk either as an insurer or a reinsurer. While the IASB has set the direction, companies do have considerable room for maneuver in key areas ranging from the adoption of new accounting bases for insurance contracts to the use of shadow accounting and floating discount rates to achieve some level of matching of assets and liabilities. The paper put focuses on the implications and application of IFRS 4 and revealed a worrying lack of preparedness on part of different countries in Asia.

Sophisticated manufacturing process demands a strong supplier base for satisfying customers with quality product at a cheaper price. Thus, supplier selection has got significance in supply chain management literature and a lot of research studies are conducted in this single area. Technology leaded sophisticated production process and bitter competition may be the reason that attracts practitioners for selecting a dedicated list of promising suppliers. Most of the previous studies concentrate on the selection of either criteria or methods used to select right supplier(s). The paper also caters to these two issues. It focuses on the methodology of selecting the right supplier(s) from the list of suppliers. Criteria have been selected in line with the requirements and some methods have been used to choose the right supplier(s). Here, criteria have been translated into three different indexes from different perspectives and ultimately supplier selection is based on the index values and their interrelationships tested through multiple regression analysis. This is the addition to the current state of knowledge where suppliers’ perspective is also considered strategically at the time of selecting the right suppliers. Finally, the paper concludes that suppliers’ performance largely depends on experience and satisfaction. And buyers should give sufficient importance on these two factors at the time of selecting the right supplier.  The paper considers these two factors through the development of two different indexes comprising relevant criteria under each of the factors where the practitioners enjoy enough flexibility of making its customized.

Corporate governance becomes a sensitive issue in recent days due to its perceived importance amid of bad governance. This decade witnessed a couple of corporate scandals that raises the necessity of more stringent code of corporate governance. In Bangladesh, the SEC requires every listed company to report their corporate governance status through a prescribed form. This paper targets to study the degree of compliance. In this regard, financial statement of all listed companies in Dhaka Stock Exchange for the year 2005 has been collected and a content analysis is done. The paper concludes a worrying result as the degree of compliance is very poor. Regulators need to rethink on this issue so that both quantity and quality of compliance can be improved.

Fuzzy Front End (FFE) is an intra-organizational process that supplements innovation in product or project development due to enhanced global competition and pressure on reducing product prices keeping the quality either intact or improved. With the increasing complexity in business processes, a successful product development process becomes rare and is more important than ever before. Thus, sophisticated methodologies have been developed and used to address such situation. The paper focuses on the basic methodology of FFE, its scope, technicality attached to it and its application with the rationalities. Readers are expected to be benefited as a first timer in the FFE implementation process.