beSMART

ISLAMIC AND WESTERN APPROACHES TO HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS: A PRACTICAL APPROACH.

    AISHA SALIM JUMA ALARIMY

This paper illustrates human resource management from both the Islamic (based on Al-Quran and sunnah) and western (based on classical and humanistic theories) perspectives. This paper has been written based on the following objectives; (a) to compare the western and the Islamic perspectives to human resource management; and (2) to highlight the best human resource approach that can bring about effectiveness and efficiency in managing human resources in Muslim organizations. A purely qualitative approach of literature review was done to compare the two (western and Islamic) approaches of human resource management. The Islamic human resource management is derived from Islamic principles which are guide by Al-Quran and sunnah. In this line, the general understanding is that human beings cannot be guided by what they think is right but they need Divine guidance from Allah SWT in the management of their organizations. Today, most organizations are adopting the western approaches to human resource management than the Islamic approaches. It should be noted that Western approaches to human resource management are just a component of the Islamic approaches. It is recommended that modern organizations need to use more of the Islamic approaches in managing human resource than the western approaches.

Human Resource Management, Western and Islamic Approaches, Muslim Organizations.

BUILDING A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR IT PROJECT SUCCESS: CIOS’ PERSPECTIVE

ABDULAZIZ I. ALMAJED, PAM MAYHEW

Organizations all over the world have invested a great deal of resources in achieving goals though the successful implementation of major IT projects, which can have a significant effect at the organizational level. Therefore, the importance of project success continuously motivates researchers to investigate this development, and many project success frameworks have been proposed by different scholars. This paper presents a new conceptual framework for project success in Saudi Arabian public organizations from the CIOs’ perspective, based on the researchers’ previous studies as this paper is part of ongoing work. The proposed framework consists of three components: the critical success factors as independent variables, the organizational culture as a moderator variable, and the project success criteria as a dependent variable.

Project, success, framework; CIO; public; Saudi.

INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERING AND OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE: THE ROLE OF INNOVATION CAPABILITY

UNTUNG SETIYO PURWANTO AND RAIHAN

This study aims to examine the effects of industrial clustering (four factors) on operational performance (three aspects) and the mediating role of innovation capability (four types) in this relationship. This study considers the variables being investigated as latent variables. A cross-sectional survey design was applied involving 238 Indonesian manufacturing SMEs. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The finding confirms that industrial clustering is critical for enhancing SMEs operational performance and innovation capability as well. This study highlights the importance of the mediating role of innovation capability when examining the relationship between industrial clustering and SMEs operational performance.The results imply that SMEs need to search for external resources to enhance their innovation capability and operational performance.

Industrial clustering; innovation capability; operational performance; manufacturing SMEs

DEVELOPMENT OF WEB-BASED TOURISM DECISION SUPPORT
SYSTEM IN TALAUD ISLAND REGENCY

HOXY RYNER TALUAY, KUDANG BORO SEMINAR, DANIEL R.O. MONINTJA

Some factors that cause tourism growth in Talaud island regency is not optimal were the promotion pattern still use tradisional method and there is no decision support system to determine tourism destination. However, there is a need to design a web-based tourism decision support system in Talaud island regency using analytic hierarchy process method (AHP). System was designed by adapted four step of system development life cycle (SDLC) model waterfall. The system using survey data from 11 experts and tourism document data was modeled by unified modeling language (UML). The result shows that five criterias and 29 sub criterias which determine 14 tourism destinations in Talaud island regency, design system contains function that showing tourism information and decision supporting function, and data processing function for the operator and expert. Decision supporting function with its support function were successfully used to be implemented on its programming language of hypertext preprocessor (PHP) and structured query language (SQL). The system can be used to wed-based decision support system in Talaud island regency to provide supporting decisions, promoting tourism product, delivery information, facilitate communication between tourist, and tourist with tourism administrator. 

AHP, Destination, SDLC, UML

STATIC AND DYNAMIC THEORIES OF TRADE INTEGRATION
REVISITED

T.U.I. PEIRIS1, M. AZALI, M.S. HABIBULLAH, AND A. HASSAN

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) are considered as one of the major growth stimulant factors in the contemporary world due to their potentiality in generating welfare gains. When assessing welfare effects of RTAs, until recently, the attention of most researchers confined to the static theory, which addresses the resource allocation effect of trade integration (TI). Even though dynamic theory roots back to the same era that static theory was grounded, the importance of attending to the dynamic efficiency of RTAs became popular in the recent past. Findings of this survey indicate that both theories independently provide a significant assessment on the desirability of RTAs. Thus, this study emphasizes the requirement of attending to both static and dynamic theories when assessing the desirability of RTAs.

Static theory, Dynamic theory, Regional trade agreements and Trade integration.

THE EFFECTS OF THE ACCUMULATION OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: USING PRODUCTIVITY AS THE MODERATOR

YU-JE LEE1*, MEI-FEN WU2 AND CHIA-HUI CHAO3

　　The primary objective of this study is to verify the effects of the accumulation of intellectual capital on organizational performance of Taiwan-listed IC design houses; while using productivity as the moderator, and interviewing management staff of section-supervisor level and above of these design houses as the research subjects. The simple Random Sampling method is used to sample the population, while Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to verify the overall research model and the fitting effects of its Structural Model and Measurement Model. The research results show that: concerning the effect of the intellectual capital accumulation of Taiwan-listed IC design houses on organizational performance, the "productivity" variable has a significant positive moderating or interactive effect, which also implies that productivity is a catalyst in the effect of intellectual capital accumulation on organizational performance of the Taiwan-listed IC design houses.

Intellectual Capital, Organizational Performance, Productivity

FORCE-POSITION CONTROLLER DESIGN FOR 4 DOF’S REHABILITATION ROBOT ARM USING PSO ALGORITHM

       Asst. Prof. Dr. MOHAMMED Y. HASSAN , Mr. ZEYAD A. KARAM

Human limbs disability such as full or partial loss of function of the upper limb is a common impairment in the elderly and due to strokes, sports injuries, and occupational injuries. The conventional rehabilitation approach is to assist patient to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADL) through a set of pre-programmed trajectories. Therapist performs the rehabilitation program to the patient.
This work focuses on designing, simulating and implementing a 4 DoF’s (3 active joints), non-wearable rehabilitation robot for arm movements. The nonlinear mathematical model of the robot includes kinematic and dynamic models for the 4 DoF’s (3 active joints), is developed and simulated using MATLAB. The friction term of robot actuators with the external disturbances of the patient limb on the robot links are considered. Intelligent Force-Position controllers incorporated PD-like Fuzzy Logic position control are designed to track the required medical trajectories for the simulated and implemented robot. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to tune the gains of the position part of the Force-Position controller’s to reach minimum position error, minimum oscillation and minimum overshoot in the position of each joint.

Force–Position control, Rehabilitation robot, Intelligent controller, Robot dynamics, Medical trajectories, PSO algorithm, Advantech card.

A STUDY OF THE INNOVATIVE PRODUCT DESIGN FOR WETLAND PROTECTION

RUI-LIN LIN

Now there are only 0.03% of area in Taiwan are wetlands. These small places are the habitats of many animals and plants. This study chose Taiwan’s 10 most beautiful wetlands through online voting and the animals and plants in these places and combined them with the concept of expandable daily commodities to create graphic books and design some creative literature for wetlands, which deliver the ideas of valuing the resources we have and reducing pollution and waste. The aim is to provide people different experiences of wetlands in Taiwan to inspire them to care more about wetlands and conservation.

Wetland protection, Innovative product design.

A BLACKBOARD-BASED INTELLIGENT FRAMEWORK FOR

DYNAMIC TEST PLAN OF CLIENT/SERVER APPLICATIONS

HUEY-DER CHU

To assist a solution to the problem of the test environment spanning multiple platforms, this paper proposes a decision support framework with the blackboard model to integrate all complementary features into a single automated test environment for multi-platform client/server applications. Before testing client/server applications, the input into this framework are testing tools with different approaches and client sites which are going to run the test. The planning agent will make a decision dynamically and produce a testing plan to allocate testing tasks to these testing tools to client sites.
   Two complementary features for testing client/server applications are illustrated in this paper to demonstrate how the framework works. The concept of mobile agents is applied to launch the test driver to different client sites, execute the tests and bring back the test results from client sites as well as the trace file from the server site for inspecting the interaction behavior among clients. Based on the multicast framework, the same test data can be broadcasted to multiple clients sites to run the tests simultaneously and the test results can be returned from client sites for examining the problem of repeated executions.

Blackboard Model, Automated Test Execution, Mobile Agents, Chat System

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE DETERMINANTS OF PROFITABILITY OF COMMERCIAL BANKS AND ISLAMIC BANKS IN KUWAIT

Dr. AHMAD KHATIB, Dr. JEHAD YASIN

This paper empirically examines the determinants of commercial and Islamic banks profitability in Kuwait. Factors that may impact bank profitability such as bank size, money supply, economic openness, per capita income and banks debt ratio are considered in the analysis. The data used in this study is unbalanced and covers two commercial banks and two Islamic banks over the period of 1999 to 2013. All banks data are retrieved from the bank’s annual reports. Other data are obtained from Kuwait’s Statistical Abstract and United Nation resources. Pool data regression models are used to examine the determinants of commercial and Islamic banks profitability in Kuwait as measured by return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA). Empirical findings point out to a significant link between the two dependent variables and some of the independent variables such as bank size which is captured by total bank assets and degree of economy modernization defined as money/GDP ratio or M2/GDP. Another positive relationship is between banks profitability and a measure of economic openness defined as trade/GDP. However with regard to per capita income (YD) the relationship with profitability ratios was negative and this is an indication that as people’s income increasing it will be less likely for them to borrow money from banks and hence reduces banks profitability.

Commercial banks, Islamic banks, financial development, banks performance and profitability.   JEL Classification Numbers:G21, A10, E5