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KEY DETERMINANTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCES INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES LISTED IN TAIWAN AS AN EXAMPLE

Ching-Lin Huang, Hao-Wen Shih

This paper intends to evaluate the weightings of the key determinants to organizational performances of information technology (IT) companies listed in Taiwan. Three IT companies, representative of the listed peers in Taiwan, are selected as the sample. The Analytic Network Process (ANP) was employed to analyze the relationship between criteria and identify the key factors and weightings of individual criterion. The results indicate that the weightings for R&D capability and innovative marketing were both over 0.2 and the weightings for intellectual capital accumulation and corporate governance were both above 0.1 according to the academia and industry professionals. In fact, both the academia and practitioners regard R&D capability, innovative marketing, intellectual capital accumulation, corporate governance and IT application as the key success factors to the IT companies listed in Taiwan. R&D capability is considered to be particularly important. The analytical results on the key determinants and priorities of organizational performances may serve as a template for management decisions by IT companies listed in Taiwan.

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND MARKETING MANAGEMENT OF A MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT

Aliya Parvin

Unilever Bangladesh Limited, a fast moving consumer goods company, engages in the manufacture and distribution of home care products, personal care products, and foods. It offers household care, fabric cleaning, skin cleansing, skin care, oral care, hair care, and personal grooming products, as well as tea based beverages. The company was formerly known as Lever Brothers Bangladesh Ltd. and changed its name in December 2004. Unilever Bangladesh Limited was founded in 1964 and is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Unilever Bangladesh Limited operates as a subsidiary of Unilever Public Limited Company. Unilever believes profitable growth should also be responsible growth. That approach lies at the heart of their business model, driven by sustainable living and the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. It guides their approach to how they do business and how they meet the growing consumer demand for brands that act responsibly in a world of finite resources. Their business model begins with consumer insight that informs brand innovation, often with partners in their supply chain, to create products they take to market supported by marketing and advertising across a range of distribution channels.

ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS IN UGANDA

John F. Magolo, Benon C. Basheka and Epiphany O. Picho

Well-tested and implemented Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can and should be an integral part of climate change impacts management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and rehabilitation).  ICTs can play an important role in the collection, retrieval, dissemination, and storage of information, to ensure that it is available to those who need it, at the time and place it is needed. However, access to adequate infrastructure is a prerequisite for the adoption and use of ICTs in risk reduction and disaster response coordination. The implementation of ICTs for climate change impacts management in Uganda is uneven among regions, and the lack of access to modern and up-to-date ICT infrastructure has severely hampered the effectiveness of a disaster management authority to competently respond to identified hazards. This therefore calls for increase in the amount of ICT infrastructure information gathering, hazard and vulnerability assessments, early warning alerting, quick response capability, and the coordination of rehabilitation activities both locally and nationally.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT); Climate Change Impacts (CCI); Management

The Determinants of Sudan’s Trade Balance: An Empirical Investigation, 1970-2014

Safiat Ali Saber Ali

This paper employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to co- integration and the associated error correction model (ECM), to examine the factors that determine the Sudan’s trade balance in the long and the short-run over the period 1970-2014. Such factors are exchange rate, cost of finance, credit to the private sector, real per capita GDP, inflation rate and domestic investment.In the long run exchange rate, inflation and real per capita GDP exert negative effects, while cost of finance, credit to the private sector and investment have positive effect on trade balance. All coefficients have the expected sign and statistically significant except the coefficient of the exchange rate which has the wrong sign.This is because devaluation/depreciation of domestic currency increases the cost of local as well as imported production inputs which leads to an increase in total imports and then deteriorates the balance of trade. Also, the rigidities that characterize the Sudanese economy is one of the factors that leads to this inverse relationship between exchange rate and trade balance. Although we could not find any short-run relationship between the explanatory variables and trade balance in Sudan, these variables are found to be related in the long-run. The results indicate that there is weak relationship between investment and trade balance which is attributed usually to the prevailing situations of political instability, prolonged civil wars, and other factors such as uncertainty over agricultural leases which resulted in declining investment, particularly in major agricultural projects.