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JAQM Volume 10, Issue 4 - December 30, 2015
Contents
Multi-Criteria Group Decision Making in Intuitionistic Fuzzy Environment based on Grey Relational Analysis for Weaver Selection in Khadi Institution
Partha Pratim DEY, Surapati PRAMANIK, Bibhas C. GIRI
The objective of this paper is to present multi-criteria group decision making in intuitionistic fuzzy environment based on grey relational analysis for weaver selection in Khadi institution. Weaver selection is a group decision making process involving qualitative and quantitative criteria. Intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy weighted arithmetic average operator and intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy weighted geometric average operator are employed to aggregate individual opinions of Khadi experts into a group opinion. In the selection process, criteria and weights of the criteria are obtained from Khadi domain experts. The importance of the Khadi experts is presented by linguistic variables that can be expressed by intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Normalized weights of Khadi experts are determined by expected weight value. The rating of an alternative with respect to certain criteria considered by Khadi experts is characterized by linguistic variable that can be represented by intuitionistic trapezoidal fuzzy number. Finally, grey relational analysis is applied for ranking and selection of alternatives to constitute a panel of selected weavers. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated through a numerical example for weaver selection.
Can Africa’s Young Drive Innovation?
Paul I. OJEAGA
Innovation shocks are known to have strong and significant effect on growth particularly when such shocks are attributable to technology changes. Literacy rates in Africa appear to have significantly improved compared to those of the 1970s (World Bank literacy rate statistics 2013). There also appears to be significant use of high level technology in information access across Africa despite poor infrastructure and in many instances impediments to technology, use attributable to high cost of access to telecommunication infrastructure and devices. Growth for Africa has also been mostly attributable to exports in commodities and a gradual development of local markets. This study investigates the effect of Africa’s growing demographic composition on growth and innovation. Quantile regression technique is utilized in the analysis of the results, specifically the Qreg2 Wrapper by Parente and Silva (2013) allowing us to derive covariance matrix estimators that are valid when there is heteroskedasticity and intra-cluster correlation. Results show that Africa’s young and their innovative capacity have strong implications for growth.
Job Satisfaction and University Administrative Staffs: An Exploratory Study
Abul Fazal Md SALAHUDDIN, M.M.A. KHAN, Mohamamd Ohid ULLAH, Nasrin JAHAN
This study was conducted with a view to examine the level of job satisfaction among the administrative staffs of different public universities and determine the significant factors affecting their job satisfaction. To achieve the goals, relevant information were collected using a structured questionnaire. The chi-square test was used to ascertain the association between job satisfaction and other demographic as well as work related factors. The ANOVA and Welch’s test were used to check whether the results obtained were biased by the variability of means and sample sizes or not. The Partial Least Squares Path Model was used to detect potential causal relationship between job satisfaction and other work related factors. Results showed that most of the officers working in the universities were satisfied with their job. They usually worked under less stress with no ambiguity in organizational goal and expectation. Job satisfaction was also found to be significantly associated with different age groups, education levels, service length at the current employment and current position. Finally, the path model revealed that job satisfaction was significantly and positively linked with expectations, goal and feedback factors.
Approximating the Poisson Probability Distribution by the Conway-Maxwell Poisson Distribution
N. E. ARUA, R. M. SAKIA
The aim of this research was to approximate the Poisson distribution by the COM-Poisson as a way to induce equi-dispersion in the model and hence, make some inferences by taking advantage of the close-form moments of the Poisson distribution. This was achieved by relating the approximate moments of the COM-Poisson distribution to that of the Poisson distribution to determine the relationship between their respective parameters. The estimates of the Poisson parameters were found to induce equi-distribution to the observed data. The advantage of the estimation is that closed-form moments of the Poisson can then be used to make inferences on the data. It is recommended that the COM-Poisson distribution should be applied to induce equi-distribution when the data does not conform to the Poisson distribution.
Knowledge Management in Romanian ITC SMES
Sebastian Ion CEPTUREANU
This paper investigates how SMEs use ICT in order to obtain competitive advantage. We developed a questionnaire to which 79 companies responded. The main result obtained refers to the fact that there are connections between the uses of ICT and competitive advantage. Majority of respondents consider ICT a key factor in company development and building competitive advantage on domestic or international markets. Also, there is remnant potential in SMEs strategy regarding ICT who is not used appropriately. The research highlights the main tools of ICT used by Romanian SMEs and because it identifies the need for a frame of reference coherent for SME to manage and use the tools of knowledge economy in the future.
A New Paradigm for Modelling Ordinal Responses in Sample Surveys
Maria IANNARIO, Domenico PICCOLO
A growing interest in the current surveys is focused on human and relational issues collected as ordinal variables. Standard approaches interpret them as manifest expressions of a continuous latent variable and the current methodology is based on the relationship between the cumulative function of the ratings and the subjects’ variables. A different class of models, called CUB, is based on the statement that ordinal responses are a weighted combination of a personal feeling and an inherent uncertainty surrounding the decisional process. In this paper, the novel paradigm is presented and applied to real data sets to show the advantages of this method for analyzing big data in the context of official statistics.
Pitfalls in Testing with Linear Regression Model by OLS. The Recent Case Study of Ramadan Fasting Effects on Sex-Ratio at Birth, and Birth Weight in German Muslim Babies
Claudiu HERTELIU, Bogdan Vasile ILEANU, Marcel AUSLOOS, Giulia ROTUNDO
This is a comment on “Ramadan fasting, sex-ratio at birth, and birth weight: No effects on Muslim infants born in Germany” [Economic Letters, 2015] DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.015. We show that due to some methodological aspects the main conclusions of the above mentioned paper should be a little bit altered.
Resilience in Romanian Small Family Businesses
Eduard Gabriel CEPTUREANU
One of the key characteristics of small family businesses who could enhance profitability frequently mentioned in last years by the academic literature refers to resilience. Increased competition, shift to knowledge based economy, changes in customer behavior and managerial practices are factors that influence significantly SMEs performances. This article analyze the connections between resilience- change management strategy- performances for Romanian small family businesses. The research found that family firms are more likely to emphasize performance using change management strategy than other small and medium companies and also that relationship between change strategy and both turnover and profitability is stronger for these companies.