Job selection and scheduling are among the most important decisions for production planning in today’s manufacturing systems. However, the studies that take into account both problems together are scarce. Given that such problems are strongly NP-hard, this paper presents an approach based on two heuristic algorithms for simultaneous job selection and scheduling. The objective is to select a subset of jobs and schedule them in such a way that the total net profit is maximized. The cost components considered include jobs & apos; processing costs and weighted earliness/tardiness penalties. Two heuristic algorithms; namely scatter search (SS) and simulated annealing (SA), were employed to solve the problem for single machine environments. The algorithms were applied to several examples of different sizes with sequence-dependent setup times. Computational results were compared in terms of quality of solutions and convergence speed. Both algorithms were found to be efficient in solving the problem. While SS could provide solutions with slightly higher quality for large size problems, SA could achieve solutions in a more reasonable computational time.

Web 2.0 has changed the way consumers access information. This study aims to investigate the relationship between social media (Watsons’ Facebook page) content and consumers repurchase intention. In addition, it determined whether E-WOM and interactivity can act as the mediating variables between the social media content and repurchase decision. The data were collected through online and offline questionnaires. A total of 146 valid questionnaires were obtained and analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) through the SMART-PLS 3.3.9 software. The findings support the direct effect of social media content on E-WOM, interactivity, and repurchase intention. Moreover, the results confirmed the mediating role of interactivity between social media content and repurchase intention, however, E-WOM does not mediate between social media content and repurchase intention. The present study suggests some managerial implications for beauty brand retailers and provides fundamental strategies related to their social media.

The role of leaders toward the development of entrepreneurship has been fully acknowledged. However, Leaders’ characteristics such as strategic improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy were mainly examined in the private sector. Hence, it is imperative to extend empirical studies to public sector organizations. The present study, therefore, proposed and validated a model linking leaders’ strategic improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy to corporate entrepreneurship in Nigerian higher education institutions (HEIs). Using a structured questionnaire, 220 responses were generated from large HEIs in Kano State, Nigeria. The data of the study was analysed using SmartPLS 3.0 to ascertain both measurement and structural model validity of the model. The results showed that both leaders’ strategic improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy were significantly related to corporate entrepreneurship in HEIs. Implication and limitation of the study; and suggestions for future study are also provided.

The research was developed with main objective of verifying the effect of perceived transaction speed, performance expectancy and social influence on behavioral intention towards mobile payment services of Cambodian users. A research model was developed in which behavioral intention of mobile payment users was influenced directly by perceived transaction speed, performance expectancy and social influence. The effects of perceived transaction speed on performance expectancy and social influence were analyzed in the research. A successful 210 questionnaires were collected from real mobile payment users in Cambodia. It was identified that behavioral intention was significantly and positively influenced by perceived transaction speed, performance expectancy and social influence. However, the effects of perceived transaction speed on performance expectancy and social influence were not statistically significant. Based on these findings, some recommendations to government, commercial banks and private mobile payment providers in Cambodia were proposed.

Improving employee and organizational performance has been the main concern of many organizations for decades and several factors have also been studied as predictors of employee performance in organizations. However, studies that comprehensively measured all the dimensions of employee performance that enhance organizational effectiveness are limited. This paper explored the influence of HRM practices on the employee performance in the Nigerian public sector. Using cross sectional method on 265 participants from local government areas, the findings revealed that HRM practices such as job rotation, job autonomy and career planning had a significant and positive influence on all the three dimensions of employee performance (task, contextual and adaptive performance).

Accounting is part of everyone’s life and affects all stakeholders who are the users of the accounting information. Organizations are created to serve their stakeholders and governments are supposed to govern, regulate and safe guard the interests of these stakeholders. Whilst accounting frequently experiences behavioral and human governance issues, this study explores the level of ethical sensitivity and its relationship with religiosity among final year accounting students in Malaysia. This study addresses the lack and the need to inculcate religiously orientated topics to be embedded and inculcated in the syllabi of bachelor of accounting, because being intrinsically religious makes an individual ethical. A quantitative research method is applied where questionnaires are administered to final year undergraduate accounting students at selected public and private universities in Malaysia. This study utilized Shaub’s ethical sensitivity questionnaire to measure ethical sensitivity and Allport’s Religiosity Orientation Scale to measure religiosity. Students are found to be ethically sensitive and by using Binary Logistic Regression, it is concluded that ethical sensitivity is influenced by intrinsic religiosity but not influenced by social extrinsic religiosity and personal extrinsic religiosity and may give some insights to the prospective employer on the selection criteria of future accountants and auditors, with regards to ethical conduct.

In this paper, we propose an exponential-related function (ER) and develop an intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS model based on the function (IF-TOPSISEF) to solve multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problems in which the performance ratings are expressed in intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs). The main advantage of this new approach is that the exponential-related function is able to represent the aggregated effect of the positive and negative evaluations in the performance ratings of alternatives based on the intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) data. It also serves as a mean for the computations of the separation measures of each alternative from the intuitionistic fuzzy positive and negative ideal solutions to determine the relative closeness coefficients. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the proposed IF-TOPSISEF is applied for the evaluation of the concept designs of a part in an HDD machine (The drill pipe slider), and for some hypothetical examples.

This research explores the significance of sustainability development through the role of environmental disclosure in Jordanian ministries and government departments by focusing on ministries and government departments that are related with the environment. This research presents the relationship between the environmental disclosure in annual reports and its impact on the overall environmental performance in Jordan, with the use of a mixed approach that will provide better quality of research results. The quantitative approach was used to examine the budgets of 22 ministries and government departments. The study was conducted using the time series from 2006 to 2015. The qualitative approach was conducted to raise the issues related to the subject that are not looked at in the quantitative study and to understand the perception of respondents in the ministries and government departments on the factors and items included in annual reports affecting of environmental disclosure and environmental performance in Jordanian governments. The results show a significant relationship between environmental disclosure and environmental performance in Jordanian government. The findings of this paper present new implications for theorists and practitioners of sustainability development by presenting the importance of the impact of environmental disclosure in the ministries and departments and its relationship on environmental performance of the Jordanian government.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to test the factors influencing on spread in Malaysia securitization market. An extension Vink’s model is tested and revalidated to determine and measure the factors influencing spread of securitized firms in Malaysia. The study consists firm characteristics and macroeconomic factors. Firm characteristic factors based on Vink’s model, such as Liquidity and Leverage. In addition, economic and market condition factors such as Interest and Inflation also maintain high impact to spread securitized firms. Ordinary Least square method, Panel data and multiple regression analysis are applied for the study period 2004-2012. The result shows two determinants influence or contribute to the primary market spread and are statistically significant in developing the securitization in Malaysia. It can be concluded that inflation and interest rate significantly contribute to the determinant of primary market spread. From four hypotheses, two hypotheses support that the determinants had a relationship with primary market spread. The result may become a model and benchmark for other ASEAN countries to be used as Malaysia resilient during subprime mortgage in 2008.

The coconut palm or scientific name Cocos nucifera L. has been called as ‘Tree of Life’ because of its multiuse. Malaysia remains as one of top ten coconut producing countries in the world and coconut is one of important industrial crops after oil palm, paddy and rubber. As coconut plays a significant source of income and employment for majority of smallholders, this study has therefore been undertaken in order to recommend strategies for policy decisions and formulate suitable schemes and programs to ameliorate socio-economic conditions of the coconut smallholders. The present study has brought into focus and issues relating to socio economic status, profitability and production of coconut in Batu Pahat district, Johor. A sample of 152 farmers was selected through a random sampling technique. In addition, the study uses Cost Benefit Analysis and multiple regression model to estimate the factors affecting the profitability of coconut production in Malaysia. The results reveal that the profitability was influenced by different factors including land, labor, fungicides, experience, education and extension visit. While the result for cost benefit analysis showed that in the study area, a cultivation of coconut was a profitable enterprise as indicated by benefit cost ratio, ranging from 5.0- 8.4. On that basis, the article proposes some recommendations to improve profitability of coconut smallholders in the future.