Historically, cash dividends are the most important form of payout policy; however, they have been losing popularity relative to share repurchases. This paper examines the signaling effect of the payout decisions namely, cash dividends and share repurchases by BSE 500 index companies. It attempts to uncover the underlying forces behind the firm’s choices of payout policy in the Indian context. Using the standard ‘Event Standard Methodology’, a strong case of positive signaling is reported in case of repurchase announcements vis-a-vis cash dividend announcements. It is observed that cash dividends are not perceived by investors as positive signals as they prefer their earnings to be retained by the companies for growth prospects. In case of share repurchases, the existence of undervaluation, signaling and wealth transfer hypotheses is reported, consistent with the fact the share repurchases are welcomed by the Indian companies. The results would provide insights into the economics of the choice between cash dividends versus share repurchases as payout mechanism adopted by the sample companies. The findings would also be useful to the academia as well as industry in understanding the payout practice and the extent to which the Indian managers use the assumptions, models and decision rules regarding payout.

This study investigates the quantitative relationship between knowledge based view (i.e. empowering employees, promoting confidence, coding rules) and sustainability competitive advantage (i.e. market, customer, financial) within the banking industry of Iran. A valid research instrument was utilized to conduct a survey of 150 top- and middle-level managers from Mellat bank of Iran. With a response rate of 81.3 percent, 122 questionnaires are returned; the number of valid and usable questionnaires was 101. In order to determine validity of questionnaire, the content validity was used and Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire (KBV questionnaire 0.886, SCA questionnaire 0.843). Utilizing the structural equation modeling, and after a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, it was found that KBV had the greatest effect on the market centered SCA, while it had the least influence on the customer centered.

Nowadays, customer is believed to be the most precious asset for any organization and building a long term relationship between firms and customers plays essential role for the success of organizations. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between after-sales service quality and customer satisfaction in a firm named Setareh Nik Aria Yadak whose primary responsibility is to provide after-sales services for public transportation. The study selects a sample of 252 out of 730 customers in 2015 who received their services from this firm. The survey designs a questionnaire in Likert scale, which consists of four items of quality, responsiveness, speed and cost of services. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.79, which validates the quality of the survey. Using Spearman correlation test, the study has detected a positive and meaningful relationships between four components of after-sales services and customer satisfaction.

During the past few years, many people have used point of sales for purchasing goods and services. Point of sales tends to provide a reliable method for making purchases in stores. Implementation of point of sales may reduce depreciation cost of automated telling machines and helps banks increase their productivities. Therefore, for bank managers, it is important to provide high quality services. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure quality service using SERVQUAL scale. The study first extracts six factors including Trust, Responsiveness, Reliability, Empathy, Tangibles and getting insight for future development through the implementation of structural equation modeling. Next, it has implemented structural equation modeling and realizes that all components had positive impacts on customer satisfaction.

During the past few years, many people have been interested in purchasing goods and services via point of sales (POS). They have also wished to pay their bills, withdraw cash or transfer funds using automated telling machines (ATMs). These two facilities help banks’ customers carry less amount of cash and do their daily banking activities any time even when the banks are closed. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of nearly 600 POS and ATM units associated with Bank Melli Iran located in city of Tehran, Iran. Using data envelopment analysis, the study has disclosed that only small portions of POS and ATM are working efficiently.

This study interrogates the meaning and conceptual nuances of human capital accounting and additionally highlights its empirical dimensions. A critical aspect of the concerns of the study borders on the validity of an interdisciplinary interpretation of the trajectories of human capital accounting. The methodology of the study is purposively the literature review. The study has attempted to underscore the essential aspects of the critical developments in the subject matter of human capital accounting. It has also tried to draw attention to the shortcomings of earlier studies, while showing the strengths of the influential types of such previous researches. Finally, the interdisciplinary thesis of the problem of the study was upheld, as having a large measure of validity. The empirical import of the concept of human capital accounting however, remains contentions. Consequently, continuous interdisciplinary research-engagement is recommended as an outcome of the study.

This study deals with appreciating the role of both governance system and executives cognitive and attitudinal aspects in the innovation decision-making. After discussing the theoretical relationship between board independence and CEOs attitude and behavior, we are advancing an empirical model testing the correlation between the managers’ attitude and behavior towards innovation and his psychological commitment level. The CEOs commitment bias and attitude constituent were measured using questionnaire. The data analysis was performed using the Bayesian network method on 220 Tunisian executives. Empirical results confirm the theoretical prediction and shows that processing with persuasive mechanism does not have an effective role on the alignment of the manager’s attitude and behavior in key tasks such innovation decision. CEOs authentic behavior was more related to an important manager involvement in this behavior rather than to persuasive effort committed by outside directors to make him contract this action. CEOs attitude and behavior towards innovation are shown related to commitment link “manager-task” and suggests that the board of directors plays no role in the CEOs discretion management. We argue that persuasive approach is not a sufficient path in behavior and interests alignment; yet, it should be applied with the commitment approach for understanding manager decision-making.

Macroeconomic stability plays essential role on the performance of governments and attaining economic development. Therefore, governments can displace the demand curve and achieve different goals such as economic development and growth by considering financial instruments, which are available for them. Thus, the present study aims at investigating the effect of government spending on the stability of macro-economy for the time interval 1979-2011 using the Johansen-Juselius method. The results indicate that the variables of goods price index and services as well as government investment spending had positive effects and variables of exchange free rate, government consumption spending, and government tax revenues had negative effects on economic development.

Accountability is instrumental for ensuring that a trusting relationship exists between shareholders and management of corporations in order that there will be enhanced investor confidence. Towards this end, corporate governance measures are instituted to make the executives or management of business organizations accountable for their stewardships of the organizational resources or shareholders’ investments. It is against that backdrop that the Securities and Exchange Commission in Ghana has also developed a code on best practices on corporate governance. However, the extent to which the provisions in the code are consistent with the theoretical and empirical literature is unknown. This paper, therefore, sought to explore whether or not gaps exist between the corporate governance policy and practices in Ghana and extant literature. This paper achieves this by examining characteristics of the board as they exist in Ghana in relations to the literature. The characteristics examined in this paper include responsibilities, optimal size, independence, board composition, and audit and compensation committees of boards. Recommendations are made based on the literature to address gaps that exist.

The theory of constraints (TOC) is a management tool, which considers any manageable system as being limited in reaching more of its objectives by some constraints. According to TOC, there is always, at least, one single constraint, and TOC implements a concentrating process to detect the constraint and restructure the remaining of the organization around it. This paper presents an overview of different perspectives of TOC and its implementation in different industries such as project management, quality management, outsourcing, product mix, make-to-buy, accounting, banking and health care, etc. The results indicate that the method has been extensively implemented in different areas of accounting.