The primary objective of the research paper is to provide some insights on the concepts of intellec-tual capital and its important dimensions alongside to investigate the possible association between intellectual capital and attainment of competitive advantage. This study focuses on Iraqi hotel industry which is an under-research area in the context of intellectual capital and its relationship with competitive advantage. An adapted questionnaire was utilized to collect the responses from top and middle level managers of four and five-star hotels in Iraq. The reliability and validity of data collec-tion instrument were measured through Cronbach’s alpha, Composite Reliability and Average Var-iance Extracted respectively. The competitive advantage was then regressed against Human, Rela-tional and Structural capital by application of Partial Least Square methodology. Results of the study showed a positive and strong connotation among intellectual capital and attainment of competitive advantage. The human capital had the highest contribution for competitive advantage in hotel sector of Iraq. The top management of hotels should take interest to develop, maintain and retain human capital to attain competitive advantage over competitors.

An effective operations of a projection spot welding (PSW) machine is closely related to the effec-tiveness of the maintenance. Timely maintenance can prevent failures and improve reliability and maintainability of the machine. Therefore, establishing the maintenance frequency for the welding machine is one of the most important tasks for plant engineers. In this regard, reliability analysis of the welding machine can be used to establish preventive maintenance intervals (PMI) and to identify the critical parts of the system. In this reliability and maintainability study, analysis of the PSW machine was carried out. The failure and repair data for analysis were obtained from automobile manufacturing company located in Uzbekistan. The machine was divided into three main sub-systems: electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic. Different distributions functions for all sub-systems was tested and their parameters tabulated. Based on estimated parameters of the analyzed distribu-tions, PMI for the PSW machines sub-systems at different reliability levels was calculated. Finally, preventive measures for enhancing the reliability of the PSW machine sub-systems are suggested.

The objective of this research is to determine the factors that can effectively predict adoption of mobile commerce in Nigeria. In doing this, 192 questionnaires were analyzed using Smart PLS-SEM. While majority of previous studies revealed negative relationship between perceived risk and system usage, the result of this study however indicated a positive relationship with mobile commerce adoption especially with the incorporation of perceived fun that tends to make mobile commerce platforms to be enjoyable. The study provides further insights into how perceived risk and fun can be used to increase the rate of adoption of mobile commerce by coming up with policies that can be used to improve the platform while marketability of mobile commerce can be enhanced.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of total quality management (TQM) between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and SME export performance in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. This study was originated from the fact that only a few studies have examined on how the firm’s intangible resources and capabilities such as EO and TQM drive SMEs’ export performance. Some questionnaires in Likert scale were used to collect the data and 364 usable responses were received from the owner/managers of exporting SMEs. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for the data analysis. The findings reveal significant relationship between EO and TQM with SME export performance. Furthermore, this study found the complementary mediating role of TQM between EO and SME export performance of manufacturing sector of Pakistan. This study has implications for owner/managers of SMEs. The results offer a better understanding regarding EO and TQM implementation to SMEs owner / managers. Thus, owner/managers of SMEs can take better decisions for the implementation of TQM practices. Furthermore, to the best of researcher’s knowledge, this study is the first work, which examines Pakistan`s SMEs export performance in association with the TQM as the mediating factor between EO and SME export performance.

This paper has been retracted.

Organizational commitment plays an essential role on the success of service businesses as well as municipalities. One of the primary challenges on such firms is to face with rumors and silence, properly. In fact, organizational rumors and silence are two important issues which influence on employees’ organizational commitment. This paper studies the relationship between organizational silence and commitment by controlling organizational rumors. The study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some employees who worked for a municipality firm in Iran. The results indicate that organizational silence had a negative relationship with organizational commitment by controlling organizational rumors. Likewise, without controlling organizational rumors, the impact of organizational silence or organizational commitment was increased, negatively. Also, the re-search indicates that there was a strong significant relationship between organizational silence and organizational rumors and organizational silence could improve organizational rumors, significantly.

Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is a compound system containing essentials like workplac-es, computerized storing and recovery systems, and material control devices such as automatons and automated guided vehicles (AGVs). In this paper, an attempt is made to study concurrently the machine and vehicle planning features in an FMS for minimization of the makespan. Planning is concerned with the distribution of partial resources to tasks over time and it is a resolution making procedure. It associates the processes, time, cost and overall purposes of the company. In this work, Nawaz-Enscore-Ham (NEH) heuristic algorithm is implemented to solve the scheduling problems in FMS. Eighty two problems and their existing solutions with different approaches are examined. The preliminary results indicate that the NEH heuristic algorithm provides better solu-tions with less computational time.

This research is conducted for evaluating the impact levels of determinants affecting the differences of financial statements of FDI firms under Vietnamese Accounting (VA) and International Ac-counting (IAS/IFRS). Data were collected by conducting survey of FDI firms and audit firms for the period from 2015 to 2017. Based on the quantitative data, multiple regression was employed for showing the influence levels of determinants on the variable of differences of financial reports. The results show that seven determinants had positive relationships with the differences of financial statements prepared by FDI under Vietnamese accounting and IAS/IFRS. Based on the findings, some recommendations are given for reducing fee of conversion of financial statements from Vietnamese accounting to international accounting, increasing the comparability of financial statements and improving information quality of financial statements.

It is a commonly visible scenario in todays’ market, especially in small and medium sized enterpris-es (SMEs), where the focus is on quantity rather than quality. This paper explains the common high rejection problem of a SME and how the productivity levels were enhanced after the successful implementation of Six-Sigma DMAIC methodology. Once the project completion industry was able to acquire many tangible and intangible benefits, this paper offers a systematic step by step illustration of DMAIC methodology to help the other firms start similar productivity improvement initiatives.

With the rapid increase of energy demand, it is becoming increasingly important to obtain accurate energy demand forecasts. To incorporate long time causal relationships, autoregressive with exoge-nous regression components models have received increasing attention from many researchers in this field. These are linear models applied through hybrid methodology of time series and econo-metrics, however, some recent studies find evidences that nonlinear models outperform over linear ones in long term peak demand forecasting. This paper proposed a nonlinear Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Inputs (N-ARIMAX) model to forecast sectoral peak demand using a case study of Iran. The results indicate that significant improvements in forecasting accuracy are obtained with the proposed models compared to the existing models.

This paper attempts to predict financial distress companies in the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors in Malaysia using financial distress companies as the dependent variable and financial ratios and macroeconomic variables as the independent variables. Logit Analysis was used as the analysis procedure because ratios do not have to be normal if it is used. It is also suitable when the dependent variable is binary in nature. Furthermore, it can also provide the probability of a company being financially distressed. This study found that the independent variables that can be used to predict financial distress companies in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia were total assets turnover ratio, current ratio, net income to total assets ratio and money supply (M2). However, the independent variables that can be used to predict financial distress companies in the non-manufacturing sector in Malaysia were debt ratio, working capital ratio, net income to total assets ratio and money supply (M2). This study provides the prediction models of financial distress com-panies in the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors in Malaysia using financial ratios and macroeconomic variables as its independent variables.