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A Study on the Factors Influencing Online Buying in Fast Moving Consumer Goods with Particular Reference to Household Items
Internet impact on retailing has been tremendous and it has provided the retailers another channel through which to reach customers situated far away. The internet penetration in the country is 11.4 % as per the latest figures. The E ??commerce space is growing by 47 % to more than $460 billion in 2011 ( IAMAI) The online buying has provided huge benefits to customers like 24/7 convenience shopping, saving time, discounts, more choice and assortment of goods, and price comparisons across brands. At present the online retail Industry is Rs 2500 crores and growing at 35 % annually. It is expected to reach Rs 7000 cr by 2015 ( Assocham 2011 ) In this study attempt has been made to identify factors responsible for buying online and also factors impacting customers for not buying through online household essentials. In the study demographic profile of the customers were looked into. The study is limited to Bangalore city only. Based on the literature survey, hypotheses have been developed. Out of 500 questionnaires distributed across Bangalore city, about 362 fully filled questionnaires were got and this was used for the study. The respondents profile and descriptive statistics has been analysed for online and non ?? online respondents. . Factor analysis has been done to find out the minimum factors involved in the online and non online buying decision. Hypotheses testing have been done using relevant tests. Some recommendations have been made on the strategies which Online retailers can adopt to attract more online buyers by taking care of some of their concerns. Some of the key findings of the study are:-- o Non - Online buyers feel there is lack of security of transactions in online shopping. o Non - Online buyers feel Touch and feel is important for buying household essentials. o One of the Reasons for Non ?? Online buyers not adopting online buying is they consider it is difficult to return goods. o Non ?? online buyers who are in the age group (36 -55yrs) are reluctant to switch to online buying. -
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Employee Challenges and its Solutions in Virtual Information Technology Industry
This study aimed at identifying the challenges faced by the employee working in virtual environment, to further propose a conceptual model and to explore the enabling factors required to provide sustainable solutions to these challenges. An organizations precursors are a must to mitigate the identified challenges by adopting the suggested solutions. In this era of IT and ICT, it is inevitable to understand what are those challenges, issues or problems employee of a virtual team faces and how do they resolve them or behave in that particular scenario. Radically changing work environment impacts the workforce productivity. In this ICT environment, it is unavoidable to expect challenges emerged out of such working conditions. Further, to study challenges becomes crucial for a better work environment. The qualitative grounded theory method approach has been used to identify challenges of 20 cases through in-depth interview techniques. The interviews have been then transcribed, coded and categorized. The conceptual model is the final outcome of this research work that depicts the challenges, the precursors ?? a company must have and last but not the least the recommended solutions to mitigate challenges. Keywords ?? IT (Information Technology), ICT (Information and Communication Technology), Challenges (A challenge is a general term referring to things that are imbued with a sense of difficulty and victory). -
Relationship between Corporate Governance and Value Based Financial Performance Measures: Evidence from India
The concept of corporate governance is gaining momentum because of changing business environment and various other factors as well as. The EEC, GATT and WTO regulations have also contributed to raise the awareness and are compelling us to think in terms of adhering to the good governance practices. In recent years, value-added relationship between management and stakeholders is considered a requirement for corporate success. The performance measures of corporations have been transformed and value-based financial performance measures like Economic value added (EVA), Market value added (MVA) has been developed.Empirical studies in corporate governance focus on the link between corporate governance and firms performance. There are limited number of studies using performance measures such as EVA and MVA, etc. hence the current study is based on relationship between corporate governance and value based financial performance measures like EVA and MVA, the study focuses on Information technology sector in India. Independent Variables included in the study were CEO Duality, Size of the Board, Management Equity Ownership, Foreign Ownership, Number of Board Meetings, Leverage ratio andSize of the firm. LLC t-test and the IPS w-test were conducted to check the stationarity of series and results are analyzed by multiple panel regression models. Results indicate that EVA, MVA has significant relationship with Corporate Governance variables. SOTB has significant negative relationship with MVA, CEO Duality has positive relationship with the Market value added (MVA) of the firms, the study further indicates there is a significant relationship between Size of the firm and EVA and as the Firm size increases EVA is also increased for the firms. However foreign ownership is found to increase the performance in terms of MVA. Manager ownership is not found to be an important variable in increasing corporate performance with the context of value based management. The study concluded that corporate governance has significance influence on the financial performance of the Information technology firms in India. Keywords: Corporate Governance, EVA, MVA, Correlation, Panel Unit Root. -
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A Study on Retirement Preparedness of Information Technology and Education Sector Employees in relation to Attitude and Knowledge
Retirement planning is a process of analysing the current financial situation, identifying the future financial need of the person upon retirement, investing on a disciplined basis through appropriate instruments and deriving benefits out of it when the need arises. With changing socio-economic factors, there is a great interest among academicians and practitioners alike, to find answers for inevitable post retirement survival crisis. This study is primarily based on a problem How well prepared are IT and Education sector employees to take up the post retirement financial survival? The objectives of the study are - to know the association between attitude, knowledge and retirement preparedness and whether attitude and knowledge has any relationship with the retirement preparedness. This study is based on primary data collected from 400 respondents (200 IT sector employees and 200 Education sector employees) using questionnaire. This study takes Attitude and Knowledge as independent variables and Retirement preparedness as dependent variable. With the help of statistical tools like Chi-square tests, ANOVA and Canonical Correlation, the association and relationship were tested. This study reveals that Attitude and Knowledge has relationship with retirement preparedness. The result is of great significance for government in policy making, for media and personal financial planners in pro actively influencing investment decisions of investors. -
An investigation of various algorithms suitable for 3D compute on heterogeneous platform
This research explores the usage of heterogeneous computing, which is the current trend in the computing industry, for the 3D compute based on the collaborative algorithm. As a part of literature review the areas related to the heterogeneous computing is investigated, which includes OpenCL, General Purpose Graphical Processing Unit [ GPGPU ], collaborative algorithm. The novelty of this research work is the application of collaborative algorithms, which have been used in other areas to 3D compute. This exploration of 3D compute algorithm was part of the exercise in order to find the suitable 3D compute algorithm for the monocular image to binocular image conversation engine. Here the two algorithms, i.e., intelligent water drops and zombie crowd algorithm were implemented using OpenCL to run on heterogeneous platform. The performance of both the algorithm was measured on the experimental setup rig. Based on the above research exercise, it can be inferred that, the collaborative algorithm can indeed be suitable for 3D compute and it can be also noted that each algorithm is suitable for particular 3D compute. KEYWORDS: Heterogeneous Computing, GPGPU, OpenCL, Collaborative Algorithm -
A Study on the Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction in Multi-Brand Apparel Retail
Numerous research studies have been done in the area of retailing, but there is no research that identifies the main factors that influence customer satisfaction in multi-brand apparel retail. A study on this aspect is important as the apparel retail industry is growing very fast in India with the advent of many foreign brands in this sector. This study aims to understand the main factors influencing customer satisfaction in multi-brand apparel retail. Primary data is collected through survey method, using a structured questionnaire designed to capture the required variables to extract the factors influencing customer satisfaction in multi-brand apparel retail. The respondents are surveyed through convenience sampling method. The appropriate variables are identified through literature review of a number of articles on organised apparel retailing. After considering appropriate variables of apparel retail service quality and store characteristics, the structured questionnaire consisting of 17 independent variables and 1 dependent variable measured on a likert scale of 1 to 5, is used to collect data from the apparel retail customers. Factor analysis on these independent variables resulted in extraction of 4 main factors. Then Regression analysis is done on the 4 factors taking customer satisfaction as the dependent variable. The results of the analysis reveal that the factors significantly influence customer satisfaction in multi-brand apparel retail. It was also found through regression analysis that there is a significant impact of customer satisfaction on shopping budget in multi-brand apparel retail. Also, a significant relationship was found between family monthly income and shopping budget in multi-brand apparel retail. The implication of this research is that the results would help multi-brand apparel retailers to formulate marketing strategies with a focus on the factors identified, to improve customer satisfaction and refine their approach to reach out to their consumers and retain them, when they come to shop in their apparel retail store. -
K shell X-ray Fluorescence Parameters of Platinum and Lead
X-ray fluorescence phenomenon (XRF) has gained importance as a tool the fields of atomic, nuclear and radiation physics, material science, medical physics, and in such diverse fields as industry, agriculture, archaeology, forensic science and so on for elemental analysis. This demands for accurate values of XRF parameters such as shell wise and sub-shell wise x-ray fluorescence yield, fluorescence x-ray production cross-section, Auger transition rate, shell and sub-shell intensity ratios, K to L vacancy transfer probabilities and so on. In addition, measurements of these parameters are useful in obtaining physical parameters such as photoelectric cross-sections, jump ratios and x-ray emission rates. Over the years several researchers have measured these parameters employing variety of methods and detectors (Apaydin and Tira?o?lu 2012; Hopman et al. 2012; Kahoul et al. 2011; Cengiz et al. 2011; Cengiz et al. 2010; M??nesguen and M. -C. L??py 2010; S????t et al. 2009a; S????t et al. 2009b; Reyes-Herrera and Miranda 2008; Ertu?rul et al. 2007; Aylikci et al. 2007; Demir and ?ahin 2007; ?ahin et al. 2005; ??zdemir et al. 2002; ?imsek et al. 2002; Durak et al. 2001; 1998; Allawadhi et al. 1993). However these methods involve complicated single and double reflection geometries armed with sophisticated equipments and strong sources of the order of 109 Bq or more. These experiments involve many corrections such as attenuation of x-rays in the target itself (self attenuation correction), attenuation in the window of the detector (window attenuation correction), solid angle correction, photopeak efficiency and total detection efficiency of the detector, etc. Estimation of intensity of radiations incident on the target is a difficult task in these methods. The incident intensity and the total x-ray fluorescence intensity generated in the target are the quantities, which determine the accuracy of the K x-ray fluorescence parameters. Recently Gudennavar et al. (2003a; 2003b) and Horakeri et al. (2011; 1998; 1997) have developed a simple method to measure K-shell fluorescence yields, production cross section and other parameters by adopting a 2geometrical configuration and employing weak radioactive sources. K x-ray fluorescence parameters are independent of angle of emission because K x-rays are emitted isotropically from the target atom. It was found that the method yields K x-ray fluorescence parameter values as accurate as any standard reflection geometry experiment. The simplicity of method helps one to utilize it to develop student laboratory experiments to train students in x-ray fluorescence field. Since the method requires weak sources, it is of great advantage to student laboratories for they do not need special permission to acquire sources and sources can be handled safely without any personal radiation hazards. However the validity of the target thickness criterion and the method needs to checked with other X-ray detectors such as CdZnTe, HPGe as their construction arrangements are different from NaI(Tl) detectors and for all the elements in the periodic table. In the present study, we have measured the K x-ray fluorescence parameters for the elements platinum and lead using HPGe detector spectrometer and 57Co excitation source. The results are compared with the theoretical, semi-empirical fitted and other experimental values. -
The Experience of Transition From Being A Breast Cancer Patient to Survivor: Treatment Experience of Naturopathy/ Yoga
Women's experience of breast cancer and conventional treatment is challenging and demanding. The period after completion of first line of treatment for the removal of cancer, is known to be stressful. Women have to rebuild their life by accepting their illness and the limitations it brings on. They suffer from a wide range of psycho social issues such as low self esteem, body image concerns, difficulties in role functionality, added to which they must also deal with residual symptoms and a compromised state of health after undergoing invasive treatments such as surgery/ chemotherapy. The treatment plan does not adequately address these concerns which are critical for adjustment to life after treatment. Many women are increasingly looking for alternative treatments for support, which reflects their unmet needs. Naturopathy functions in a holistic domain that aims to help patients move towards a better state of health and treats every individual's experience as unique. Hence the present study aimed to understand the process of transition from being a patient to becoming a survivor, focussing on the treatment experience of Naturopathy. Six women participated in semi structured in-depth interviews and provided details about their life. Based on the phenomenological approach, data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Themes that emerged have been organised into Life before diagnosis, Living with cancer and Surviving breast cancer, in order to understand the meaning participants' attached to their whole experience. Participants of the study found the treatment experience of Naturopathy to be helpful in enabling their transition towards becoming a survivor and regaining a sense of normalcy in their life. They associated positive feelings/ emotions during the process of therapy, and felt empowered through a greater sense of awareness and control over their body/mind Key words: Naturopathy, Breast cancer, Treatment experience, Cancer Survivorship -
A study on Celebrity endorsement as an effective tourism destination marketing tool with reference to Bangalore
Celebrity Endorsement is one of the major forms of advertising in which a business organisation makes use of famous individuals or well known organizations in order to boost consumer interest in the product and/or services that they want to sell. Now-a-days every company is trying to bring in a brand ambassador for their brands. Slowly the trend of tying up with a celebrity in promoting has moved towards promoting tourism destinations. This paper tries to find out the effect of celebrity endorsement as an effective marketing destination tool. The objectives framed to reach to this goal were to identify whether the consumers are consider the tourism advertisements that are endorsed by celebrities, to find out the various factors of celebrity endorsers that motivates people to visit the advertised tourist destination and to determine whether the use of celebrities have greater effect than the use of non celebrities when advertising a tourist destination. Data was collected from 250 respondents from Bangalore city in a questionnaire form. Some of the tools that are been used to test the hypothesis are One sample t- test, ANOVA, Chi Square test, Friedman test and Tukey test . The major findings from the study are that the main factors that a celebrity has to have when endorsing a tourism product is the match between the product and the celebrity and the factor that is not at all looked into by the consumers in a tourism product is physical attractiveness. It was also identified that most of the respondents would have better brand recognition and recall when done by a celebrity endorsement but more weightage for the advertisement, more convincing, easy to choose from the different destinations is only possible with the help of if the advertisement that are not done by celebrity. It was found out that occupation of the consumers would have no impact in getting attracted to celebrity endorsers but students were one category that loved to see celebrity endorsers on screen. Key words: Celebrity Endorsement, tourism destination advertisements, Expertise, Trustworthiness, Similarity, Familiarity, Likeability, Match between the celebrity, transfer meaning, Physical attractiveness. -
Effectiveness of Awareness Program in Raising Teachers Awareness about Learning Disabilities
??Learning Disabilities is a term associated with difficulties in reading, writing, doing Maths and motor coordination. Awareness about learning disabilities is required for early identification and further remediation. A learning disability in a child can be identified as early as in toddler stage. Teachers are the first ones , usually to suspect a learning disability in a child. For appropriate observation and referrals for further assessment , a teacher should be aware of the various characteristics of learning disabilities which differs from individual to individual. Literature says that there is need of raising the awareness of teachers about learning disabilities and its various etiological factors. Awareness program could help in enhancing the knowledge of teachers in this regard. The current study was organised with an aim of conducting an awareness program to raise teachers knowledge about learning disabilities. 20 teachers, teaching in a Government school in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala was selected for the study. A pre experimental study pre post without control was designed. The intervention package was framed with comprehensive information about the concept, characteristics, kinds, signs, symptoms, strategies and guidelines for early identification. The awareness of the teachers prior to and post intervention was assessed using a semi structured questionnaire. The effectiveness of the awareness program was gauged using statistical analysis. The findings of the study proved that the knowledge of the teachers about learning disabilities has significantly increased post intervention. The knowledge level was shifted from moderate level, prior to intervention to high level post intervention. The feedback from the teachers ascertained that the program was very useful and interesting. Awareness programs of similar kind are recommended in a broader spectrum. -
EFFECT OF GRAVITY MODULATION ON THE ONSET OF RAYLEIGH-BENARD CONVECTION IN A WEAK ELECTRICALLY CONDUCTING COUPLE STRESS FLUID WITH SATURATED POROUS LAYER
The effect of time-periodic body force (TBF, also called gravity modulation) of small amplitude in a weak electrically conducting couple stress fluid with saturated porous layer is investigated by using a linear stability analysis. A regular perturbation method is used to arrive at an expression for the correction Rayleigh number. The Venezian approach is adopted in arriving at the critical Rayleigh and wave number for small amplitudes of TBF. The effect of roles of Couple stress parameter, Hartmann number, Darcy number, Porous parameter and Prandtl number on the onset of convection is studied. It is found that TBF leads to delay in convection. Also the results suggest that instead of taking electrically non-conducting fluid it is better to consider electrically conducting fluid with weak electrical conductivity as this ensures a stable environment in the presence of a magnetic field. The system is most stable with respect to TBF. -
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Impact of Life Skills Education on Self-Esteem among Adolescents in Childrens Home
The aim of the current study was to assess the impact of life skills education on self-esteem among adolescents in Childrens Home. The design was experimental and used a pre-test/ post-test design with a control group. Sixty adolescents (30 males and 30 females) from Childrens Home comprised the experimental group (N=30) and control group (N= 30) who were selected from Childrens Homes in Kannur district, Kerala. A life skills education programme was prepared and included sessions towards improving self-esteem among adolescents in the age group 13-15 years. The Rosenbergs Self-Esteem Scale (1965) was administered before and after the life skills education programme to the adolescents. The results indicate that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control group in their self-esteem after life skills education programme including gender differences. The implication of the study reiterates that the inclusion of life skills as part of the curriculum for adolescents residing in Childrens Home plays a role in enhancing self- esteem. Key Words: Self-Esteem, Adolescent, Childrens Home, Life Skills Education -
MEDIATING EFFECT OF PERCEPTION OF POLITICS BETWEEN DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND TURNOVER INTENTION OF EMPLOYEES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATIONS
During the past few decades, organizational researchers have increasingly focused their attention on the subjective work issues and their impact on various work related outcomes. One of the most prominently studied factor perception of organizational politics has received much recent conceptual and empirical attention. Political work environment are responsible for a variety of harmful work consequences like higher stress, lower job satisfaction and commitment, diminished worker productivity and higher rate of turnover (Ferris et.al 1989, 2002; Kacmar and Baron, 1999) Some researchers focused on the distributive justice aspect as predictors of important outcomes here they pursued studies from the opposite perspective while they examined Perception of politics (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992; Kacmar , Ferris, 1991). Thus research has demonstrated the independent influences of politics, distributive justice, on turnover intention, job satisfaction etc (Cropanzano et.al 1992; Mcfarlin and Sweeney, 1992). Very few studies attempted in finding out how these elements of fairness influence each other in predicting outcomes. In the current study, the mediating effect of perception of politics between distributive justice and turnover intentions has been examined. This study extends the previous research efforts and fills a gap in the reviewed literature by simultaneously investigating the mediation effect of perception of politics between distributive justice and turnover intention of employees in Information technology organizations. 343 employees from the top 10 IT organization as listed by NAASCOM were involved in the present study. The purposive sampling technique was adopted. Employees with minimum 2 years of experience in the organization was chosen as respondents. The major objectives of the study are, to measure employees perception of politics and employees perception of distributive justice; to study the turnover intention of IT employees; to find if perception of politics mediates the relationship between distributive justice and turnover intentions; to find out the significant effect of distributive justice on the dimensions of perception of politics and finally to find out the difference in perception of politics and distributive justice across demographics. Hypothesis was framed in accordance to the objectives stated. The tools of measurement adopted were (i) Perception of organisational politics were measured with the fifteen item Perception of politics scale (POPS), developed by Kacmar and Carlson (1997).( ii) Five item Perceptions of distributive justice were measured with the Distributive Justice Index, developed by Price and Mueller (1986). (iii) Turnover intention was measured using a categorical item developed by Dilys Robinson, Sarah Perryman, and Sue Hayday, (2004). The Crobachs alpha for perception of politics dimensions and distributive justice were above 0.90. The level of perception of politics and distributive justice was found to be moderate. In terms of the logistic regression analysis performed, it was found that there was partial mediation of perception of politics between distributive justice and turnover intention. The result indicated that, even though the employees perceived their work environment to be political, they will have the intention to stay back, as long as the fairness in distribution of rewards exists. Perception of politics which always carried a negative label showed partial mediation in the relationship between distributive justice and turnover intentions, where it explained only 13.9% of the intention to leave factor. This means, even when the environment is political, employees will stay back in the organization when they experience fairness in distribution of rewards. Keywords: Information technology, Organizational behaviour, Human resource management, Perception of politics, Mediation, Distributive justice, Turnover intention. -
SVM Ensemble for Insurance Data Analysis
Data mining is the process of analysing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information. Companies with a strong consumer focus use data mining. The information getting from datamining is useful to increase revenue and reduce overall costs of the company. It is applied in retail field, financial sector, communication media, and in marketing organizations. Datamining facilitate these companies to determine relationships among company internal factors such as price, product positioning, or staff skills, and external factors such as competition in products, economic indicators, and customer demographics. Ensemble learning is a machine-learning paradigm where multiple models or learners are trained to solve the problem. This research explores the usage of SVM ensemble for Insurance Data Analysis. The number of Insurance firms is increasing day by day. The main objective of this research is to find out the best policy from a given list of Insurance policies. In this research a detailed study of SVM ensemble is done. An insurance dataset obtained from UCI knowledge discovery in Databases Archive is taken in the research analysis. From the dataset five different Non-life insurance policies were selected and used in this research work. The categories of policies include Fire policy, Home policy, Car policy, Kissan policy and Boat policy. AdaBoost, multiclassifier SVM ensemble was created and tested with the insurance dataset. SVM ensemble produces better accuracy than other ensembles. The knowledge flow of SVM ensemble is loaded in Weka. From each category, the policy that gives a highest accuracy value for SVM ensemble is considered to be the best policy. A graphical user interface is also developed using .NET framework, to view the policy output. This system helps the user to find out a best policy from the analysed data. KEYWORDS: SVM ensemble, Insurance policy, Accuracy, ROC, Support Vector Machine. -
Morphological Characterization of Selected Aliphatic and Aromatic Hydrocarbons.
In the last few years considerable interest has been aroused in the study of amorphous carbon. Amorphous carbon has a wide range of properties that are primarily controlled by the different bond hybridizations possible in such materials. This gives different properties like high strength, flexibility etc. Due to these properties, they are used in thin film technology and in nanoscale electronic devices. Films can range from those with high transparency and are hard and diamond-like, through to those which are opaque, soft and graphitic-like. Application areas include field emission cathodes, electronic devices, medical and optical coatings. Hence study of different carbon structures has been of great interest for many researchers. Several techniques have been used to study various sources of carbon. Hydrocarbons are the most abundant sources of carbon. The majority of hydrocarbons found, naturally occur in crude oil and the decomposition of these give hydrogen and carbon. Incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons leads to the production of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbon combustion therefore mainly have aromatic and aliphatic chains of carbon. Hydrocarbons are by far the most widespread precursors among carbon sources employed in the production of carbon nanotubes and carbon nanosphers. In the present study diesel soot, camphor soot and coal has been used as precursors for nanomaterials. Impurities in the samples can reduce efficiency of production. Mineral matter encompasses dissolved salts in the pore water and inorganic elements associated with the organic compounds, as well as crystalline and non-crystalline mineral particles. Quantitative analysis of minerals and other inorganics contributes to defining coal quality. Therefore a study on effects of bio and base leaching on coal samples are also done. XRD is one of the majorly used techniques to deduct the various structural parameters like interlayer spacing of crystalline (d002) structure, crystallites size (La, Lc), aromaticity (fa), number of layers of carbon atoms per aromatic lamellae(n). According to Scherrer, crystallite size varies inversely with peak width. Therefore it is a known fact that a broad hump in the spectrum indicates the presence of nano layers. These parameters are determined from the intensity profiles of the sample hydrocarbons. Also the structure of the hydrocarbon can be characterized using NMR and SEM EDS. 1H NMR spectra can yield structural information that allows classification of complex mixtures containing hundreds of aromatic, naphthenic, paraffinic, olefinic, and isoparaffinic compounds. SEM/EDS techniques allow both inorganic analysis of bulk materials and determination of chemistry and abundance of microscopic constituents. SEM analysis also gives us the size of nano particles formed in the sample. EDS allows one to identify what those particular elements are and their relative proportions. CHNS analysis gives the elemental composition of the samples. The study shows that the carbonaceous soot produced from combustion of diesel in engine show the presence of significant amount of carbon nanomaterials. The SEM micrographs indicate that nanoparticle present in diesel soot is clusters of carbon nanospheres. EDS analysis reveals the soot particles to be composed of primarily carbon and oxygen along with hydrogen. NMR spectrum of the soot reveals significant aliphatic component with predominance of methyl and methylene groups on ?and ?? positions to aromatic rings. Camphor soot XRD analysis shows presence of ordered layers of nanolayers and laso the presence of CNTs. The SEM micrographs of camphor show the presence of carbon nanostructures. The EDS analysis shows more of carbon and oxygen along with aluminium, silicon and potassium. Study of coal samples treated with biological leaching agents reveals that Penicillium spp (PE) treated sample is having more of a graphitic or ordered structure and the d002 spacing of this sample is 3.37 ?? which is close to graphite. XRD data of coal sample treated with base leaching agents confirms the turbostratic structure of coal. The SEM micrographs of the samples show that KN has more graphite like sheet structures. -
DETERMINANTS OF ORGANISATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR OF EMPLOYEES IN BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING SECTOR
Organizational Citizenship Behaviour is defined as the voluntary behaviour in which employees go beyond what is formally expected of them to contribute to the well being of the organisation and people involved in it. The present study investigated whether Big five Personality Traits and Psychological Contract have significant influence on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour of employees in Business Process Outsourcing Sector. Convenience sampling was adopted to administer the questionnaire (questionnaires were administered to the target sample from the business process outsourcing companies that gave permission, and through the online). Judgmental sampling method was adopted for deciding whom to administer the questionnaire. Employees must have worked for minimum 2 years in the present company to complete the questionnaire. 500 questionnaires were distributed and 381 fully completed questionnaires were compiled for analysis (76.2% response rate). In the present study the dimensions of Big Five Personality Traits ?? Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness to Change, the Psychological Contract Variables - Relational Contract, Transactional Contract, Employer Commitment, and Employee Commitment, and the dimensions of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour- Altruism, Conscientiousness, Courtesy, Civic Virtue and Sportsmanship were measured on 381 employees of top 10 BPO companies listed by NASSCOM . The result of the present study indicated that extraversion dimension of Big Five Personality Traits had a significant influence on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour. Psychological Contract variables Relational Contract, Transactional Contract and Employer Commitment had a significant influence on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour. In this study we have analyzed the implications based on the results found. Some of the implications of the study were the BPO employees high on extraversion, may display more citizenship behaviours towards the organisation. The employees who scored high on the psychological contract measures may result in exhibiting voluntary behaviour towards the organisation. It is suggested for the future researchers to replicate the study to determine how the findings reported here correspond to the results of studies conducted in other work environments to ensure proper generalization. Future researches also need to consider the moderating influences of person and situation-based factors on the relationship between Big Five personality Traits, Psychological Contract and OCB. Additionally, researcher may consider the respondents position in future studies as findings. A dyadic response from both the managers and employees can be a better study to avoid bias and self rating. Key words: Organisational Behaviour, Big Five, Psychological Contract, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, Human Resource Management. -
Study of two-dimensional, all-time dispersion of a solute in a fluid-saturated porous medium
The effect of interphase mass transfer on dispersion in a unidirectional flow through a horizontally extent of infinite porous channel is examined using the generalized dispersion model of Sankarasubramanian and Gill [91]. The model brings into focus three important coefficients namely the exchange coefficient, the convection coefficient and the dispersion coefficient. The exchange co- efficient exists due to interphase mass transfer. The effects of reaction rate parameter, ? porous parameter, ? and Brinkman number, ??, on the veloc- ity and thereby the convective and dispersion coefficients are discussed. The time-dependent dispersion coefficient and mean concentration distribution are computed and results are represented graphically for various values of ? ? and ??. The results have applications in heat exchangers, petroleum and chemical engineering problems, chromatography and bio-mechanical problems.