Research Symposium-2011
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Browsing Research Symposium-2011 by Subject "Business Studies"
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Item Effect of Knowledge Management Practices on Product Innovations: Study with Special Reference to Hospitality Industry in Southern Province Sri Lanka(Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Prasadani, M.G.M.; Jayawardhane, A.A.K.K.Note: See the PDF Version 21' century is considered as the Knowledge era. The knowledge is the factor that drives the businesses in the 2I51 century. It can be seen as an asset raising traditional asset questions to management such as when, how much and what to invest in. Owing to the particular properties of knowledge, however, knowledge assets require special attention (Uwe et al., 2003). Knowledge Management (KM) is defined as the internal modes of collaboration in innovation activities between different departments that involve in the exchange of knowledge. The significant determinants of KM include consumer orientation, continuous R&D activity, and number of employees, high-tech manufacturing and knowledge intensives services (Annelies and Dirk, 2009). Innovation is doing something newly and uniquely to what the competitors are producing or practicing. Companies collect new ideas and forms new products and processes based on those ideas. Innovation is crucial to the success and survival of companies. It can be identified as the single most important building block of competitive advantage. There are two common forms of innovations, product innovation and process innovation. Product innovation generally involves in the introduction of new products or services to meet market needs (Allan, 2008). In accordance with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), hospitality is an industry that generates three billion dollars per day globally, and one out of twelve people around the world are employed by tourism industry. Potentially, tourism will become Sri Lanka's largest industry and employer. According to Karr R, the 'Pearl of the Indian Ocean', Sri Lanka's diverse attractions have always lured tourists from all over the world. Since the war ended in May 2009, there has been a rapid growth in the numbers of tourists visiting Sri Lanka and as a sector, tourism is booming (Business Today, 2W 0). This study aimed to identify whether there is a relationship between Knowledge Management practices (KMP) and product innovations and assessing the impact of KMPs on product innovations since these two concepts are very important to the business world. Accordingly, the sub objectives of this study were to observe current degree of KMPs in hospitality industry and the degree of KMPs in different classes of hotels, the effect of different types of KMPs on product innovation and to explore the relationship between KMPs and product innovation.Item Forecasting Foreign Direct Investment Inflow to Sri Lanka: Hybrid ARIMA-Neural Network model(Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Perera, S.S.N.; Karunathunge, G.N.; Chathurdarshi, G.T.B.G.Note: See the PDF Version FDI is known as that "Investment made by multinational business enterprises in foreign countries to control assets and manage production activities in those countries" (Bashier and Talal, 2007). Foreign direct investment consists of three major components. Those are equity capital, reinvestment earnings and other capital used in various intra company debt transactions. In 1977, the Sri Lankan government made changes in its economic policies to establish an investment friendly economic environment. Sri Lanka reached its highest FDI inflow of US dollars 752.2 million in 2008. The objective of the research is to build a model to forecast future FDI inflow to Sri Lanka. Research has been carried out using different methods such as the univariate ARIMA model (Bashier and Talal, 2007), the double exponential smoothing model (Kumar et al., 2009) and the neural network model (Pradhan, 2010) to forecast FDI inflow to other countries. To the best knowledge of the authors, this study could be the first to forecast FDI inflows in Sri Lanka using a combination of an ARIMA model and a neural network model. In this study, an ARIMA model is fitted through the Box-Jenkins procedure and then the back propagation neural network procedure is applied to remove the lack of accuracy due to the small sample size. The data set employed consists of annual foreign direct investment inflow to Sri Lanka from 1978 to 2010.Item Impact of Working Capital Management on Profitability: An Assessment(Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Herath, M.S.; Kulathunga, K.M.M.C.B.Note: See the PDF Version Working capital management (WCM) means planning and controlling current assets and current liabilities to eliminate the risk of inability to meet short term obligation on one hand and avoid excessive investment in current assets on the other hand (Eljelly, 2004).Working capital management is an important part of financial management decisions of the firms. This study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of Working Capital Management on the profitability. The study also sheds light on the relationship of working capital components with profitability. The research carried out by mil consulting on the Challenges of Sri Lankan Corporate Finance reveals that 68% of the respondents had reported that they have been impacted by longer cash generation cycles. It means that there is an unnecessary tie up of capital in working capital. Most firms have invested large amount of cash in working capital and a considerable amount of short term payables have used as a source of finance (Deloof 2003). Moreover, according to the rel/cfo Asia survey (2006) which was carried out to evaluate the Asian working capital improvements based on over 725 Asian companies, the Asian companies have unnecessarily tied up in working capital. Many research articles have found that, the managers spend a considerable time on day-today working capital decisions since current assets are short-lived investments and hence, continuously convert into other asset types (Rao, 1989). Therefore, it is important to assess whether the time spend on managing working capital is effective or not. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to identify the relationship between working capital management and profitability. The secondary objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of different components of working capital management on profitability.Item Product Innovations Lead to Higher Organizational Performance: An Evaluation with Special Reference to Insurance Industry in Sri Lanka(Uva Wellassa University of Srilanka, 2011) Niroshan, N.H.P.; Jayawardhane, A.A.K.K.Note: See the PDF Version Innovation is identified as the backbone of the organizational success. Innovation can be defined as the "New way of doing things that are commercialized (Poter, 1990).. According to Jessen (2003), there are four types of innovations namely, product or service innovation, process innovation, position innovation and paradigm innovation. In recent years’ service sector has become a fast growing sector in the world economies including Sri Lanka. GDP contribution of Banking, Insurance & Real Estate sector is highly considerable in the Sri Lankan economy. Insurance industry in Sri Lanka is comprised with 18 Insurance companies and 11 of them are engaging in both General and Long Term Insurance businesses, 5 companies are engaging in General Insurance business and two companies are engage only in Long Term (Life) Insurance business (Sri Lanka Insurance Board). Insurance total Premium has shown a considerable negative growth in 2009 and this has been continuing during the last consecutives yeas. However, the total premium income from long term and general insurance has shown a negative growth of 1.57% in 2009 with compared to a positive growth of 12.11% in the previous year. Not only that but also from 2008 to 2009, the premium income from general insurance has declined by 3%, while the premium income from long term insurance has grown only by 0.65%. Hence, the primary purpose of this research was to identify the lead of product innovation on the performance of the life and general insurance industry.