Knowledge Management Practice at a Bulgarian Bank: A Case Study

This paper reports on knowledge management (KM) practices in the customer service and lending departments of one of Bulgaria's top retail banks and investigates how KM processes can be further improved. The Bank's KM activities have been studied using observations, interviews and informal discussions for data collection. Findings were compared and contrasted with existing literature in similar contexts. Although rudiments of knowledge sharing are evident from the KM activities in different departments of the bank, the limitations such as resistance to change of the implemented KM systems are impeding the effectiveness of the knowledge management process. More training and incentives are needed to increase knowledge creation and sharing. Moreover, a clearly articulated KM strategy along with success criteria and commitment and support from senior management is needed. There is a severe lack of knowledge management studies in Bulgarian context in general and Bulgarian banking sector in particular. The authors' findings will potentially help in improving knowledge sharing practice as well as provide a valuable insight into knowledge management related issues in the Bulgarian context. The findings from this research can be useful to companies from Eastern Europe and other regions in improving their knowledge sharing practice

A Country-Level Analysis of Competitive Advantage in the Wine Industry

The purposes of this paper are (1) to examine driving forces and key success factors related to the increasing globalization of the wine industry, and (2) to analyze the current competitive advantage positions of four Old and five New World wine producing countries. Each country will be profiled using key industry data and analyzed regarding their national capabilities to address five key success factors that contribute to their national competitive advantage position. The countries fall into three groups with respect to their national comparative competitive advantage position. The group with the strongest competitive position includes United States, Australia, and Chile. Australia and Chile both have small populations that provide for a tiny domestic market with little potential for growth. However they are very well positioned to produce and export wine with their adaptive, large-scale producers and their great lure for foreign investments, providing them with a position of a strong competitive advantage. With respect to production, cost structures suggest Australia and Chile may be better positioned that the US. However, economies of scale and economies of scope in marketing offer an advantage to the US because it is a populous and affluent nation. While the US wine market is already significantly larger than Australia and Chile, it has even more potential to expand. The group of countries with moderate competitive advantages includes Italy, Spain, Argentina and South Africa. Lingering economic concerns and disadvantages of scale prevent Argentina from being ranked as competitively as neighboring Chile. Likewise, South Africa has strong marketing economies of scale and moderate production economies of scale, but currently domestic unrest has diminished its attraction for foreign investment and ability to expand its home market. In the Old World, Spain and Italy are hampered by decreased consumption rates and weak economies of scale in production. However, on the positive side, they have shown promise in their ability to adapt to an increasingly internationalized marketplace and to attract foreign investment. The countries with the weakest competitive advantage positions in the global wine industry are two traditional strongholds of wine production in the Old World: France and Germany. While they have large domestic markets, there is little opportunity for further growth. The concentration of production into small wineries, scarce land and labor, complex labeling practices and inability to leverage new production, and marketing techniques does not bode well for effective competition in a global market place. Nor does either country hold much potential for attracting foreign investment, save for some traditionally undervalued areas of France, like Languedoc. In conclusion, it is clear that the New World countries are currently positioned better to capitalize on the opportunities created through industry globalization and other current driving forces. Italy and Spain emerge as the best positioned Old World nations. This competitive advantage scenario should be a wake-up call to many wine producing countries. Indeed, some Old World countries have begun efforts to better adapt to industry-wide improvements in production and marketing practices. However, it is clear that many nations need to increase support that will encourage production and marketing innovations to improve their competitive advantage position to help local wineries succeed in the changing and increasingly competitive wine marketplace.Wineries, Globalization, Competitive Advantage, Exports, Markets

Monetary aggregates in Pakistan: theoretical and empirical underpinnings

The objective of this study is to analyze theoretical as well as empirical soundness of the current monetary aggregates (M2) and to propose a broader monetary aggregate (M3), by exploring the functional characteristics and empirical relevance of financial assets. We used annual time series data from FY76 to FY03 and employed both the functional and empirical (F-M dual criteria) approaches. The results indicate that current monetary aggregates seemed to have been defined more on functional considerations compared to the empirical evidence. The analysis of new set of financial assets suggests that, while the various savings schemes individually as well as in aggregate were able to meet F-M dual criteria, deposits of NBFIs failed to satisfy this criteria. However, the functional considerations suggest that these deposits should, nevertheless, be included in a broader definition of monetary aggregates (M3).Monetary Aggregates, Pakistan

Bayesian compressive sensing framework for spectrum reconstruction in Rayleigh fading channels

Compressive sensing (CS) is a novel digital signal processing technique that has found great interest in many applications including communication theory and wireless communications. In wireless communications, CS is particularly suitable for its application in the area of spectrum sensing for cognitive radios, where the complete spectrum under observation, with many spectral holes, can be modeled as a sparse wide-band signal in the frequency domain. Considering the initial works performed to exploit the benefits of Bayesian CS in spectrum sensing, the fading characteristic of wireless communications has not been considered yet to a great extent, although it is an inherent feature for all sorts of wireless communications and it must be considered for the design of any practically viable wireless system. In this paper, we extend the Bayesian CS framework for the recovery of a sparse signal, whose nonzero coefficients follow a Rayleigh distribution. It is then demonstrated via simulations that mean square error significantly improves when appropriate prior distribution is used for the faded signal coefficients and thus, in turns, the spectrum reconstruction improves. Different parameters of the system model, e.g., sparsity level and number of measurements, are then varied to show the consistency of the results for different cases

Geometric phase gate for entangling two Bose-Einstein condensates

We propose a method of entangling two spinor Bose-Einstein condensates using a geometric phase gate. The scheme relies upon only the ac Stark shift and a common controllable optical mode coupled to the spins. Our scheme allows for the creation of an SzSz type interaction where Sz is the total spin. The geometric phase gate can be executed in times of the order of 2{\pi} /G, where G is the magnitude of the Stark shift. In contrast to related schemes which relied on a fourth order interaction to produce entanglement this is a second order interaction in the number of atomic transitions. Closed expressions for the entangling phase are derived and the effects of decoherence due to cavity decay, spontaneous emission and incomplete de-entangling of the light to BEC are analyzed

Convergence Model of Governance: A Case Study of the Local Government System of Pakistan

The future of devolution plan in Pakistan may be analysed in view of our Convergence model. This model views stability of the local Govt. system drawn on Devolution Plan 2001. It claims that as there would be more volatile and non-committed (floating) number of agents in the political market and governance system, there is more probability of divergence; i.e. the system will remain unstable. Contrary to that more is the systematic trend in political market and governance system more is the probability that the convergence in the system occurs and that in turn leads to stability of the over all system. In this ‘Convergence’ Model different types of agents have been highlighted on the basis of their political ffiliation and being in competition as ruling elite and/or their allies and non-ruling elite and/or their allies. The agents have interactive relationship horizontally and vertically with other agents i.e. either they are ally or otherwise. The composition of this structure of the agents and clients is based on the principle of bottom top pproach i.e. Union council’s members, Nazim and their political competitors, Tehsil council and Nazim, District Nazim and his allied district assembly members and their political competitors, Member provincial Assembly and their political rivals, Member National Assembly/Senator, and their political rival and the ruling political elites, Provincial Government and their political rivals, and Political elites ruling Federal Government and their political rivals.

Study of Philanthropic Behaviour in Divine Economics Framework

Philanthropic Behaviour