The impact of entrepreneurial passions on organizational commitment in SMEs: the mediating role of perceived organizational support / Md Sharif Md Said

This study examines a model involving Entrepreneurial Passion (EP), Perceived Organizational Support (POS), and Organizational Commitment (OC). It was hypothesized that employees’ EP will be positively related to their organizational commitment, and that perceived organizational support would serve as a mediator in the relationship between employees’ perceived EP and employees’ OC. Data were gathered using cluster sampling method from a sampling frame of 231 Malaysian Manufacturing Related Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) located within the Klang Valley comprising the States of Selangor and Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed on the 258 samples using structural equation modeling. The CFA revealed that there is a positive and direct relationship between EP and OC as propounded by earlier authors

Study of integrated solar PV and municipal energy storage-based power generation system in residential user’s context

Now a days, renewable energy technologies bring revolutionary changes in power systems to meetup electricity load demand to the diverse user levels (i.e. industrial, commercial and residen-tial). Moreover, off-grid PV plants have added a new dimension in energy systems specially in residential user level to serve small scale load demand. Integration of energy storage facilities is helping to bring sustainability by ensuring safe operation of energy technologies, stocking and delivering high performance power generation units to the consumer level with less interruption and fault conditions. Additionally, residential buildings are becoming futuristic energy generation facility by integrating such sustainable energy harvesting technologies. In this thesis, our primary objective is to study on Solar PV integrated building energy infrastructure with the integration of municipal energy storage facility to meet sufficient load demand in residential user level and to test the operation of such systems in different conditions. Moreover, generate optimized models and perform economics analysis for the model. Our plant model has been tested and analyzed for multiple countries aspects which covers developed countries like Finland and developing countries like Bangladesh. This thesis will cover all the necessary analysis for kW range off-grid PV and battery energy-based plants and will help to get insights before projects validation and Initialization

Experimental Investigation Of Thermophysical Properties, Pressure Drop And Heat Transfer Of Non-Newtonian Silica Colloid Flow In Tubes

Thermophysical properties and rheological behavior of silica (SiO2) nanoparticle colloidal suspension with 9.58% volume concentration in water were analyzed. The laminar flow of the fluid through tubes of different diameter was studied to compare its pressure drop and heat transfer performance with those of water. Thermal conductivity of the silica suspension was found to be 0.99% to 3.6% higher than the same property of water when measured from 7°C to 50°C. Within the temperature range, thermal conductivity of the silica suspension and water increased by 9.88% and 11.1% respectively, with increase in temperature. It was observed that the colloidal dispersion of silica behaved as non-Newtonian shear thickening fluid whose viscosity increased with increasing shear rate when temperature was kept constant. Power law model for non-Newtonian fluid could fairly predict the viscosity of the fluid at certain shear rate. While measuring viscosity data with a rotary viscometer at fixed shear rate and temperature, the fluid viscosity showed a change in value with time for first 12-15 second of shear application and then obtained a constant value. Pressure drop analysis showed that the friction factor of the silica suspension and the friction factor of water have no significant difference after a Reynolds number of 750. Before that, silica suspension has higher friction factor than that of water and the highest increase observed was 63%. Conventional correlation to predict the friction factor of single phase fluid can also be used in case of silica colloidal dispersion. As the diameter of the test section got smaller, the increase in the friction factor of silica dispersion enhanced compared to the friction factor of water. There was no eminent difference between the heat transfer performance of silica suspension and water. Correlation that is used for water was found to be suitable for nanoparticle dispersion too. The highest value of Nusselt number for silica suspension and water was 17.54 and 13.42 respectively, when the fluids were circulated through the tube with the biggest diameter

Present Situation of Capital Market and the Role of Brokerage House: A Study on IDLC Securities Limited

The capital market plays various roles for strengthening the economy of a country. It acts as an intermediary between surplus units and deficit units of the economy and facilitates savings into investments. Also providing liquidity of these investments, the capital market ensures optimum allocation of resources. All these activities make it the engine for the growth of the economy.When asked about their expectation about GDP growth of Bangladesh in fiscal year 2012-2013, 69% of the participants believe that growth stays roughly same and 80% said local political instability is the biggest risk to Bangladesh economy in 2013. Majority answered that central bank will keep the monetary policy tools at current level but liquidity situation will improved in 2013 relative to that of 2012. When asked to identify the reason for bearish capital market in 2012, 47% attributed the reason to lack of investors trust and poor corporate governance of listed companies. Also highest 49% participants caution the local political instability is the biggest risk to local capital market in 2013 followed by the lack of confidence of investors. Despite that, 53% and 43% survey participants respectively show their optimism that market will remain moderately bullish or remain at current level. And the expectation about average market turnover is to hover around BDT 4000 to 5000 million (41% responses). When asked why big business conglomerates are not interested to raise funds from primary market, almost half of the participants believe that fear of sharing the true financials with public is the reason. A majority of those surveyed (57%) also attributes the lack of corporate governance of listed companies is the main reason of poor foreign portfolio investment in capital market. But in 2013, overwhelming (86%) consensus is that demutualization of stock exchanges will bring more transparency and increase confidence of investors. Survey participants are bullish for equity in 2013 and 43% has said that equity will outperform other asset classes. Real estate and saving instruments received both 18% answers respectively. 51% respondent said that their expectation about employment opportunities for professional in financial market remains about the same like 2012 and 41% is optimistic about relative improvement of employment situation. Keywords: GDP, Growth, Demutualization of stock exchange, Corporate Governance

Revisiting the Phillips Curve and the Lucas Critique

Many OECD countries are facing problems of high government debt and high unemployment. Consequently, a monetary stimulus is being increasingly viewed as a solution to curb the rising debt burden and stimulate economic growth. Some OECD countries are setting inflation target at 2% or even higher. In this paper we investigate the likely impact of inflation on unemployment for a panel of 10 highincome OECD countries, namely, Australia, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. The period of study is 1970-2012. Results indicate a significantly positive long-run impact of inflation on unemployment. Granger causality indicates long-run bi-directional causality between inflation and unemployment. For the 10 OECD countries and the period of this study, the empirical findings support the Lucas critique: inflation and unemployment are positively correlated. A monetary stimulus, therefore, will most likely aggravate the unemployment scenario in the 10 OCED countries under study

The diminishing of indigenous artistic tradition in the decorative arts of the mosques in the Malay World

Unlike their counterparts in the Islamic mainland, the vernacular mosques of the Malay World seem to lack the ‘grandeur’ in architecture as well as in ornamentation. During the time that the Muslim world in the western part of the Malay World were achieving artistic and technological breakthrough in mosque architecture, the 17th and 18th century witnessed a period of architectural vacuum whereby no architectural development was recorded. The aim of this study is to analyse the changes taking place in the decorative arts of the mosques built between 15th to 20th century in order to understand how the decorative arts of mosques in the Malay World evolved. By following the routes of Islamisation, the study charted the development in mosque architecture and documents the changes in mosque building elements, design and decorative arts. The study highlights the period in history when the artistic creations were most prominent and the declination of local arts only to be replaced by decorative schemes introduced by Colonial administrations in the 19th and 20th century buildings

Women Empowerment in Bangladesh through Microfinance

Microfinance has long been associated with generating empowerment of women. Over 90percent of their clients in Bangladesh are women. Women’s empowerment is a dynamic process that has been quantified, measured, and described in a variety of ways. The paper shows different kind of development activities of MFIs for women to develop them. The paper uses some proxy indicators to show the women empowerment through microfinance. The paper discusses the status of the women borrowers, the loan disbursement on women by the MFIs and their status of recovery in rural and urban areas specifically. Keywords: MFIs, borrower, loan disbursement, loan recovery, wome

Wavelet: a new tool for business cycle analysis

One basic problem in business-cycle studies is how to deal with nonstationary time series. The market economy is an evolutionary system. Economic time series therefore contain stochastic components that are necessarily time dependent. Traditional methods of business cycle analysis, such as the correlation analysis and the spectral analysis, cannot capture such historical information because they do not take the time-varying characteristics of the business cycles into consideration. In this paper, we introduce and apply a new technique to the studies of the business cycle: the wavelet-based time-frequency analysis that has recently been developed in the field of signal processing. This new method allows us to characterize and understand not only the timing of shocks that trigger the business cycle, but also situations where the frequency of the business cycle shifts in time. Our empirical analyses show that 1973 marks a new era for the evolution of the business cycle.Business cycles