Understanding Customer Switching Behaviour in the Retail Banking Sector: The Case of Nigeria and the Gambia

This thesis examines customer switching behaviour in Nigeria and Gambia, focusing on the retail banking sector. The study’s key objective is to provide new knowledge on customer banking behaviour in the retail banking sector. The study is grounded in Bansal et al.’s (2005) push-pull-mooring model. A qualitative method was employed in the data collection, incorporating a triangulation approach, whereby direct observations were combined with thematic interviews and focus group discussions. The intention behind this method was to increase the validity of the research results. Ultimately, the study findings indicate significant factors and subfactors influencing customer switching behaviour in the retail banking sector. The results are categorised as push, pull, or mooring factors. It identifies seven push factors with thirteen subfactors, four pull factors with ten subfactors, and six mooring factors with three subfactors. The study’s significant contribution to existing knowledge of services marketing is the identification of new and emerging constructs, thus extending the existing knowledge in the literature. The study’s findings support numerous results of prior relevant research, while some findings disagree with those of previous research. Furthermore, the new constructs that emerge from this research are highly relevant to today’s consumers. For example, factors like banking products, perceived knowledge of banking products, perceived relative security of banking products, satisfaction with the current bank, emotions (e.g., regret or anger), liquidity challenges, bank staff career development prospects, and ethical banking issues are the study’s unique contributions to the push factors and subfactors. In addition, the emerging pull factors and subfactors include technological advancement, coronavirus pandemic-induced switching, a bank’s physical appearance, positive banking expectations, a bank’s relative proximity, expected switching benefits, perceived usefulness of a bank’s digital platforms, perceived ease of banking transactions, personalised banking offerings, and repositioning banking business models. Lastly, the new mooring factors and subfactors identified in this study are inertia, changes in customer needs or tastes, involuntary switching, and bank responsiveness. Consequently, the author has developed a framework/model based on the findings of this study. The new framework/model presented comprehensive results with practical implications and a valuable contribution to the current knowledge of customer switching behaviour

Stigma Hurts: Exploring Employer and Employee Perceptions of Tattoos and Body Piercings in Nigeria

Purpose – This study draws on social stigma and prejudice to examine the perceptions and beliefs of managers and employees regarding visible tattoos and body piercings, as well as the impact they have on potential employment and human resource management in the global South, using Nigeria as the research context. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a qualitative research approach, drawing on data from forty-three semi-structured interviews with managers and employees in Nigeria. Findings – Contrary to the popular opinion that tattoos and body piercings are becoming more accepted and mainstream in society, this study finds that some Nigerian employers and employees may stigmatise and discriminate against people with visible tattoos and body piercings. The findings of this study suggest that beliefs about tattoos are predicated on ideologies as well as religious and sociocultural values, which then influence corporate values. Practical Implications – Religious and sociocultural preconceptions about people with visible tattoos and body piercings have negative implications for the recruitment and employment of such people and could prevent organisations from hiring and keeping talented employees. This implies that talented employees might experience prejudice at job interviews, preventing them from gaining employment. Furthermore, stigmatising and discriminating against people with visible tattoos and body piercings may lead to the termination of employment of talented employees, which could negatively affect organisational productivity and growth. Originality/value – This study provides an insight into employment relations with regards to tattoos and body piercings in Nigeria. It also makes some contributions to the social psychology of workplace prejudice and highlights the reasons for the stigma and prejudice against individuals with visible tattoos and body piercings

Sustainability on the Horizon? An investigation into Sustainable Banking Practices in an Emerging Economy

Purpose: This study investigates sustainability practices in the banking industry, focusing on a developing economy. It employs the triple-bottom-line framework to answer the following research question: How do banks in Nigeria conceptualise sustainability, and what role does it play in their banking practices? Design/approach/methodology: This study adopts a social constructivist approach in its exploration of banking sustainability practices in an emerging economy, and the research design is a purpose-based (exploratory) approach. The qualitative data was collected from 33 bank personnel from various bank units and departments through semi-structured interviews in order to achieve the research objective. Findings: The study reveals a lack of sustainability policies and programmes, as banks focus mainly on profitability. It uncovers unfair treatments of bank workers through casualisation, low wages, and work overload. It indicates that most banks in developing countries ignore environmental considerations, as they still carry out paper-based transactions and use dieselpowered generators, which cause various negative environmental impacts. It also confirms that governments and banks in the country are not doing enough to propagate sustainable practices and banks have also not taken advantage of the sustainability concept to promote their brands; instead, they consider it as requiring additional operational costs. Practical implications: The findings demonstrate the need for banks to see sustainability from a marketing point of view and adopt sustainable practices to create additional value that will improve their brand image and enhance their competitiveness. Originality/value: The importance of sustainability in the banking industry in emerging economies is considered a viable means of contributing to the overall development goals of the United Nations as the world tries to preserve the environment. It also highlights the consequences of inaction or unsustainable banking practices

The Role of Information and Communications Technology in Socializing Knowledge Management

The globalization of business, the shift from production-based to a knowledge-based economy, the growth of information communications technology (ICT), the strive to become learning organizations and the emergence of the needs for knowledge workers have made knowledge management practice a must today across all types and levels of firms However, because the concept is so new, there exist different views among practitioners and even researchers on how a knowledge management program can be designed and implemented in organizations. This paper posits that knowledge management can be socialized and works in an organization. It also review the related literature on the knowledge management strategy, including the review of the different definition of the knowledge management, types of the knowledge, processes of acquiring knowledge, and the knowledge management strategy according to various empirical studies conducted by scholars. This paper further reviews the technologies and the technology tools to be used in the development of social networks for KM in an organization. A brief description on knowledge processes and technology enabler, the impact of social networking site and socialized KM in today’s organization, the reason for socializing KM and the component of KM are discuss. The strategy for Km implementation and the two main strategies are discussed. The literature are based on the past studies and researches. Keywords: Knowledge Management, Social Networks, I

Analisa Dan Implementasi Dns Server Sebagai Filtering Konten Negatif Menggunakan Metode Rpz (Response Policy Zone) Di PT. TIME Excelindo

Internet today has become an important requirement for the community. The increased use of the internet, it is also popping up more and more sites with content that can have negative effects for society. To create a clean and comfortable internet, it is necessary to filtering of the domain that has a negative content. PT. Time Excelindo as one of the internet service providers (ISPs), shall perform the blocking of websites that contain negative content. This is reinforced by the MINISTER OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA NUMBER 19 OF 2014 Article 8, paragraph 1, Internet Access Service Provider shall perform the blocking of sites contained in the TRUST + Positive. In this thesis, the author will analyze and implement the DNS Server As Negative Content Filtering Using RPZ (Response Policy Zone) method at PT. Time Excelindo. So that filtering can run up, the client may be forced to use the DNS server with the help of a router.The method used is the analysis, installation, configuration, testing and evaluation. DNS servers, can perform filtering of the domain are allowed and which are not allowed to be accessed by the client. By using RPZ, can register a particular client for a free from the filtering process on the DNS server. In addition, in order to force the client through the process of filtering, use the router. With the blocking of negative sites, the authors hope to civilize healthy internet for a better Indonesia

On the reciprocal effects between multiple group identifications and mental health: a longitudinal study of Scottish adolescents

Objectives: The aim of the study was to investigate the link between social group identification and mental health outcomes in a sample of secondary school pupils. Based on previous work, it was predicted that multiple high group identifications would protect against psychological ill health. Furthermore, it was predicted that better mental health would also predict greater number of group i identifications, thus creating a 'virtuous circle'. Design: A longitudinal questionnaire design was used. Methods: A total of 409 Scottish secondary school pupils aged 13–17 completed a questionnaire twice over a year. Pupils' responses regarding their mental health and the extent of their identification with three groups (the family, school, and friends) were measured. Results: A path analysis of the data showed that greater number of high group identifications predicted better mental health outcomes amongst participants. However, better mental health also predicted greater number of high group identifications, suggesting that there is a cyclical relationship between both variables. Conclusions: The findings have both theoretical and practical implications. They highlight the importance of conceptualizing the link between group identification and mental health as cyclical, rather than unidirectional. This reconceptualization has implications for mental health promotion strategies, as it highlights the importance of attempting to turn a potentially 'vicious cycle' of social disidentification and mental ill health into a 'virtuous cycle' of social identification and mental health. Practitioner points: - Results showed that in a population of 409 high school pupils, the more high group identifications pupils had, the better their mental health outcomes. - Better mental health also predicted a greater number of high group identifications over time. - The findings suggest that we would benefit from conceptualizing the relationship between group identification and mental outcomes as being cyclical rather than unidirectional. - Viewing the relationship between group identification and mental health in this way enables us to consider interventions which help turn a 'vicious cycle' into a 'virtuous cycle'. Limitations: - A potential limitation of the work relates to the use of self-report questionnaires which may elicit socially desirable responses. - The sample only consists of high school pupils from mainstream public schools within Scotland

Informed pair selection for self-paced metric learning in Siamese neural networks.

Siamese Neural Networks (SNNs) are deep metric learners that use paired instance comparisons to learn similarity. The neural feature maps learnt in this way provide useful representations for classification tasks. Learning in SNNs is not reliant on explicit class knowledge; instead they require knowledge about the relationship between pairs. Though often ignored, we have found that appropriate pair selection is crucial to maximising training efficiency, particularly in scenarios where examples are limited. In this paper, we study the role of informed pair selection and propose a 2-phased strategy of exploration and exploitation. Random sampling provides the needed coverage for exploration, while areas of uncertainty modeled by neighbourhood properties of the pairs drive exploitation. We adopt curriculum learning to organise the ordering of pairs at training time using similarity knowledge as a heuristic for pair sorting. The results of our experimental evaluation show that these strategies are key to optimising training

ASEAN-Indonesia counterterrorism cooperation to fight terrorism in Indonesia since October 2002-2009

Terrorism and counterterrorism have become high priorities in Indonesia. Several bomb explosions since the fall of New Order government in 1998 until the J.W. Marriott and Ritz - Carlton hotels on July 17, 2009 such as Christmas Eve bombing, Bali bombing, Australian Embassy and J.W.Marriot bombing demonstrates that terrorism is a continuous threat. This paper discusses the counterterrorism measures taking by the Indonesian government to deal the problem. The aim of this study is: to verify support given by ASEAN Countries to fight terrorism in Indonesia. To get the specific information and data, the writer uses two kinds of research methods which are field research (observation, data collection, data analysis) and library Research. The writer used this method by reading and taking sources from books found in the library and looking for the other material that have relationship with this observation. The result of study describes counterterrorism cooperation between ASEAN and Indonesia, such as intelligence sharing, joint training of law enforcement, and efforts to standardize legal definitions of terrorism. ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and its member countries have been addressing the issue of terrorism at the national, bilateral and multilateral basis over the years. The ASEAN Leaders viewed terrorism as a profound threat to international peace and security and "a direct challenge to the attainment of peace, progress and prosperity of ASEAN and the realization of ASEAN Vision 2020". Furthermore, this paper seeks to plot the trajectory of ASEAN-Indonesia counterterrorism cooperation from the Bali bombing of October 2002 through the J.W.Marriott and Ritz Carlton Hotels of July 2009

The supermassive black hole mass - S\'ersic index relations for bulges and elliptical galaxies

Scaling relations between supermassive black hole mass, M_BH, and host galaxy properties are a powerful instrument for studying their coevolution. A complete picture involving all of the black hole scaling relations, in which each relation is consistent with the others, is necessary to fully understand the black hole-galaxy connection. The relation between M_BH and the central light concentration of the surrounding bulge, quantified by the S\'ersic index n, may be one of the simplest and strongest such relations, requiring only uncalibrated galaxy images. We have conducted a census of literature S\'ersic index measurements for a sample of 54 local galaxies with directly measured M_BH values. We find a clear M_BH - n relation, despite an appreciable level of scatter due to the heterogeneity of the data. Given the current M_BH - L_sph and the L_sph - n relations, we have additionally derived the expected M_BH - n relations, which are marginally consistent at the 2 sigma level with the observed relations. Elliptical galaxies and the bulges of disc galaxies are each expected to follow two distinct bent M_BH - n relations due to the S\'ersic/core-S\'ersic divide. For the same central light concentration, we predict that M_BH in the S\'ersic bulges of disc galaxies are an order magnitude higher than in S\'ersic elliptical galaxies if they follow the same M_BH - L_sph relation.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Penentuan Nilai Sun Protection Factor (SPF) Ekstrak Etanol Daun Jeruju (Acanthus Ilicifolius L.) secara In Vitro

UV radiation can have an adverse effect on the skin. One of the ways to prevent these bad effects is to use sunscreen. The ethanol extract of jeruju leaves contains several secondary metabolites in the form of flavonoids and phenolics so that it has the potential as a sunscreen agent. This study aims to determine the activity of the extract as a sunscreen agent and to determine the SPF value of jeruju leaf extract. This research is an experimental laboratory with a quantitative approach. The SPF value of the ethanolic extract of jeruju leaves was determined by measuring the absorbance with several extract concentrations, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 ppm at the UV wavelength of 290-400 nm with 5 nm intervals using a UV spectrophotometer. The absorbance data obtained were analyzed using Microsoft Office Excel. The ethanol extract of jeruju leaves has activity as a sunscreen agent with the best SPF value indicated by a concentration of 500 ppm with a value of 3.8478 followed by a concentration of 400 ppm with a value of 2.9687, a concentration of 300 ppm with a value of 2.2672, a concentration of 200 ppm with a value of 1.7202 and a concentration of 100 ppm with a value of 1.3165