The Role of Geography in Management: A Timely Matter of Concern in Education and Knowledge Management in Sri Lanka

AbstractAccording to Hartshorne (1939) geography is the science that provides accurate, orderly and rational description of the variable character of the earth surface. This definition emphasizes that everything on this earth has a geographic dimension as everything is place specific and changing from place to place. Thus, management is also a geographic phenomenon, as managerial methods, practices and decisions also change from place to place. They are time and place specific and acting as processes changing over time and space which are emphasized as identities in geography.At present, geographical concepts are significantly applied in management. Particularly in environmental, real estate, human resource and marketing management its application is salient. Internationally, geography is taught as a subject in different faculties of commerce and management. In UK and USA universities even degrees on geography and management are offered.Unfortunately the management faculties in Sri Lanka have neglected its importance particularly in the recent past. Nearly two decades ago economic and commercial geography was taught as a subject of the commerce degree programme but that has also been excluded after the revision of curricular. However, geographical concepts are still significantly applied in management but it seems that academics and practitioners in the field of education and knowledge management are not well aware of geography behind management. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the role of geography for creative and innovative business management practices in Sri Lanka.Methodologically this is a conceptual and thought raising paper by emphasizing the significance of various concepts in geography to the field of management. This is done through a literature survey by following purposive sampling technique for the selection of literature. To emphasize its significance many theoretical and practical aspects particularly accepted internationally are cited. As the outcome, it is expected that the expertise in the field of education and knowledge management will understand the importance of this subject for creative business management practices in Sri Lanka as the paper emphasizes its importance through the geographical identity and the concepts applied in management, decision making in management, world practices in different universities and the text books published in the field of geography and management.Keywords: Education and knowledge management, Geography, Place specific, Process, Time

FROM INTERPRETIVISM TO POSITIVISM: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE RESEARCH IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (HRM)

As the research in many other disciplines methodological aspects of the research in HRM are also under debate in the context of present development. Due to the complexity of an issue academicians and the professional practitioners in HRM attempt to view a problem in different angles by applying various methodologies associated with different philosophical paradigms in research. Among them positivism and the interpretivism are two different major paradigms, which have set the foundation for quantitative and qualitative dualism in turn.Positivism basically focuses on the objective reality of the issue while interpretivism emphasizes its subjective reality. Thus, there is no argument for the fact that the research in HRM should mainly follow the interpretive methodological approach, which mainly focuses on qualitative aspects of human resources. But in professional practice, researchers in HRM have confronted a great challenge particularly in analyzing subjective data with many disadvantages of the interpretive approach. Among them the difficulty of generalizing the issue and its causes and findings is one of the most important challenging aspects. In many instances, professionals in this field are worrying of its disadvantages, as they have not been able to show their results to the organization objectively. Sometime this may be due to their ignorance of the application of proper methodology in research and/or the lack of knowledge in quantitative analysis. However, due to different reasons professional practitioners in this field are so keen of finding a suitable methodology so that they would be able to show the productive results according to world-wide accepted norm of scientific method. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to discuss the ways and means of integrating two different methodologies, starting with interpretivism that is the most realistic in HRM and then combining with positivism, which is generally accepted scientific method by quantitative researchers. Methodologically this is a theoretical paper but some HR cases are cited to justify the points where necessary. The output of the paper discuses the ways and means of transferring from qualitative interpretivism to quantitative positivism by converting the HR variables into non-parametric and parametric data and output. It provides guidelines to the academicians, researchers and professional practitioners in this field for testing logical relationships between the problematic variable and its related causes.Key Words: Positivism, Interpretivism, Methodological Paradigms, Parametric and Non-parametric DataFor full paper: [email protected]

Vulnerability of the Poor and Non-poor Households: A Case Study of Neboda West Grama Niladhari Division of Dodangoda Divisional Secretariat in Sri Lanka

Poverty is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with many forms and causes. It is normally measured quantitatively by using income criterion. But understanding poverty only in terms of income criterion can misrepresent its nature and underlying causes. It is a much broader and deeper issue of deprivation mainly associated with both quantitative and qualitative aspects. It is essential to place considerable values on both quantitative and qualitative aspects in understanding poverty. Thus, vulnerability is one of the criteria which is used to understand poverty in these two aspects.  Vulnerability is a constant companion of material and human deprivation, given the circumstances of the poor and the near-poor or non-poor. It means the probability of being exposed to a number of risks. It is generally accepted that poor people are more vulnerable in various circumstances than non-poor people due to many reasons. Thus, this paper attempts to analyse the nature of vulnerability of the poor and non-poor households and the root causes leading to their level of vulnerability. For this purpose, Neboda West Grama Niladhari Divison of Dodangoda Divisional Secretariat in Sri Lanka was selected for the study. A sample of fifty households was selected for the study by following stratified random sampling technique. Questionnaire and the in-depth interviews were used for data gathering. In order to examine whether there is a significant difference between poor and non-poor households regarding quantitative aspects of vulnerability, mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used. For analysing qualitative aspects of vulnerability relating to these two groups absolute and percentage values were used. As the findings, this study disclosed that there is a significant difference between poor and non-poor households regarding vulnerability.  As its quantitative aspects income and its variability and as the qualitative aspects ownership to physical assets, education, income diversification, links to networks, safety nets and access to credit market significantly vary between these two groups by confirming significant difference of the ability to face adverse shocks.&nbsp

The Impact of Leadership Styles on the Job Satisfaction of Employees in a Garment Factory of Sri Lanka

Job satisfaction is a common but important theme discussed at organizational level. It refers to the attitude and feelings that the people have about their work. Main concern of every organization is to maintain the satisfaction of the employees so that the organizational goals can be achieved successfully. Job satisfaction of the employees can be determined by many factors. Among them, leadership style followed by the leaders is also one of the important factors. Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans and motivating people.Many scholars have addressed the impact of leadership styles on the job satisfaction of employees in different manner. But, literature on this topic in the context of Sri Lanka has not sufficiently developed. There are only few studies covered the subject of leadership in Sri Lanka particularly limiting to few sectors. Therefore, this study attempts to fill that gap of the knowledge by addressing how leadership styles affect job satisfaction of the employees, particularly in a garment factory in Sri Lanka. Methodologically, deductive testing theory approach was followed by this study. Theory was developed by the literature based on the pilot study.  As the pilot study confirmed that three major leadership styles such as democratic, autocratic and transactional style are followed by the leaders, the impact of these three styles on the job satisfaction of employees were examined by giving a questionnaire to a stratified random sample of 60 employees. Basic hypothesis of the study was that the transactional leadership style should be the most significant in determining the job satisfaction according to human nature. But the outcome of this study confirmed that the impact of democratic style was statistically more significant than autocratic and transactional styles by rejecting the initial hypothesis. &nbsp