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Volume 2 Number 2

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The Art of Reviewing Academic Articles: Perfections and Limitations

The review process is an unavoidable part of publishing academic contents for assuring quality. The process is featured with artistic judgments and has many implications on the development of knowledge. Assisting an author for publication through a review process needs enthusiasm, expertise and confidence. As a whole, a review work is an art rather than a skill that requires perfection. Besides, the process has limitations that may lead to a misery to an author. A prospective reviewer needs to be aware of the basics of a review work before being engaged. This article discusses the major and minor aspects of a review work that are closely associated with perfection in practice. These critical aspects such as intensive and up to date knowledge on the relevant subject matter, critical view and absence of conflict of interest are the key to a successful quality assurance process in the academic arena. The ‘misery of recommendation’ can be avoided only by learning the process with the professional interest.

The Main Antecedent of Customer Loyalty in Moroccan Banking Sector

Loyal customers are always considered an asset for any business. The aim of this research is to examine the main antecedents of customer loyalty. Data was collected by survey instrument from various regions of Morocco including Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier and Marrakech. Pearson correlation was used to test research hypotheses and multiple regression analysis helped to find the most important antecedent to customer loyalty. Data analysis revealed that customer satisfaction, trust, corporate image and service quality were important factors affecting customer loyalty, with customer satisfaction emerging as the most important of these. Research findings illustrate that the banking sector needs to develop strategies to increase customer loyalty by enhancing customer satisfaction along with trust level, corporate image and service quality. This empirical research is the first of its kind in the Moroccan context. It is envisaged that this study will set a foundation for future research work concerning this aspect of business activity in Morocco and in general, the broader service industry context.

Factor Affecting the Adoption of E-commerce: A Study of the Textile Industry in Wujin, China

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence the adoption of e-commerce with emphasis on textile companies in WuJin, China.  The factors are organizational readiness, innovation characteristics, government influence and culture. Binary logistic regression was applied to test the research model. The result shows that organizational readiness, innovation characteristics and culture influence the adoption of e-commerce among textile companies in WuJin. As China’s culture is different from many western countries, it is found that relationships between organizations, or GuanXi as it is commonly known in China, needs to be established before organizations collaborating with each other are willing to adopt e-commerce.    The findings of this study are useful for the Malaysian companies who are interested to adopt e-commerce with their business partners in China.

Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma with Local Interaction: A Simulation Model

We study a simulation model of the prisoner’s dilemma game played locally by agents situated on a two dimensional lattice. Agents interact simultaneously with players in its Von Neuman neighborhood (r = 1), behaving as one of the four of automata strategy types including simple cooperation, simple defect, TFT (tit for tat) and TF2T (tit for two tats). Our research seeks to study the effect of including reciprocal players like TFT and TF2T on the survival rate of simple cooperation under different scenarios of learning rate and payoff structures. We show that presence of reciprocal-strategy (TFT and TF2T) players and learning delay positively affects the survival of single state cooperators.

Financial Liberalization and Banking Fragility within Tunisian Financial Sector

In this paper we assess and measure the effect of financial liberalization on the Tunisian bank’s risk exposure. Our objective is to compute the probability of banking failure. Firstly, we analyze the financial liberalization process and the mechanisms through which financial deregulation may increase banking sector fragility. Secondly, we present an overview of the Tunisian banking sector before and after financial liberalization reforms. Finally, we consider a model to assess the interaction between financial liberalization process and the probability of Tunisian’s banks failure. Estimation exercises shows that the increase in loans supply in Tunisian banks is positively correlated to the probability of banking failure. Furthermore, the financial liberalization increases the banking deposits, which are negatively correlated to the probability of banking failure. Our results provide strong evidence of negative relationship between return on banking assets and the probability of failure.

Corporate Corruption and Chaos: A Formal Recursive Model 

This paper develops a formal model of organizational corruption in order to explore rigorously the dynamic implications of corporate culture. This formalism is especially important whenever feedback (i.e. recursive) mechanisms are at play, since this can induce complex dynamics which are not at first obvious. We show that the conclusions of even a simple model are not intuitive and are, in fact, chaotic. Moreover, corporate corruption often has little to do with the variables that are under the control of management. Rather, they are determined endogenously, by a corporate culture that has a life of its own and is sensitive to the initial conditions in which the firm finds itself. Managers can influence the dynamics of corporate culture through various methods including employment pre-screening or promotions policies. However, these methods do not diminish the chaotic nature of dynamics of corporate corruption that are beyond managerial control.

TQM and Competitive Advantage: A Review and Research Agenda 

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model that can be used in supporting the association between the many facets of total quality management (TQM) practices and its impact on competitive advantage. The theories of TQM and competitive advantage serve as the theoretical foundation to build up the conceptual model. This proposed conceptual framework could provide valuable knowledge to top management in the organizations to improve their quality management practices and subsequently achieving competitive advantage.