What can the Stakeholder Theory Learn from Enron?

Roughly speaking, Enron has done for reflection on corporate governance what AIDS did for research on the immune system. So far, however, virtually all of this reflection on and subsequent reform of governance has come from those with a stake in the success of modern capitalism. This paper identifies a number of governance challenges for critics of capitalism, and in particular for those who urge corporations to voluntarily adopt missions of broader social responsibility and equal treatment for all stakeholder groups. I argue that by generally neglecting the governance relation between shareholders and senior managers, stakeholder theorists have underestimated the way in which shareholder-focused governance can be in the interests of all stakeholder groups. The enemy, if you will, is not capitalists (shareholders), but greedy, corrupt or incompetent managers. A second set of governance challenges for stakeholder theorists concerns their largely untested proposals for governance reforms that would require managers to act in the interests of all stakeholders and not just shareholders; in other words to treat shareholders as just another stakeholder group. I suggest that in such a governance regime it may be almost impossible to hold managers accountable to anyone – just as it was when state-owned enterprises were given “multi-stakeholder” mandates in the 1960s and 1970s.

Stress Of Women Entrepreneurs a Comparative With Women In Selected Groups In The District Of Ernakulam

The focus of this study is the stress of women entrepreneurs.As stress is associated with constraints and demands, and as a set of emerging conditions seem to affect the quality of life of women, it is more than just an occasional need to enquire in to the possibilities of promoting entrepreneurship by empowering women.As women entrepreneurs are increasingly involved in inherently complicated activities of improving their enterprise functioning ,it would be appropriate for women entrepreneurs to focus on transformational coping interventions.The study is limited to women entrepreneurs in the tiny sector.Women entrepreneurs registered in the Distric Industries ( DIC) and in the Kerala State Women’s Industries Association (KSWIA) are only selected for the study.It gaves a detailed description about empowerment of women.The social , economic ,political,ecological,and psychological importance of the study are detailed.It explains the family related stress, and the contextual system.This study is suggested on beliefs and values of women about their self-perception influencing gender bias, which contribute to stress and coping.This study is also needed about women’s believes and expectations about the probable effectiveness of various course of action and their ability to perform those actions.It is also neede for appraising coping potential of women and enhancing their stress base.It is important to research on stress and self-concept

Sediment Budgeting Studies for the Kollam Coast

The Sediment budgeting studies are done to bring out the coastal processes at work, to understand the beach-innershelf sedimentary dynamics and to assess the stability of any coastal stretch. There is a dearth of such studies as far as the Indian coast is concerned. The Chavara coast of Kollam district, Kerala, is world famous for its rich heavy mineral resources. These mineral resources are being commercially mined by the Indian Rare Earths Ltd. (IREL) and Kerala Minerals and Metals Ltd. (KMML), two Public Sector Undertakings located in the area. The impact of mining on stability of the beach has been a point of debate among the local people as well as researchers. The coastal stretch of 22km length from Neendakara to Kayamkulam which is referred to as the Chavara coast. The tidal, wind driven and continental shelf currents, there could also be the contribution of coastal trapped waves and baroclinic flow associated with the plumes of fresh water coming from the estuaries. The main objectives of the study are the hydrodynamic processes and mechanism involved in the sediment movement along the Chavara coast, Identify the different sources and sinks of beach sand along the coast, Quantify the sediment input/output into/from the coast and assess the erosion/accretion scenario of the coast.

Design and Development of data mining models for the predictions of manpower placement in the technical Domain

Data mining is one of the hottest research areas nowadays as it has got wide variety of applications in common man’s life to make the world a better place to live. It is all about finding interesting hidden patterns in a huge history data base. As an example, from a sales data base, one can find an interesting pattern like “people who buy magazines tend to buy news papers also” using data mining. Now in the sales point of view the advantage is that one can place these things together in the shop to increase sales. In this research work, data mining is effectively applied to a domain called placement chance prediction, since taking wise career decision is so crucial for anybody for sure. In India technical manpower analysis is carried out by an organization named National Technical Manpower Information System (NTMIS), established in 1983-84 by India's Ministry of Education & Culture. The NTMIS comprises of a lead centre in the IAMR, New Delhi, and 21 nodal centres located at different parts of the country. The Kerala State Nodal Centre is located at Cochin University of Science and Technology. In Nodal Centre, they collect placement information by sending postal questionnaire to passed out students on a regular basis. From this raw data available in the nodal centre, a history data base was prepared. Each record in this data base includes entrance rank ranges, reservation, Sector, Sex, and a particular engineering. From each such combination of attributes from the history data base of student records, corresponding placement chances is computed and stored in the history data base. From this data, various popular data mining models are built and tested. These models can be used to predict the most suitable branch for a particular new student with one of the above combination of criteria. Also a detailed performance comparison of the various data mining models is done.This research work proposes to use a combination of data mining models namely a hybrid stacking ensemble for better predictions. A strategy to predict the overall absorption rate for various branches as well as the time it takes for all the students of a particular branch to get placed etc are also proposed. Finally, this research work puts forward a new data mining algorithm namely C 4.5 * stat for numeric data sets which has been proved to have competent accuracy over standard benchmarking data sets called UCI data sets. It also proposes an optimization strategy called parameter tuning to improve the standard C 4.5 algorithm. As a summary this research work passes through all four dimensions for a typical data mining research work, namely application to a domain, development of classifier models, optimization and ensemble methods.

Management of Public Road Transport System in Trivandrum City

An efficient passenger road transport system is a boon to any city and an inefficient one its bane. Passenger bus transport operation involves various aspects like passenger convenience, profitability of operation and social, technological and environmental factors. The author’s interest in this area was aroused when he conducted a traffic survey of Trivandrum City in 1979. While some studies on the performance of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation in specific areas like finance, inventory control etc. have already been made, no study has been made from the operational point of view. The study is also the first one of its kind in dealing with the transportation problems for a second order city like Trivandrum. The objective of this research study is to develop a scientific basis for analysing and understanding the various operational aspects of urban bus transport management like assessing travel demand, depot location, fleet allocation, vehicle scheduling, maintenance etc. The operation of public road transportation in Trivandrum City is analysed on the basis of this theoretical background. The studies made have relevance to any medium sized city in India or even abroad. If not properly managed, deterioration of any public utility system is a natural process and it adversely affects the consumers, the economy and the nation. Making any system more efficient requires careful analysis, judicious decision making and proper implementation. It is hoped that this study will throw some light into the various operational aspects of urban passenger road transport management which can be of some help to make it perform more efficiently

“Urban Water Supply Management: A Study Of Centralised And Community Based Systems In Calicut City

Studies in urban water supply system are few in the state of Kerala. It is a little researched area. In the case of water pricing a number of studies are available. In Kerala state, exception to Jacob John’s study on “Economics of Public Water Supply System”, which is a case study of Trivandrum Water Supply System in 1997, no exhaustive research work has so far come out in this field. loreover no indepth research study has come up, so far, relating to household ater demand analysis and the distribution system of urban piped water supply. he proposed study is first of its kind, which focuses on the distributional and Iailability problems of piped water supply in an urban centre in Kerala state. Hence there is a felt need for enquiring into the sufficiency of )table water supplied to people in urban areas and the efficiency maintained in roviding the scarce resource and preventing its misuse by the consumers. It is in llS backdrop that this study was undertaken and its empirical part was conducted |Calicut city in the state of Kerala. Study is confined to the water supply system ithe city of Calicut

English-Malayalam Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval – an Experience

This paper describes about an English-Malayalam Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval system. The system retrieves Malayalam documents in response to query given in English or Malayalam. Thus monolingual information retrieval is also supported in this system. Malayalam is one of the most prominent regional languages of Indian subcontinent. It is spoken by more than 37 million people and is the native language of Kerala state in India. Since we neither had any full-fledged online bilingual dictionary nor any parallel corpora to build the statistical lexicon, we used a bilingual dictionary developed in house for translation. Other language specific resources like Malayalam stemmer, Malayalam morphological root analyzer etc developed in house were used in this work

Mini-trawls for Estuarine Fishing Kasargod District

Mi ni -trawls are operated by the artisanal fishermen from small wooden non-motorised canoes. Shrimp, fish and crab trawls wi th head rope length rang ing from 3.5-8 m, made of Po lyethy lene mon ofila ment (PE) twisted and Polyamide mullifilament (PA) rigged to 6-7 kll fla t rectangular wooden otter boards are common in the lower reaches of Kariango de and Chandrag iri rive rs. Since the trawling speed is less, ca tch is do minated by crus taceans. Less scope ratio also may be affecting the catching efficiency of the gear. This pape r deals with the design, operation and economics of mini traw ling carried out by a group of fisherme n in the above rivers of Kasargod district Kerala state.

Conceptualisation Of Model For Studying Consumer Purchase Behaviour Of Passenger Cars

Automobile Industry in India is influenced by the presence of national and multi-national manufacturers. The presence of many manufacturers and brands in the state provides many choices to the customer. The current market for car manufacturers has been transformed from a monopoly of one or two manufacturers in the seventies to oligopoly of many manufacturers in the current marketing scenario. The main objective of the research paper is to explore and conceptualize various parameters and develop a model, which influence the purchase patterns of passenger cars in the State of Kerala. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to come up with a model, which shall facilitate further study on the consumer purchase behaviour patterns of passenger car owners in the State of Kerala, India. The author intends to undertake further quantitative analysis to verify and validate the model so developed. The main methods used for this paper are secondary research on available material, depth interview of car dealers, car financing agencies and car owners in the city of Cochin, in Kerala State in India. The depth interviews were conducted with the use of prepared questionnaire for car dealers, car customers and car financing agencies. The findings resulted in the identification of the parameters that influence the consumer purchase behaviour of passenger cars and the formulation of the model, which will be the basis for the further research of the author. The paper will be of tremendous value to the existing and new car manufacturers both indigenous and foreign, to formalize and strategies their policies towards an effective marketing strategy, so as to market their models in the State, which is known for its high literacy, consumerism and higher educational penetration

Characterization and FTIR spectral studies of human urinary stones from Southern India

Urinary stones resected from urinary bladders of patients hailing from Kollam district of Kerala State, India were analyzed by SEM, XRD and by thermal analysis techniques. The analytical results indicate that, stones have different composition, i.e., calcium phosphate, calcium phosphate hydroxide and sodium calcium carbonate. Infrared spectral studies also reveal the presence of phosphates or carbonates in these samples. Further, IR spectral investigations have revealed that amorphous carbonated species are occupied in PO4 sites in calcium phosphate type stone and OH sites in calcium phosphate hydroxide sample. Thermal studies of these samples also reveal that, carbon dioxide is released from carbonated samples upon heating which is related to amount of carbon content and bond strength. Crystals with defects and irregular morphology are grown inside the urinary bladder due to variation in crystal growth conditions

Analytical Characterization, Thermal And Ftir Studies Of Urinary Calculi

Urolithiasis is identified to be a major urological disorder affecting people all over the world irrespective of their age, sex and race. Urinary stone samples resected from the urinary bladders of two patients belonging to tropical region, Kollam District of Kerala State, India are investigated by using XRD,SEM, EDAX, TGA, DSC and FTIR to understand its chemical structure. Uric acid shows exothermic peak around 432°C is due to the decomposition with the evolution of CO and cracking of the remaining products. Results of analytical studies reveal that samples under investigation consist mainly in uric acid and hydrated uric acid. Hydrogen bonding exists in hydrated uric acid samples

Educational Loans And The Higher Education Sector In India

In 2001 the Indian Banks Association have come up with a model frame work for educational loans in the country. With the approval of the Central Government the public sector banks in India started to give education loans. The private and cooperative banks also joined the fray. Due to growing NPAs and the intervention of the Government these norms were modified in 2011. The budget allocation for the primary and higher secondary education is on the increase in India. However, higher education has been of late relegated or left to the mercy of the private players. There has been a steady growth of educational loans disbursed, private colleges and deemed universities started and enrolments of students in higher education during the years 2001 to 2011. This paper is a humble attempt to 1) analyse the growth of the educational loans vis-à-vis other forms of personal loans at the national level, 2) showcase the disbursements of educational loans in Kerala State, 3) to assess the growth of educational institutions and enrolment of students in higher education in India from secondary data and 4) to make suggestions based on the findings

Model Diagnostics in the presence of measurement error

The problem of using information available from one variable X to make inferenceabout another Y is classical in many physical and social sciences. In statistics this isoften done via regression analysis where mean response is used to model the data. Onestipulates the model Y = µ(X) +ɛ. Here µ(X) is the mean response at the predictor variable value X = x, and ɛ = Y - µ(X) is the error. In classical regression analysis, both (X; Y ) are observable and one then proceeds to make inference about the mean response function µ(X). In practice there are numerous examples where X is not available, but a variable Z is observed which provides an estimate of X. As an example, consider the herbicidestudy of Rudemo, et al. [3] in which a nominal measured amount Z of herbicide was applied to a plant but the actual amount absorbed by the plant X is unobservable. As another example, from Wang [5], an epidemiologist studies the severity of a lung disease, Y , among the residents in a city in relation to the amount of certain air pollutants. The amount of the air pollutants Z can be measured at certain observation stations in the city, but the actual exposure of the residents to the pollutants, X, is unobservable and may vary randomly from the Z-values. In both cases X = Z+error: This is the so called Berkson measurement error model.In more classical measurement error model one observes an unbiased estimator W of X and stipulates the relation W = X + error: An example of this model occurs when assessing effect of nutrition X on a disease. Measuring nutrition intake precisely within 24 hours is almost impossible. There are many similar examples in agricultural or medical studies, see e.g., Carroll, Ruppert and Stefanski [1] and Fuller [2], , among others. In this talk we shall address the question of fitting a parametric model to the re-gression function µ(X) in the Berkson measurement error model: Y = µ(X) + ɛ; X = Z + η; where η and ɛ are random errors with E(ɛ) = 0, X and η are d-dimensional, and Z is the observable d-dimensional r.v.

Testing Isotropy and a related Random Walk problem

One comes across directions as the observations in a number of situations. The first inferential question that one should answer when dealing with such data is, “Are they isotropic or uniformly distributed?” The answer to this question goes back in history which we shall retrace a bit and provide an exact and approximate solution to this so-called “Pearson’s Random Walk” problem.

El ideal administrativo, nueva visión de la gestión directiva

Las recientes crisis económicas que ha vivido el mundo nos llevan a hacer una reflexión en torno a las responsabilidades que tienen los dirigentes empresariales en los cambios económicos e incluso sociales que se están viviendo. Es por tanto el momento para hacer un análisis más profundo del aporte que la administración, como ciencia, ha hecho a la sociedad. Se ha identificado que la administración permite el desarrollo y crecimiento de un individuo, al tiempo que es un medio de crecimiento y desarrollo para una comunidad, una región y una cultura, lo que se convierte en una realidad indiscutible que nos lleva a reflexionar acerca del porqué, ocurren problemas como las quiebras, ausencia de recursos, y conflictos internos en las organizaciones. En esa medida, una reflexión puede ser que los ideales que ha venido liderando la administración han sido desvirtuados y apartados de una moral y ética empresarial que permita al directivo pensar en algo más que utilidades. Podría parecer extraño decir que la empresa y la acción gerencial deben ir más allá. Podríamos iniciar con el análisis de la obsolescencia de los ideales administrativos o incluso en la ausencia de ideales en la administración. Sobre si se está teniendo en cuenta que la administración que conocemos y aprendemos sigue vigente en un mundo que ha evolucionado y cambiado, el mundo de hoy es distinto al que conocimos incluso en nuestra época de formación profesional, pues se nos enseñó a pensar linealmente, causa y efecto, todo cumple un orden y un plan predeterminado, hoy la visión de certidumbre y control del hombre sobre las decisiones son guiadas por el azar, y por más que el hombre trabaja y diseña estrategias, éstas serán transformadas de acuerdo a las emergencias. Por lo anterior, es importante entender que para avanzar y dejar la obsolescencia en los ideales que ha definido la administración, los directivos deben cambiar su visón y entender la dinámica de interrelación de sus organizaciones en un mundo en permanente caos. Debemos estudiar desde dinámicas diferentes a la de funcionalidad, y saber que es momento para que la administración tenga una nueva visión de la gestión administrativa, por lo que debemos ampliar nuestro horizonte y ver a través de la complejidad. Las decisiones que toman los directivos, las estrategias que definen y la forma de relacionarse con la competencia en mercados altamente competitivos requiere de un cambio en la administración y de un marco ético muy distinto, debe concebirse la gestión directiva y administrativa para mantener y conservar la vida del sector, de la empresa y, por ende, mantener el medio que nos rodea. Por ello se propone ejercer la administración desde la bioética.