Narrow Results

This paper identifies key features of the Thai mutual fund industry and analyzes determinants of those characteristics using unique survey data from 45% of fund managers registered in Thailand in 2012. The Thai mutual fund industry has some unique characteristics. It has experienced rapid growth and is dominated by bank-related funds that are mostly fixed income funds. Equity allocation of the fund industry and our sample funds are below optimal allocation benchmarks. However, country-level allocation is close to optimal, suggesting that Thai investors who invest in equity prefer to do so directly rather than through equity mutual funds. Fund managers perceive that too much regulation, investors’ preference for deposits and insufficient liquidity limit growth in their equity investments. Managers in our survey indicate that investors do not consider expense ratio and management fee important in determining mutual fund investments. This is contrary to general investment recommendations. Thai bank-related fund managers believe that investors place more importance to brand reputation than performance, whereas foreign fund managers view performance as more important. Thai bank fund managers are more concerned about local interest rates than Thai non-bank and foreign fund managers.

It would be useful for IS researchers to know the major methodological methods used in IS filed and the trends MIS is experiencing in this regard. For this reason, we have conducted a meta-research on three leading IS journals over a period of 15 years in an attempt to provide the MIS field with an overview of research methodologies used and help researchers in choosing appropriate research method. 651 survey-based studies reported in three leading MIS journals between 1992 and 2006 are reviewed. The findings indicate that a considerable proportion of MIS research has been conducted using the survey method. In terms of research purpose, there has been an imbalance between the use of exploratory and explanatory surveys. Consequently, it is to be expected that in the immediate future, the trend will be much more towards the development of models and the explanation of relationships that is towards explanatory studies.

The misreporting of voter turnout, prevalent in survey data across the world, has received comparatively little attention anywhere apart from in some western countries. This study evaluates the use of questions specifically designed to mitigate the level of vote overreporting for the 2012 national elections in Taiwan. After a theoretical examination of social desirability and memory failure, the two primary causes of misreporting, we present the results of a split-question experiment featuring two questions designed to mitigate overreporting. While the findings reveal that the experiment with changes to the questionnaire context was far from successful because of a low reported turnout for the control question, it is the case that, as hypothesized, reported voter turnout differs vastly among the different questions, with the question mitigating for social desirability resulting in higher figures than that for memory failure.

The main purpose of the presented research is to contribute to a better understanding of business process reengineering (BPR), supported with performance measurement (PM) indicators with the purpose to improve company operations efficiency. Existing literature on the subject warns about deficiencies in the concept of BPR, which can be extremely efficient with its radical workings. The concept of BPR should be studied in connection with the logical supplementary areas: manufacturing strategy and, on the other hand, performance indicators, meant for selected manufacturing strategy and BPR performance verification. BPR and PM literature is based primarily on case studies and there is a lack of rigorous wide-ranging empirical research covering all its aspects. This chapter presents the results of a survey research carried out in 73 medium- and large-sized Slovenian manufacturing companies. Seven crucial areas were identified based on a synthesis of PM literature, which must be practiced to achieve effective operations: cost, quality, time, flexibility, reliability, customer satisfaction, and human resources. Variables have been constructed within these areas, using Likert scales, and statistical validity, and reliability analyses.