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It is with great pleasure I’m able to report to our respective association members, readers, colleagues, supporters and contributors that all the initial feedback on the newly launched journal has been most positive to say the least. In the main appreciation has been pointed in terms of the journals overriding quality, principally by way of both its content and due presentation of same. Furthermore the editorial board has grown since first issue was posted and I’m delighted to welcome Professor’s Rao and Orcullo and Dr Al-Harthy and thank them most sincerely for their contribution and support.
This is indeed a very promising beginning and as the journal grows in terms of its increasing library of articles so too will its international recognition in and around the field of International Management and the highly important role of ’The Professional Manager’ on an increasingly international stage. It is very often and sadly forgotten that irrespective of the quality of political/corporate strategies the overwhelming effectiveness of their respective implementation, development and success lies firmly in the hands of those professionals serving at the sharp end of business management practice. Our association throughout its longstanding development has always striven, first and foremost to meet the developmental needs of the professional manager and in so doing continually focus upon issues in and around innovation and intelligence by encouraging and thereby enhancing innovative thinking underpinned by increased intellectual grasp of ‘thee pertinent managerial issues’ local, regional, national and international. Indeed the international conference to be held in Kuala Lumpur this coming September will focus very heavily along those self same lines and this journal will produce a ‘special edition’ in direct support of same. A specifically aligned call for papers for this ‘special edition’ will be both posted in the journal and circulated as an electronic flyer.
In this issue Professor Orcullo’s article presents to us a solid appreciation of the practical applications of ICT in delivering learning modules in management education and within his article he makes an interesting and most salient observation;
“literacy and familiarity with eCommerce/eBusiness platform has now become a minimum requisite prior to job entry for many employers both at the private and government sector.”
This is so very apt in its application at the professional manager level as job entrants more now than ever before are expected to hit the ground running in terms of individual grasp of both eCommerce and eBusiness. It is not at all unreasonable for employers at the cutting edge to expect educators in management to cover within their respective curricular this important area of consideration. Professor Orcullo’s presentation, appreciation and research applicable to his own institutions’ My eClass Initiative is an authoritative piece of work and one that might prove highly useful to educators in management aiding in realizing an important requirement of the student and their respective existent or potential employers. Furthermore it affords organizations an evidenced and thereby tangible expectation of education and learning in this ever increasing important area of appreciation and more importantly practical application within the learning process. The My eClass Initiative in effect enhances the student’s personal capacity and at same time reduces significantly the burden from the employing organization in terms of in house training and development in the field of ICT applicable to eCommerce and eBusiness.
Professor Bawany’s article provides a clear appreciation of ‘knowledge capital’ in succinct appreciation and presentation that employee skills, that is their expertise and inherent capabilities are pivotal in both attaining and most importantly maintaining competitive advantage. This as he identifies is dependent and thereby interdependent upon clear recognition/acknowledgement that we do, most certainly in business management terms exist and co-exist in a truly globalised and knowledge driven economy. The globalisation of business management has by natural osmosis increasingly homogenised socio-eco-environ approaches to the world at large. The ‘human resource’ is no longer a base asset applicably placed in the respective ‘soft/hard HRM models’ borne out of the 1980s/90s schools of thought, moreover ‘human capital’ should be recognised in ever increasingly qualitative terms, encouraged in continuous learning by way of effective coaching as an investment, thereby recognising that employees are; “a base source of growth”.
Professor Rao’s article provides insightful understanding in enhancing the employability in the ‘ME generation’. In general the ‘ME generation might be viewed across the range 7 to 36 year olds, however in this instance the focus is primarily directed at those studying at undergraduate level. Professor Rao recognises that educators can not by any means sit back on their laurels, content in the tried and tested education techniques of the past. On the contrary, he attests that it is incumbent upon the modern leading edge educator to become most familiar with the technologies (particularly communication) that young people use almost instinctively in everyday use of. The article points towards student learning and the ‘hard’/’soft’ skills approach in so doing, furthermore highlighting a pro-active role for industry/potential employers to overlap more so with the student body. From the professional manager’s perspective this article gives voice to an ever increasing need for continuous improvement by way of stakeholder recognition, their intrinsic value in applying an integrated mechanism(s) of pro-active education and learning in not only enhancing employability but maintaining (longevity) and progression (development) of the stakeholder set.
Dr Evans work gives us a succinct ‘real world’ appreciation of business creation, consolidation and development by way of an article narrative that is ‘interview based’ underpinned by cogent academic reference. As Dr Evans points out the interviewee (David Marsden) did not set out with the sole intention of becoming a successful entrepreneur although by due process, in the first instance of recognising a potential gap in the market it becomes clear that David by due process had to rapidly adopt the entrepreneurial mantle in order to successfully further the business. The article is interesting as the basic premise turns on the empirical validity of that being presented. Dr Evans, very cleverly in my view keeps the vocabulary highly readable and as such maintains David’s ‘story’ throughout whilst at the same time providing the reader with ‘organising insights’ from which very clear terms of reference can be drawn, all neatly maintained within a framework based solidly in reality. The article is perhaps in the main an overview of the beginning of David’s journey and it would be equally interesting should Dr Evans revisit both David and his organisation for a further and valuable update in the future.
Jackson and Marsden (J&M) consider the characteristics, features or attributes of effectively functioning teams. It is recommended that this article be read in conjunction with our currently featured article by Professors’ Haigh and Morris (Teams and Groups). Whilst J&M acknowledge that no one team is ‘identical’ to another they do present clearly issues that point most readily to established core components as derived from their review of the literature pertaining to teams per se. This article is an extremely useful read to the ‘professional manager’ who in the main by virtue of that title will be wedded to teams and team working. Important inasmuch very often within the business dynamic too little time is set aside in fully understanding those factors most important in implementing, developing and maintaining high performance teams. To my mind J&M are absolutely correct in attesting that the more we can understand those verifiable factors complimenting high performance teams, the better we can operate and optimise both individual and collective contribution in any and all aspects of the organisation. It is without doubt an internationally accepted and proven given that effective teamwork provides tangible rewards and as our ‘marketplace’ treads relentlessly towards ever increasing competitiveness team performance at the highest levels will prove essential to those individuals and their respective organisations in the short-medium-long term.
Sing et al present a highly topical article examining and in turn promoting the importance of Business Intelligence systems (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) where BI systems in tandem with DW provide businesses effective analysis tools for examining ‘raw data’ to such an extent that it can prove highly useful to management in identifying useful trends, customer behaviour patterns, etc, and contribute rapidly in decision making processes. The premise here on my reading is that ‘data is key’ and ‘time is the enemy’ and BIDW effectively applied can and does provide organisations an immediate opportunity to access, analyse, share and distribute viable information across their respective departmental links or as increasingly the case extranet access and assimilation of useful data to all located within a particular business environment. This article is clearly presented and thankfully bereft of the ‘jargon’ and acronyms so often applicable to the ICT arena and is therefore worthy of reading from a practitioner perspective.
This journal in keeping with the underlying ethos of our association is not just about publishing articles from established authors. IJPM is intent in providing whenever and wherever possible an effective conduit for publication to those aspirant authors, practitioner and academic alike. I am therefore extremely pleased to be able to publish our first (of hopefully many) research note. This is, in my opinion an extremely important feature of any verifiable journal and Abdul Ghaffar’s much appreciated contribution gives measure of that intention. His ‘thought’ in research terms is duly and very well presented here and as Abdul’s research now continues in terms of further qualification by way of increased literature review, data gathering and assessment of same it will be a real pleasure to publish his article in full in due course.
Dr Philip E Dunn
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