There is a strong need to automate the retail businesses in the emerging markets. Many PC based solutions exist to address the issues involved in automating retail businesses. However, none of these information and communication technology (ICT) based solutions have been able to provide a simple, user friendly and a cost effective solution. We aim to build a low cost, easy-to-use appliance that...

Skill shortages are often portrayed as a major problem for the economies of many countries including the Australian economy. Yet, there is surprisingly little evidence about their prevalence, causes and consequences. This paper attempts to improve our understanding about these issues by using econometric methods to analyse the Business Longitudinal Database, an Australian panel data-set with in...

This Special Issue, taking five years to come to fruition, presents the latest research on strategic management in private and family businesses in Asia Pacific regions. Asia Pacific societies have a long history of private and family businesses. For example, a Chinese classic, Records of the Grand Historian (known by its Chinese name Shiji, which was written from 109 BC to 91 BC), includes a c...

Achieving strategic synergy between diversified businesses is one of the important objectives world-class enterprises, and relevant operational decision-making technology a hot topic. At present, world’s leading including large energy are widely engaged in operations, continue to promote main business financial business, international emerging industries other auxiliary businesses. In this pape...

Internet use has grown and spread rapidly around the world during the last decade. Today, computers and the Internet have become an integral part of modern societies. The Internet has created a new medium for communication and commerce for businesses. It is hard to imagine a business working without using a computer. These technological advances have also largely affected small and medium-sized...

This chapter presents the rapid prototyping and manufacturing concepts applied as means to reducing time between jewellery designs and manufacturing process. Different processes on jewellery modelling production are presented. Nowadays, the use of technologies as CAD/CAM Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing in high production companies are very disseminated. However, the implementation of th...

The current study examines the role of organizational efficacy and supplier flexibility in regards to the business performance of small and medium-sized firms. It was anticipated that both organizational efficacy and supplier flexibility would have positive relationships with performance for small and medium-sized businesses. Results supported these hypotheses and indicate the importance of fir...

the purpose of this paper is to analyze the simultaneous effect of corporate culture and market orientation on the performance of small to medium-sized industrial manufacturing firms. to this end, a cross-sectional survey and variance based structural equation modeling was used for testing the hypotheses. the samples were selected based on a stratified sampling of commodity and specialty indust...