ICBR-2020 (3rd)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://192.248.9.226/handle/123/16127

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    A Factor analytic investigation of green banking adoption in customer’s perspective with special reference to Trincomalee campus
    (2020-10-27) Wijenayake, PGTM; Wijayasinghe, WDSR
    Going green concept has become an obligatory trend within the global banking industry. The concept of green banking has motivated banks to introduce paperless, technology driven services while reducing environmental impact and to perform their role as a corporate citizen on sustainable development. It is necessary for banks to understand the demand side of green initiatives since the ultimate success or failures of such investments are influenced by perceived satisfaction of the customer. To achieve the goals of this research, the data were collected from convenience sample of 50 banking customers in Trincomalee Campus. The survey has used five (5) point Likert scale and 23 questions. The respondents provided the data by means of a close-ended questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha scale was used as a measure of reliability. Its value is estimated to be 0.895. Sophisticated statistical model as ‘Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)’ has been used. The results show that Green Banking Adoption in Customer’s Perspective extracted from the analysis that together accounted 70.041 percent of the total variance. The results of factor score is Carbon Emission, Providing Service, Transaction Cost, Deposit Rate, Renewable Energy and Information Availability got the ranks of sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second and first respectively and constitute the key dimension of Green Banking Adoption of Customer Perspective. The study helps an insight into what banks should do, being environmentally proactive, to create a strong customer base in future.
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    Travel demand analytics based customer-service decision model
    (2020-10-27) Jeyaratnam, A; Mahakalanda, I; De Silva, T
    The tourism industry adds high value to the economy in Sri Lanka by attracting people from all around the world. Within the tourism industry, a large amount of data is collected with regards to user demographics and their purchases on a daily basis. Though less used in the tourism sector of developing countries like Sri Lanka, data analytics techniques can be utilized to understand the customer better and thereby add additional value to tourism organizations. This research uses customer records from a tourism operator to develop a model to predict the complexity of a customer’s requirements as well as group customers according to the complexity. While K-means clustering is used to group the customers as easy, moderate and complex customers, an ordinal logistic model is used to build the predictive model. The outputs obtained through the data analytic models proposed in this study will support the study organization to manage their customers efficiently and provide better attention to their needs.
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    The effect of covid-19 to apparel sector, Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Bolonne, H
    The Covid-19 pandemic has led many countries to implement lockdowns and social distancing due to an exponential rate at which the virus has been spreading over and the heightened uncertainty of how bad the situation could be. The seriousness of the situation caused a disruption to the consumer habits of shopping as the pandemic heavily influenced to curtail the spending on nonessential goods which ultimately resulted with a massive blow to the global fashion market. This study evaluated the effect of Covid-19 on the apparel industry and using of a framework of strategies falling over three horizons as respond (short-term), recover (medium-term) and reimagine (long-term) to deal with the uncertain situation of Sri Lankan apparel sector facing, to manage its’ survival, to make it learn & emerge stronger and to prepare & shape itself for the next normal. The findings of this study emphasize how important it has been almost all organizations in the apparel sector of Sri Lanka to come up with mechanisms focusing on short-term, medium-term and long-term to face the atmosphere created by Covid-19. If the actions in the three horizons are not managed properly, the apparel sector will face more detrimental effects which will ultimately lead both the apparel industry and the economy to collapse as it is the highest export income generator to the Sri Lankan economy.
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    Technical efficiency of paddy farmers and its determinants : application of trans log frontier analysis
    (2020-10-27) Thayaparan, A; Jayathilaka, DMPIL
    The objectives of this study are to estimate the technical efficiency and its determinants of paddy farmers in Kurunegala district. 120 sampled farmers were selected from three villages during the last Maha season in 2019/2020. Translog frontier production function is applied to identify the impact of each input on paddy production and its results showed that log forms of the inputs such as land size, chemical costs, seed costs, expenditure on machinery, labor squared, interactions between land and chemicals, land and seed, labor and seed, fertilizer and chemical, fertilizer and seed were significantly affected on paddy production in the model. Empirical findings of the technical efficiencies indicated that, its mean value was 84% with a wide range from 27% to 99%. It suggested that farmers in the study area still have the room to improve their farming efficiency by 16% from its present level and this variation has arisen from differences in demographic characteristics and farm management practices rather than random variability. An inefficiency effect model was estimated by the maximum likelihood method which shows that male farmers are more efficient than females in the sample. Further, family size, income from farming, availability of non- farm income and farming experience were negatively related to technical inefficiency which means that, they were found to be significantly contributing to the variation in farm specific technical efficiency. Based on the results, the study recommended that agricultural extension officers should organize to exchange the farm experiences between male and female farmers, and promote them by providing additional income facilities to improve the efficiency in paddy farming and farmers’ income in future.
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    Start-up stories of techno-entrepreneurial engineers in Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Wijesinghe, DPS; Jayawardane, VPT; Dasanayaka, SWSB
    Entrepreneurial engineers can be considered as valuable human resources which contribute immensely to the economic growth and development of any country. Hence, wider attention has been given to promote entrepreneurship among professional engineers in many countries. In general, billion-dollar technology-related businesses have been found and managed by innovative engineers in the international context. Although not in the billion-dollar capacity, there are still a lot of successful techno-entrepreneurial engineers in Sri Lanka whose start-up stories have not yet been revealed to the general public in the form of an academic study. This research paper investigates the motivation and challenges faced by such engineers in Sri Lankan context during the start-up phase of their firms as a part of an ongoing study based on the grounded theory approach. Data were collected by conducting face to face interviews with purposively selected eight techno-entrepreneurial engineers. Verbatim transcriptions of the audio records of the interviews were analyzed by following techniques of the grounded theory approach. It reveals that lack of experience, finance, and social issues were the major challenges they faced during the start-up stages. The findings of this study can be used at the policy level to create a favourable eco-environment for budding entrepreneurial engineers to successfully exploit their innovative ideas and products into businesses in the Sri Lankan context.
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    Organizational resilience in the face of disruptive forces: a model for building robustness of firms in financial services sector
    (2020-10-27) Karunarathna, WKS; Mahesh, DD; Dasanayaka, SWSB; Samarasinghe, GD
    Highly dynamic and turbulent business environments of today demand almost all the organizations in the world to be more resilient than ever before. Resilience has become the new buzzword in today’s world, with the advent of various disruptive forces and suddenly emerged pandemics, such as COVID-19. Among the industrial sectors that are destined to be under the pressure of those disruptions, health services sector and financial services sector are of utmost importance. Therefore, organizations need to be more robust or resilient and in order to do so, they have to formulate appropriate corporate and business strategies after identifying the drivers or sources contributing towards the emergence of the resilience in an organizational context. Based on the prevailing theoretical underpinnings from prior literature sources, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to further understand the antecedents of organizational resilience in order to enhance the overall business performance of the firms in the financial services industry in Sri Lanka. In this conceptual model, sources of organizational resilience are classified as resilient leadership, resilient organizational culture, adaptation capacity, organizational capacity and managerial capabilities. The proposed organizational resilience conceptual framework will also pave the way for various theoretical and empirical implications.
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    Modeling and simulation for quality management in manufacturing processes
    (2020-10-27) Somarathna, KUS; Rajapaksha, LKI; Somarathna, KYJ
    Quality management in manufacturing processes is crucial to improve organizational performance. In order to improve product quality of manufacturing processes, new quality strategies have to be implemented and manufacturing processes have to be re-engineered. The effectiveness of such strategies and process modifications must be evaluated prior to implementation. However, experimentation with the real manufacturing system is constrained as quality and manufacturing related parameters such as fraction defective, inspection strategies, and machine failures cannot be systematically changed in a real manufacturing context. Therefore, modeling and simulation is widely used in operations management to analyze manufacturing and business processes. Though simulation of manufacturing systems is well studied in literature, simulation models that focus on apparel manufacturing and specific aspects of quality management are limited. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to review the existing simulation models of quality management, identify their limitations and propose areas of study for further research, and demonstrate the simulation of a one-piece-flow apparel manufacturing module. A discrete event simulation technique was adopted in the simulation model, and the effects of fraction defective and machine failures on throughput, work-in-progress, and cost per unit were evaluated.
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    It capabilities on supply chain performance: mediating role of supply chain agility
    (2020-10-27) Pushpasiri, GTTK
    The purpose of this paper is to investigate the IT capabilities affecting supply chain performance, explore the relationship among those identified capabilities to supply chain performance and, explore the mediating factors to the relationship with special reference to large manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka. Systematic random sampling technique was applied as the sampling technique of the study. 200 questionnaires were distributed among executives in large manufacturing organizations to collect the primary data and 160 were used for the analysis. Gathered data were analyzed by SPSS software. Findings: Under the IT Capabilities, Flexible IT Infrastructure and IT Assimilation have a weak positive relationship with supply chain performance while strong positive relationship with supply chain agility. Supply chain agility has a direct strong positive relationship with supply chain performance and it is mediating the relationship between IT capabilities and Supply Chain Performance. The interest for using IT in the Supply Chains in large organizations is being increased. To face the contemporary changes in the market all the activities in different layers should be integrated. There is a high possibility to increase the performance by using advanced IT applications and providing reasonable IT infrastructure. This study explains the importance of considering supply chain agility as a mediator rather than using only IT applications or infrastructure. No research can be found in Sri Lankan context that explore the factors affecting IT capabilities and Supply chain performance relationship. Practical Implications: Future studies are possible to conduct surveys in different angles using various control variables. Comparison of factors between different industries will provide more insights for the practitioners and as well as the researchers on the study variables.
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    Investigative study to analyze market conditions to launch a surf wear brand with specific requirements in the context of Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Ranathunga, GM; Fernando, H
    Surfing or the act of riding waves has become an ecumenical inclination where the population follows it as a sport as well as a relaxing leisure time activity. The market for surf equipment and surf wear has grown immensely giving large profits to businesses worldwide where businesses create a need for surfing today. Sri Lanka possesses one of the best surfing locations, which has become the center of attention by surfers worldwide. In-line with the prevailing market opportunity, the research analyzed market conditions to launch a surf wear brand with specific requirements in the context of Sri Lanka in terms of environmental and weather, culture, performance, and durability aspects. The survey used questionnaire-based methods and personal interviews. Close-ended questionnaires were selected. Personal interviews were conducted to obtain details on surf wear requirements under the aspects of technical, cultural, and design. Survey findings show that there is a growing surfing culture in Sri Lanka which is more towards entertainment than a professional water sport in Sri Lanka which comprises both local and foreign populations. The research showed that there is a demand for value-added surf wear and for cultural visual representation on surf wear.
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    Interrelations between mobile banking service quality attributes, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in domestic commercial banks in Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Perera, ALD; Gunaratna, AGDLK
    The main objective of this study is to find the interrelationship between mobile banking service quality attributes, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, in the mobile banking sector in Sri Lanka. This study specifically aims to measure the qualities of mobile banking service provided via mobile banking applications. Review of literature reveals that a lesser amount of research has been conducted to investigate the quality of services delivered through mobile banking applications, and the interrelationship among mobile banking service quality attributes, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Thus, the current paper attempted to fill the gap in the literature. The overall research study has been structured based on the conceptual framework built up referring to prior literature. The researcher has used the customer loyalty as the dependent variable, five dimensions of service quality; namely, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, as the independent variables and customer satisfaction as the dependent/ independent variable. A questionnaire was distributed to collect the data from the sample of 200 customers who are experienced with their mobile banking apps offered by five private commercial banks in Sri Lanka. The study adopted Frequency statistics, Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, Regression model and ANOVA to analyze the collected data from the sample. Research findings show that all the mobile banking service quality attributes are positively related to customer satisfaction and thereby customer loyalty in the mobile banking sector in Sri Lanka. Among the service quality determinants, Reliability, Assurance and Responsiveness play a pivotal role in customer satisfaction since they demonstrate high positive correlation with customer satisfaction while Tangibility and Empathy shows the medium positive correlation with customer satisfaction. The results of this study lead to an interesting managerial implications when improving the quality of mobile banking services for greater customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the mobile banking sector in Sri Lanka. Key words: Mobile banking, Service quality,
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    Influential factors on brand equity of Trincomalee tourism destination
    (2020-10-27) Ranathunga, HGCK; Devendra, S
    Destination Marketing has converted a prevalent national strategy in the globalized world gradually, and numerous countries have recognized it as one of the critical national income originators. With Pricing Strategies, Advertisement, Publicity, and Positive Word of Mouth (WOM) are some of the best tactics to achieve competitive advantage and to sustain in the market. Therefore, this research is contributing to identifying the factors that are influencing Brand Equity in Trincomalee Tourist Destination. To accomplish the goals of this research, the data was collected from the convenience sample of 60 International Tourists in Trincomalee Division. The respondents have provided the data utilizing a close-ended questionnaire. SPSS Software is used for data analysis. The results of this study indicate that the Advertisement, Publicity and WOM have positively correlated with Brand Equity except for Price. 64.6% variation of Brand Equity can be explained by Price, Advertisement, Publicity and WOM. Further analyses reveal that the Price, Publicity, Advertisement and WOM individually indicate a high level of attribution, 42% of tourists expressed neutral ideas regarding the safeness of Sri Lanka. This study provides outcomes that could be valuable to the Tourism Industry for strategic planning and to compete in this industry.
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    Financial Literacy and credit card usage: with special reference to Wewala West GN division, Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Perera, PGTN
    Credit cards are a wide spreading modern payment instrument which is an important tool for producers and vendors in order to exist in the market and to uphold their strength in the present intense and competitive business world. Financial decision making is an integral part of daily life of people. Financial decision making and also the accuracy of those decisions depend on financial literacy. The main objective of this study is to identify whether there is a relationship between financial literacy and credit card usage. This study selected 300 households using simple random sampling technique from the 1442 households in the Wewala West GN division, in Colombo administrative district, Sri Lanka, which is the population of this study. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire. Validity analysis, frequency analysis, factor analysis, weighted average, Chi square test and independent sample t-test have been used for the analysis part of this study. The calculated financial literacy index is between 0 and 5.02. This study has found that credit card users have significantly high level of financial literacy rate. It has proven that, as shown in the previous literature in many countries, financial literacy rate is a considerable factor among other factors which affects the usage of credit cards.
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    Factors affecting the adoption of e-commerce in Sri Lanka: internet users’ perspective
    (2020-10-27) Navarathna, KGH; Bandara, HMND
    Despite being one of the earliest adopters of the Internet in the region, e-commerce adaptation in Sri Lanka appears to be relatively low. In this paper, we identify user-related barriers that prevent the wide-spread adoption of e-commerce in Sri Lanka. We adopted a mix-method methodology to identify Internet user-related adoption factors and to understand e-commerce merchants’ views on those factors. First, a preliminary survey was carried out by interviewing stakeholders to identify barriers affecting e-commerce adoption. Next, users’ perspective was captured using an online and paper-based survey. Survey results were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Finally, a set of interviews were conducted with e-commerce merchants to identify their views on those factors. Affordability, knowledge and awareness, and facilities expected from retailers were identified as the most significant factors contributing to the e-commerce adoption. Government and legal factors, consumer perception, and digital infrastructure are the least significant factors. Smoothening of the delivery process, convenient return policies, and enhancing government involvement to promote e-commerce were identified as the key recommendations to strengthen e-commerce adoption. Keywords: E-commerce adoption.
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    ERP procurement process effectiveness of ABC apparels, Sri Lanka: a study from ERP user perspective
    (2020-10-27) Weeramanthrie, TT; Yapa, SR
    This study analyses the factors influencing procurement process effectiveness from the ERP perspective in ABC Apparels, Sri Lanka. The company uses an ERP system for their SCM activities and for making strategic-level decisions. Procurement being a practice involving a substantial amount of money, the effectiveness of the ERP system is expected to be high. However, the management of the company has identified that its ERP procurement process effectiveness is low as observed through the increasing number of purchase order delay complaints from suppliers and increasing number of procurement-related ERP support issues that are unsolved. In order to understand the factors influencing the procurement process effectiveness, an in-depth literature review was conducted, and a conceptual framework was developed. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct the research. Data analysis was done using reliability and consistency, correlation and regression. Research findings revealed that information quality, integration and usability are factors significantly influencing procurement process effectiveness. Finally, recommendations were provided to improve procurement effectiveness from an ERP perspective.
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    Entrepreneurial antecedents of secondary school students in western province, Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Jayath, T; Mudalige, DM
    Business entrepreneurship is an essential ingredient of economic prosperity and the need to understand the antecedents contributing to entrepreneurial ambition in Sri Lankan teenagers is paramount for successful policy planning in future. The attitudes and behaviors of youth will be conditioned during the developmental years and as a consequence perception towards entrepreneurship will be conditioned heavily during this phase of development. Despite the continued interest in promoting entrepreneurship among the young generation, researchers have paid little attention to primary and secondary educational stages. The main objective of this research is to analyze the factors affecting entrepreneurial ambition of teenage students as a career choice. The research is formulated as a quantitative research adhering to the deductive approach. Research finds the existence of two factors; Perception of benefits of entrepreneurship and family and friends teenage students. Further it reveals the moderation effect caused by prior entrepreneurial education on the interaction between perception of benefits of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ambition. The study reveals existence of differences with respect to entrepreneurial ambition and antecedents in different communities. The study recommends introducing entrepreneurial education with more emphasis to teenage students. The understanding of the preferences of the young generation will support policy efforts to create useful avenues for entrepreneurial success in the future
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    Assessing life span of vehicle tyres by analyzing multiple failure modes using parametric approaches
    (2020-10-27) Rajasekara, SM; Sunethra, AA
    In the recent decades, modelling multiple failure data which was a largely neglected analytical issue until the development of sophisticated techniques has gained a greater enthusiasm among the statisticians, which, can be advocated to address the precise nature of multiple failure type data. This study employs methodologies for the analysis of multiple failure modes for a dataset with two tyre categories namely Cross ply and Radial. Each tyre category had two types of tyres and five distinct modes of failures. Type of tyre and mode of failure are considered as explanatory variables. The lifetime (time to failure) of the tyres, which is the core response of interest, was modelled as a function of the explanatory variables and the fitted models were used to assess the validity of the prevailing warranty period. Two approaches of parametric survival regression were used for regressing the lifetime as a function of the failure mode and tyre type which were the explanatory variables considered in the study. Under the first approach, one model each was fitted for Cross ply tyres and Radial tyres treating all failure modes together, whereas in the second approach, one model for each failure mode of each tyre category was fitted. Reliability estimates for lifetime were obtained and compared across the two approaches of model fitting. A significant difference among the two approaches was not seen with respect to survival estimates. However, with respect to residual analysis, accommodate data dependencies and provision for adjusting the shape flexibility to parameter can be regarded as improvements of the second approach, which fitted separate models for each failure mode. In conclusion, the methods deployed in this study enable better decision making with respect to warranty setting and identifying failure modes and failure timings precisely.
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    Art meets fashion: an investigative study of modern art inspired fashion brands in Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Ranathunga, GM; Madushani, SPN
    Fashion shows a continuous change over time. Fashion represents the latest style of clothing. Inspirations assist fashion to create new designs to ensure they fit with the customers' view and satisfaction. A trend refers to a certain style in fashion. The symbolic aspect that transforms clothes into fashion is either an aesthetic attribute or brand attribute. Fashion has always sought inspiration from art, therefore fashion designers have been working with art throughout the years and now it includes contemporary and modern art due to the high demand for art inspired fashion in the world. This research is aimed to investigate the modern art inspired fashion brands in the world and find out decisive points in developing modern art inspired fashion brands in Sri Lanka. Information from primary and secondary sources has been gathered. Shop visits were carried out to collect information to study art inspired fashion. Secondary data were gathered by referring to books, journals, reports, and websites. It is expected that research findings would be beneficial for the stakeholders of the field of fashion in Sri Lanka.
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    A moderating role of power distance in support for innovations and innovative behaviour of middle and front- line managerial level employees in Sri Lanka
    (2020-10-27) Niranga, WAM
    Research on practices of innovative behavior of organizational employees supports the notion that continuous support may be the predictors of effective innovation implementation in contemporary organizations. Extant studies stress that various ways of support gained for innovations is related to fruitful innovations within an organization and identify managerial, organizational and cultural support as key elements of support for innovations. Generally, the level of support for innovations may vary as per the power distance in different hierarchical authorities. However, relatively few studies have tested how and why management, organization and organizational culture support relate to innovative behavior and largely ignored the influences of power distance in organization hierarchies. Accordingly, the main aims of the present study are to investigate the impact of support for innovations on innovative behavior and to examine the moderating role of power distance, in social distance process of power. To advance the understanding of these topics, simple regression analysis and moderator regression analysis were performed to test hypotheses with a sample size of 120 middle- and lower-level employees from Sri Lanka. The study found that there is a positive direct effect of support for innovations and innovative behaviour of middle- and lower-level employees. Further, power distance moderates the positive relationship between support for innovations and innovative behaviour with an antagonistic effect. The present study makes several theoretical contributions to social cognitive theory and the social distance theory of power. Managerial contributions of the present study make domestic firms successful through better focus of innovation support and power distance which facilitate innovative behaviour of employees