Ergonomics in Malaysia has been introduced over a decade ago with the establishment of the ergonomics division in the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) on 1 December 1992. This study aims to evaluate the level of ergonomics awareness in Malaysian manufacturing industries and to determine the best practices of ergonomics program using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) ...

While the US experienced a remarkable economic expansion throughout the 1990s, not all regions and not all industries benefited. Over the decade, traditional sectors continued to decline, while growth in the serviceand technology-based sectors that make up the “new economy” helped fuel the boom. For many, the transformation to a knowledge-based economy has heightened concerns that rural areas w...

Article history: Received 16 October 2014 Received in revised form 6 April 2015 Accepted 8 April 2015 Available online 22 April 2015 The primary purpose of this paper is to review the historical development of the application of IT, its relationships with corporate strategy, and its influence on corporate performance. The secondary purposes are to empirically investigate the above relationships...

Using firm-level data for three Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and four manufacturing industries, I examine how imports from OECD countries lead to productivity gains for domestic establishments through their knowledge absorption capabilities. I find that domestic firms with technology standards farther away from the international frontier benefit more from trade than those with technology...

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of a model of structural change and the growth of industrial sectors. The model analyses the process of diffusion of general-purpose technologies (GPTs) and how this affects the dynamic performance of manufacturing and service industries. The empirical analysis studies the dynamics and the determinants of labour productivity growth for a large num...

The provision of adequate health care facilities to cater for the health of workers is an important consideration in the management of manufacturing industries, since productivity is dependent on the health status of the workers. There are very few studies evaluating the health care provision in Nigerian industries. This study elucidates such health care services in Edo and Delta States of Nige...

Using three different panel data sets, the authors show: (i) that mark-ups are significantly higher in South African manufacturing industries than they are in corresponding industries worldwide; (ii) that competition policy (i.e. a reduction of markups) should have largely positive effects on productivity growth and employment in South Africa.

Industries constitute a highly complex process network including multiple business and process units, which interact with each other. Enterprisewide optimization addresses the optimization of supply operations, manufacturing and distribution in process industries. This work presents the evolution of knowledge management approaches for supporting enterprise wide optimization in process system en...