Vol. 1 No. 1 (2010)

Research into the effectiveness of customer complaint management has attracted researchers, yet there has been little discussion on customer complaint management in the context of systematic knowledge management approach particularly in the domain of hotel industry. This paper aims to address such gap through the application of object-oriented theory for which the notation of unified modelling language has been adopted for the representation of the concepts, objects, relationships and vocabularies in the domain. The paper used data from forty seven hotel management staff and academics in hospitality management to investigate lessons learned and best practices in customer complaint management and knowledge management. By providing insights into the potential of a knowledge management approach using object oriented theory, this study advances our understanding on how a knowledge management approach can systematically support the management of hotel customer complaints.

Malaysia oil palm industry is the leading commodities and one of the major contributors to the Malaysia economic after oil and gas sector. Malaysia and Indonesia palm oil plantations are the major commodity producer with Malaysia currently being the world's second-largest area of oil palm after Indonesia. Together these two countries account about 84% of total world production and 88% of global exports. With the increasing price and demands for the Crude Palm Oil (CPO) and with the 4.69 million hectares that were planted with oil palm trees, plantation industry and estate managers has to look into the most crucial factor that will decide the yield and quality of the CPO that is being sent to the mill. Typically, palm oil plantations include production areas requiring supporting infrastructure such as buildings, roads and services/management. When there is a better management of the roads in the estates, better Fresh fruit Bunch (FFB) and CPO quality will be sent to mill and processed. Road transport has a fundamental meaning for the sustainable agriculture. Poor quality and inadequate coverage of roads, lack of maintenance operations and outdated road maps continue to hinder economic development in the plantation. This work focuses on studying the present state of road infrastructure and its mapping in Felda Trolak Utara, Perak. The road infrastructure of the study area is studied by GPS and GIS based methodology. Data of road infrastructure characteristics were collected from GPS device and road infrastructure of the test sites then analyzed in GIS environment. The results of this study may be applied to road infrastructure mapping in oil palm plantation in general context, although with certain limits. In particular, the "noise" of road network occurred and need to rectify the topologies of the network.

The universal characteristics of private universities are explored using a sample of 210 students from private universities to identify their perception. Both theoretical and empirical measurement issues have been considered using structural equations as the primary data analysis approach by using a structured questionnaire. The specific objectives of the research are to, inter alia, measure of the satisfaction level of students in case of academic issues, support services and general issues, which will lead to identify their attitude towards private universities in Bangladesh. Moreover, the study would also try to identify the effective extra curricular activity, and the most satisfied physical environment according to them. From the survey, it is observed that the students are satisfied with the services provided by the private universities. Though some of them are not satisfied with the services but they do not have any other options because every year huge number of students passed from the higher secondary class and the public universities do not have the capacity to cater the needs of most of the students want to have a university graduation. Therefore, they know the position of the private universities but they do not want to come out with the fact, as they have no other choices. However, private universities should try to improve their current standing through maintaining and retaining credibility and viability, maintaining the highest student quality, designing a broad based liberal arts curriculum and emphasizing on research and scholarly activities. Overall they should have strategic plan to ensure the quality of education.

This study investigates the dissatisfaction attributions and complaining behavior of public library users. This paper analyses a survey of ninety-nine randomly selected public library users in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia. Data was analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The survey revealed that public library users in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia, who believe that service failure is due to the negligence of library staff and perceive the service of the library to be free, are more likely to complain to a third party. Loyal users also prefer to complain to a third party about their dissatisfaction. Some users complain directly to the personnel or person in charge of the department or chief librarian at the time of dissatisfaction. Users' complaints can be a powerful resource for the library management to use in making strategic and tactical decisions that could prevent them from switching services or performing actions such as abandoning the library and no longer using library services.

This paper is an attempt to study the trends in non-interest income which is a vital source of stability in bank income. For this, the study takes some parameters like interest and non-interest income as a percentage to total income, share of non-interest income components like exchange & brokerage, sale in investment and exchange transaction. On the basis of these parameters the study concludes that interest income is continuously declining due to deregulation in interest rates and non-interest income is rising. Among the non-interest income components, commodity exchange & brokerage witnessed a large share while exchange transaction witnessed a meager part. The paper also gives some ways and means to bring stability in the total income.