Career Advancement and Participatory Decision Making of Teachers: Predictor on Job Satisfaction in Public Primary Schools in Nandi County, Kenya

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The purpose of this study is to investigate career advancement and Participatory decision making of the teachers by head teachers as a predictor of job satisfaction in public primary schools in Nandi County, Kenya .This study was guided by the following objectives: To determine the extent to which head teachers encourage Career advancement influence teachers’ job satisfaction .To determine the extent to which participatory decision making by head teachers influence teachers job satisfaction. A descriptive research design was used. The study was anchored on two factor theory Herzberg-hygiene theory developed by Fredrick Herzberg (1968) and job characteristics Model by Hack man and Oldham (1980).  The target population for the study was 691head teachers and 5470 teachers in 691 primary schools. The total sample was 548 teachers. Multi- stage random technique and Simple random sampling were used.  The data collection instruments were questionnaires. Validity was done through pilot study and content validity was used to check the representation of the research questions in the questionnaires. The reliability was tested using Pearson‘s Moment Co-efficient approach. The results from questionnaires were interpreted and analyzed using frequencies’ percentages ‘and means. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data was analyzed using Analysis of Variance(ANOVA).The results shows that the null hypothesis H01 was rejected which implies that there was a relationship between head teachers ’involvement in career advancementof teachers and teachers’ job satisfaction. This implies that when head teachers ’involve teachers in career advancementthe teachers feel encouraged and satisfied.Career advancement had an influence on teachers’ job satisfaction.This shows participatory decision making by head teachers had some influence on teachers’ job satisfaction. From the findings, results from testing of the null hypothesis Ho2. The null hypothesis H02 was rejected which implies that there was a relationship between head teachers involving teachers in decision making and teachers’ job satisfaction. This implies that when head teachers involve teachers in critical decision making in schools they feel part and parcel of well being of the school hence feel satisfied. They head teachers should recommend teachers for promotion and mobilize parents by involving Board of Management so as to get resources.The government through the ministry of education should: provide policies on Career advancement are effective and that it does not interfere with the teachers schedule in school. The Quality Assurance Service should ensure they act as key monitors’ especially in supervision and encourage job satisfying practices through collaborative decision making. The government through the ministry of education should: Consider teachers are involved in decision making in school on matters education to ensure participation of all teachers is paramount in order to ensure that teachers are satisfied with their jobs.

Modelling Cyclic Fluctuations of SEIR Epidemic Diseases

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Seasonality of infectious disease is an important factor in disease incidence, outbreaks, control and prevention. Many mathematical models that incorporate seasonality in the transmission were formulated and analyzed. In this essay a qualitative analysis is given in terms of the effective reproduction number R0, the existence and stability of the disease-free equilibrium and endemic equilibrium of both the SEIR model and seasonal SEIR model. We perform numerical simulations  to validate the model formulation.

A Brief Review on The Common Defects in Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing

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Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process, which depends on conventional welding arc processes, is a promising option for industries when compared to typical manufacturing processes for assembling large and complicated products. WAAM process attracting manufacturing industries due to its potential to make large and complicated components with real sharp production run time with almost single step process. The process represents greater material savings, higher material buildup rate and speed, cost savings, lower cycle time, less impact on the environment, and capability of producing large size parts when evaluated with other fabrication methods. This paper focuses on WAAM process and reviews some of the common possible process defects found in variety of studies made previously to summaries a guideline for the causes of such defects and provides some prevention methods found by those studies. Of these common possible defects found in researchers works and reviewed in this work are pores, lack of fusion, cracks, and residual stress.

The Financial Performance and Stock Valuation of Coal Mining Company in Indonesia (Case Study: Pt. Abm Investama Tbk (ABMM))

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Indonesia, the world’s largest supplier of coal, may profit from the uncertainties surrounding the present geopolitical situation. According to experts, the current high price of coal could be stable through the end of 2022, before declining moderately in 2023, but remain well above its five-year average. Therefore, investing in coal companies’ stock right now is a good idea. Theoretically, investing in the stocks of any firm whose primary business is in the coal industry will result in a profit. The issue is deciding which stock to purchase to increase the portfolio’s return. Value investing, often known as finding an undervalued firm with a great potential for growth, is the main goal of the research. The first step of this study is to observe the coal mining sector, and analyze the problem that occurs. Then, a simple screening valuation method using PBV and PER is conducted to choose the appropriate company to evaluate. Next, external factor analysis using PESTEL analysis and Porter’s Five Forces analysis is conducted. Afterward, internal factor analysis using Financial Ratios and F-Score is conducted to evaluate the problem that lies within the company. Finally, to summarize, SWOT analysis is conducted to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the company’s business environment that provide a thorough knowledge of the company’s competitive advantages. Furthermore, an absolute valuation method is carried out to produce the company’s intrinsic value. The financial performance of ABMM when viewed from its financial statement from 2017 – 2021 is strongly increased in 2021, but stagnant in 2017 – 2020. After obtaining the valuations result through three absolute valuation method, the normalized earnings valuation shows an upside of IDR 2,317 or  77%, the DCF valuation shows an upside of IDR 2,193 or 73%, and lastly, the Monte Carlo Simulation shows an upside of IDR 2,233 or 74%. Therefore, from all three method, ABMM current stock price is considered as undervalued. According on the findings, this study advises purchasing ABMM shares. The present stock price was found to be undervalued using three absolute valuation methods, which means that anyone who purchases the stock at the current price of IDR 3,000 will see a capital gain on their investment.

Relationship between Family Burden, Stigma, Stress, Social Support, Family Acceptance, and Family’s Ability in Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

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The family’s ability as a caregiver for schizophrenic patients is very necessary because it can affect the success of the treatment process provided. This article aims to determine the relationship between family burden, stigma, stress, social support, family acceptance and family’s ability in caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. This study used a quantitative method with a cross-sectional study design. The study was conducted at the outpatient polyclinic at Teuku Umar General Hospital with a total sample of 98 family members of schizophrenic patients. The results of this study indicate that family burden, stress, stigma, and acceptance are related to the family’s ability to provide care to schizophrenic patients (p = 0.0001 < 0.05). Only the social support variable has no relation with the family’s ability to provide care to schizophrenic patients (p = 0.145 > 0.05). The lack of a relationship between the social support variable and family’s ability is consistent with the stigma variable’s results, which indicates a negative stigma from the community towards the family, so social support becomes unnecessary. This study concludes that families can better care for schizophrenic patients when their burden, stress level, and stigma are reduced or lower. The greater a family accepts schizophrenia patients, the greater their ability to care for them.

Islamic Finance and Blockchain: A Bibliometric Analysis

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The Covid-19 pandemic is causing the digital economy to expand quickly. The development of Islamic finance employing Islamic financial technology should see this technology and the burgeoning digital economy as a problem and an opportunity. One of the most sophisticated acceleration development products is blockchain, and become Islamic finance’s most challenging product. There are still pros and cons to using blockchain in Islamic financial products. In terms of transparency and high trust level, the value of blockchain is similar to those of Islamic financial value. It’s critical to have this opportunity to speed up Islamic finance development. The main problem is that there are still very limited studies about Islamic finance and blockchain. With this study, we will conduct a bibliometric analysis of the publications we published from 2012-2022 about Islamic finance and blockchain through Scopus and google scholar. This study uses the Vos viewer program to see the number of publications, co-authorship authors, co-authorship institutions, co-authorship countries, and keywords. In Scopus, only 24 papers have discussed Islamic finance and blockchain in the last ten years. However, there are more papers on google scholar, but they are still not as specified as in Scopus. There are still many opportunities to have more research in this field.

Use of Industrial Waste in the Development of Ceramic Mass Compositions

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The compositions of ceramic masses for facing slabs based on Angren secondary kaolin and clay were developed, using metallurgical waste–iron–containing dust from the gas cleaning of “Uzmetkombinat” JSC and sandy waste from the Toytepe fluorite enrichment plant. With the help of differential thermal and X–ray phase analysis, the chemical–mineralogical compositions, exothermic and endothermic effects of the used components of ceramic masses were determined during their heat treatment. Thus, the suitability of using these wastes for the development of the composition of ceramic masses has been established.

Marketing Strategy to Improve Brand Awareness: Case Study of a Cloud Service Provider in Indonesia

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The World Health Organization classified Covid-19 a global pandemic, its effects have rippled across every aspect of society, including the economy. Firms are shifting their objectives and concentrating on their information technology capability to deal with the unpredictability that this pandemic has brought onto the economy. Cloud and colocation will be required to support company operations with digital infrastructure. Many of the world’s largest cloud service providers are thinking about creating cloud regions within its boundaries as a result of its tremendous development potential. Cloudgear as one of local Indonesian cloud service provider wants to take this opportunity to grow their business. Cloudgear has a comprehensive service portfolio consisting of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Professional as a Software (PaaS), professional services, and multi-cloud services. However, based on the initial interview with ten cloud engineers and specialists in different companies, most of them are not aware that Cloudgear is a local Indonesian cloud service provider. Therefore, the next challenge is how to improve brand awareness of Cloudgear by formulating the right marketing strategy. Because it will strengthen the brand and develop Cloudgear competitive advantage for the company’s future growth. This research is objected to analyse Cloudgear internal, external conditions, analyse the factors that influence the brand awareness, and propose the most suitable marketing strategy in building Cloudgear brand awareness. Brand awareness is affected by advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity. In this research, advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity are being analysed whether it has significant positive influence to cloud service providers brand awareness or not. The hypothesis are that each of these factors have positive influence to cloud service brand awareness by performing customers analysis. Questionnaire was distributed to two hundred samples. Then, the data were processed by SPSS using multiple linear regression method. Several tests were conducted consisted of validity test, reliability test, normality test, and linearity test. After the data were valid, reliable, normal, and linear, analysis continued by doing multiple linear regression. The results are there is significant effect of each advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity to brand awareness of cloud service provider. Determination test is resulted these variables have 50.1% influence. When F Test was conducted, the result was these variables if tested simultaneously or simultaneously have an effect on cloud service brand awareness. Therefore, the proposed marketing strategy for Cloudgear is related to improvement in advertising, social media, word of mouth and publicity in order to increase their brand awareness as a local Indonesian cloud service provider.

Proposed Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) to Increase Patient Visits of Assyifa Specialist Clinic

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The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a catastrophe in the healthcare sector and a customer shifting trend in how patients choosing a healthcare service as their medication platform. Furthermore, social media and internet users are both rapidly rising and individuals nowadays are also prone to being more aware of their health concerns. Healthcare services that are incapable to compete within the industry, survive the business and adapt to the changing consumer behavior will likely face the major issues. This study analyzed the business problem of Assyifa Specialist Clinic who faced a decreased in the patient visits and revenue in surviving the private clinic in the midst of Covid-19 outbreak. The author used Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning (STP), Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and value proposition canvas analysis through the quantitative research method to propose the marketing strategy to increase patient visit of Assyifa Specialist Clinic. The study found that there is still lack of clinic promotion and the access of clinic information is still low. Meanwhile, the current customers of Assyifa Specialist Clinic are mostly critical, curious, high self-awareness, smart and oversharing behaviors with health conscious, social media users, technology savvy, financially literate, well-educated and hygiene conscious lifestyle and in middle to high income level. To overcome, the gap between the Assyifa Specialist Clinic and the customers, the author intends to propose new marketing strategy as the business solution of Assyifa Specialist Clinic issue.

The Oilfield Service Company’s Business Development Strategy towards a Sustainable Energy with Scenario Planning

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Since the Paris Agreement where the countries in the world commit for the carbon emission reduction and net zero in 2050 or sooner, the energy transition has become the top topic in the energy sector. The oil-field services (OFS) industry is one of the business actors in the O&G supply chain with complex value chains, business structures, and models, and this research will explore scenario planning on the energy sector in Indonesia to have a forward-looking view of future O&G conditions in Indonesia including the energy transition which later became the key focal issue in this research. Scenarios are made based on the key driving factors and uncertainties that have been identified through the analysis of primary data from stakeholder interviews and secondary information from various literature studies. Furthermore, Scenarios are constructed based on how society responds to sustainable consumption and supporting infrastructures such as regulatory policies, the economic and investment environment, as well as technology and innovation. The four scenarios are (i) Empty Boat, (ii) Leaking Boat, (iii) Rocking the boat, and (iv) Rowing to Win. This research describes the implications, options, and strategies for each scenario which can then be taken into consideration by Green Bay Hornet Company (GBH) as an OFS company to enable proactive decisions and evaluate strategies to be resilient in each scenario. Reassessing the energy market, business conditions, and core competencies and how to expand and diversify technology, product, and service portfolios to renewable energy and decarbonizing initiatives in their operation is some of the strategies to expedite the transition in 2035.