Due to paucity of financial resources, educational institutions are unable to provide the best of facilities to satisfy the students. Hence, it becomes important to understand the factors that influence students’ perceptions of college management and that satisfies their demands. In this context, Dalwinder Kaur and Gurwinder Singh Bhalla, in their paper, “College Management: Views of Students”, present a survey they conducted to understand the factors influencing students’ perceptions of college management and the relationship of perception scores with the personal characteristics of the students. Factor analysis was used for defining the factors affecting the perceptions of students towards college management. Some of the factors analyzed were ‘placement’, ‘education’, ‘extracurricular activities’, ‘student development’, ‘study material’ and ‘college environment’. According to the survey, ‘placement’ appeared to be the most important and ‘college’ the least important factors considered by students in choosing an institute. The study also showed that perceptions vary according to ‘gender’, ‘age’, ‘educational background’ and ‘course stream’.

With the advent of globalization, significant breakthrough in technology, changing workforce, changing family norms and traditional organization structures have been achieved and they are being replaced by virtual structures. Face-to-face contacts have been replaced by virtual contacts. More importance is placed on work rather than the place one works from. This kind of structures help in bringing together diversified talent and dispersed knowledge, so as to achieve the organization’s goals without any geographic barriers. In the light of this, Jaya Ahuja in the paper, “A Study of Virtuality Impact on Team Performance”, select a software firm to understand this impact. The results of the study reveal that team distribution had a positive impact on the employees’ performance, whereas mobility factors contributed to the negative performance. She also identified some hurdles like different native languages, different time zones, etc., that affected team performance and even suggested measures to overcome them.

Banking sector has undergone a tremendous change in the last decade with the advent of new technologies and policies. Added to this, the entry of private players into the field has led to increased competition, which demands higher levels of performance, both qualitatively and quantitatively, from the employees of the banking sector in order to tap the customer force. These situations lead to stress among the employees of the banking sector. In view of this, a study was conducted by R Neelamegam and S Asrafi and discussed in the paper, “Work Stress Among Employees of Dindigul District Central Cooperative Bank, Tamil Nadu:

A Study”, to measure the level of work stress among the bank employees. The study also identified the causes of stress. It revealed that about 55% of the employees faced stress and the major causes were incongruent roles, and non-recognition of hardwork and skills of the employees.

-- K Rajanath
Consulting Editor