This issue includes papers on customer satisfaction with regard to banking, factors affecting the emotional intelligence of school students, social security and welfare measures at New Mangalore Port Trust (NMPT), and the competitive advantages of Indian software industry.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a way of making the `voice of the customer' heard throughout an organization. It is a systematic process of capturing customer requirements and translating these into product (goods or a service) characteristics that must be met throughout the supply chain. Nikhil Chnadra Shil and Bhagaban Das, in the paper "A Study of Customer Satisfaction with Regard to Banking: An Application of QFD", focus on the application of QFD on a typical service through designing the house of quality matrix. Customers nowadays are very choosy about the way they spend their money. Quality is the first and foremost preference. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for every organization to understand, respect, and satisfy their customers' needs and feelings, continuously. In this regard, QFD is the right tool to design a product (or a service) that will meet the customers' requirements. The study is aimed at understanding how a service provider can improve customer satisfaction.

Emotional Intelligence (EI), often measured as `Emotional Intelligence Quotient' (EQ), describes an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. It is a relatively new area of psychological research. Researchers and human resource management professionals across the world are actively engaged in studying EI and its applications in various organizational settings to improve the managerial performance. It is found from literature that very few studies relating to the factors affecting the EI among the school students are available. Therefore, Shamira Malekar and R P Mohanty, in the paper "Factors Affecting Emotional Intelligence: An Empirical Study among School Students in Mumbai", seek to fill that gap by making an empirical study to identify the important determinants of EI among school students in the metro city of Mumbai, and thus provide feedback to the parents, teachers, and other authorities to better understand the emotional needs of the students.

Social security system aims to help the individuals during times of dependency, arising out of unsteady income, unsupported occupation, and natural insecurity. Welfare measures are positively correlated with the standard of living, quality of work life and well-being of the employees. Anjali Ganesh and Vijayi D'Souza, in the paper "Social Security and Welfare Measures at New Mangalore Port Trust: A Case Study", aim to give an overview of the social security and welfare measures at New Mangalore Port Trust (NMPT) and the employees' perception regarding the same. The authors observe that the employees, on the whole, are satisfied with the social security and welfare measures implemented at NMPT. The authors conclude that the welfare measures have a great influence on the working of the employees as they offer psychological and social satisfaction.

India has achieved remarkable success in the software industry. Software accounts for 25 percent of the total Indian export. From a Resource-Based View (RBV), the main source of the market performances of a range of firms lies in the specific nature of their resources and accumulated competences. Pankaj M Madhani, in the paper "Indian Software Success Story: A Resource-Based View of Competitive Advantages", evaluates the Indian software industry and its resources using the RBV of strategy. The study identifies the emerging challenges for the Indian software industry and proposes a dynamic resource-based model.

- T R K Rao
Consulting Editor