Concepts of Throughput Accounting and Theory of Constraints

Financial Management

Kaizen – Understanding the Japanese Business Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

Operations Management

Role of Leaders in Shaping Organizational Culture

Management Principles

Organizational Culture – Development and Importance

Management Principles

Five Important Organizational Cultural Models

Management Principles

Use of Exchange Controls to Eliminate a Nation’s Balance of Payments (BoP) Deficit

The exchange control refers to a set of restrictions imposed on the international transactions and payments, by the government or the exchange control authority. Exchange control may be partial, confined to only few kinds of transactions or payments, or total covering all kinds of international transactions depending on the requirement of the country. The main features of a full-fledged exchange control system are as follows: The government acquires, through the legislative measures, a complete domination over the foreign exchange transactions. The government  monopolizes  the purchase and sale of foreign  exchange. Law eliminates the sale and purchase of foreign exchange by the  resident individuals. Even holding foreign exchange without informing the exchange control authority’s declared illegal. All payments to the foreigners and receipts from them are routed  through the exchange control authority or the  authorized  agents. Foreign exchange payments arc restricted, generally, to the import  of essential goods and service such Continue reading

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History and Development of Currency Options and Futures

Options and Futures have been a feature of trade since ancient times. Futures and options have been around as long as there has been commerce, because commerce involves risk. In the last two decades or so, such risks have grown almost exponentially, and these volatile trading conditions have created substantial growth in the use of futures and options. In the global integration; the use of Futures and Options products has changed the financial world. Futures and Options are used to manage external business risks. It is therefore interesting to note that the phenomenal growth in their use coincided with the collapse of Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime and the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. Exchange rates suddenly became much more volatile and because interest rates affect and are effected by exchange rates, so interest rates also became much more volatile. A method of managing risk was required. Continue reading

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Value Net Framework

The Value Net Framework, also known as Coopetition Framework  is an analytical strategy tool  developed by Adam Brandenburger and Gary Nalebuff in 1996, combining strategy and game theory, in order to describe and analyze the behavior of multiple players within a given industry or market.  The Value Net Framework  is an alternative to Porter’s Five Forces framework,  extends the five forces framework more general by examining the role of complementors. The frameworks fundamental idea is that cooperation and competition coexist.  Cooperation and competition are both necessary and desirable when doing business. Cooperation is required to increase benefits to all players (focus on market growth), and competition is needed to divide the existing benefits among these players (focus on market share). Co-opetition Co-opetition  is a neologism representing the ambivalence of competition and cooperation in business relationships.  Co-opetition is part competition and part cooperation. It  describes the fact that in today’s business Continue reading

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Risk Management in Banks: Regulatory Issues and Capital Adequacy

Individual banks risks create Systematic risk, i.e., the risk that the whole banking system fails. Systematic risk results from the high interrelations between banks through mutual lending and borrowing commitments. The failure of single institution generates a risk of failure for all banks that have ongoing commitments with the defaulting bank. Systematic Risk is a major challenge for the regulator. A number of rules, aimed at limiting risks in a simple manner, have been in force for a long time. For instance, certain ratios are subject to minimum values, say Capital Adequacy Ratio, certain caps are placed viz., Single Borrowers etc., so as to limit the risks. The main enforcement of such regulations is Capital Adequacy. That is by enforcing a capital level in a level in a line with risks, regulators focus on pre-emptive (in-anticipation) actions limiting the risk of failure. Guidelines are defined by a group of regulators Continue reading

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How do Banks Increase their Liquidity?

Firstly it is necessary to define liquidity and explain the reason that liquidity is so important for banks. Liquidity is essentially immediately spendable funds or the ability to convert assets into spendable funds, quickly and easily without a significant loss. Banks need liquidity because of demands for spendable funds. These demands mainly come from customers wishing to withdraw money from their accounts and from customers with credit requests, either in the form of new loans or drawings upon existing credit lines. However, banks will also have a demand for liquidity for other reasons including paying off liabilities that they have for example loans from other banks, or the central bank, payment of income taxes, and the paying of cash dividends to their shareholders. Sources of liquidity that banks have available to them fall into two categories; asset liquidity and borrowed liquidity, with most banks tending to use a mix between Continue reading

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Factors Influencing Wage and Salary Administration

The wage payment is an important factor affecting the labor management relations. Workers are very much concerned with the rates of wages as their standard of living is linked to the amount of remuneration they get. Managements, however, do not come forward to pay higher wages because cost of production goes up and profits decrease to that extent. A number of factors, thus, influence the remuneration payable to the employees. The factors influencing Wage and Salary Administration  can be categorized into (i) External Factors and (ii) Internal Factors. 1. External factors influencing Wage and Salary Administration Demand and supply : The labor market conditions or demand and supply forces operate at the national and local levels and determine organizational wage structure. When the demand of a particular type of labor is more and supply is less then the wages will be more. On the other hand, if supply of labor Continue reading

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