This is a thesis on madness and moments and what happens in between. I invite the reader into the world of a post-psychotic woman living within and without a Kuwaiti culture. As a fragmented and traumatised researcher I use my chaotic and dismembered writing as a narrative quilt creating a layered account of conversations and stories, in other words, “moments of meeting”. Moments that make us, define us and continue to create knowledge. In those moments, I dialogue with myself, with other people representing different cultures as well as the different “messy” theorists I draw on in my work. The messy theorists include writers such as Alec Grant, Sophie Tamas, Helene Cixous and Susanne Gannon. Through the creative freedom afforded me by their theories I begin to explore my chaotic psychic landscape. Those explorations are, what I call in this thesis, process inputs as they are also reflections of my personal process in writing this autoethnography. They exist alongside the moments of meeting to create snapshots of my experiences from different perspectives at different times. In this work, as a bipolar Kuwaiti woman, I have a dual purpose, where I give voice to my lived experience of a severe mental illness highlighting my struggle with narrative coherence as well as to provide a Kuwaiti I-account detailing my experience of being “othered” as a result of my “mad episodes”. I hope to, in the process, provide people with severe mental illnesses, Kuwaiti women and members of marginilised communities who have been forced out of the cultural scripts or master narratives of their country with constitutive narrative resources and alternative story lines that they can draw on in their journey towards “a more functional state” in the case of severe mental illness and the creation of a dialogue with people who are unable to, for cultural reasons communicate about their experiences.

One of the main tasks of key account management (KAM) practice is the creation of customized value propositions for a business-to-business organization's most important customers, which often requires the support of multiple internal departments. Thus, making internal alignment central in KAM in order to exchange value and serve the key accounts (KA) long-term. This study will, therefore, explore internal alignment in KAM and aims to identify what contributes to internal alignment and how misalignment could emerge in KAM teams, in order to understand the significance of internal alignment and identify possible reasons for misalignment in KAM. The theory was framed by 7 elements of internal alignment including shared values, style, skills, staff, strategy, structure and systems. The empirical data was collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews with KA managers. The findings suggest that internal alignment is of importance in KAM and that the elements of internal alignment studied in the thesis are dependent on each other. Furthermore, it was found that misalignment is most commonly caused by personal disputes, however, all elements studied were found as contributing factors to misalignment. The findings led to the conclusion that internal alignment is not a target state, it is rather a measure of progress and that all aspects that do contribute to internal alignment also entail causes for misalignment.

Thesis advisor: Philip E. Strahan / In the first essay of this dissertation I examine the bank credit supply and industry growth effects stemming from the introduction of bank account debit (BAD) taxes using a sample of Latin American countries between 1986 and 2005. I first show that the introduction of BAD taxes is followed by a reduction in the provision of bank credit to the private sector. I identify that a key channel through which these taxes affect credit is by creating a strong incentive to hold cash and reduce the use of bank deposits. I also provide evidence that their implementation ultimately affects economic growth, mainly by reducing the growth prospects of industries that are more susceptible to distortions in the supply of credit. In the second chapter I use a large sample of private firms in Colombia to investigate the impact of the introduction and changes of BAD taxes on the financing and investment decisions of firms. I first document that bank leverage decreases from an average of 23% in the years before the tax to 18% in the post-tax years. Furthermore, using a differences-in-differences empirical strategy, I find that small-risky firms reduce more their leverage and capital expenditures relative to large-high credit quality firms, even after controlling for firms' demand characteristics. In the last essay, written jointly with Heitor Almeida, Miguel A. Ferreira and Igor Cunha, we exploit the sovereign ceiling policy by credit rating agencies to show that sovereign rating downgrades have a real impact on firm investment and financial policy. We identify these causal effects by exploring the effect of sovereign downgrades on corporate ratings that are due to the rating agencies' sovereign ceiling rules. We find that sovereign downgrades lead to greater reduction in investment and leverage at firms that are at the sovereign rating bound than at otherwise similar firms that are below the bound. Consistent with a contraction in capital supply, bond yields of firms at the bound increase more than yields of firms below the bound. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

by Pang Yan-foo. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Bibliography: l. 166.

This study is based on the viewpoint of the intertemporal substitution of the consumption smoothing. Under considering the interactive influences on the international economy, the writer employs the present value model to investigate an estimated model of the current accounts. The basis of the traditional current account model is to apply the traditional single-country VAR estimation, and not to consider the internationally interactive effects among countries. However, with the more and more frequent interactions among nations, the economic development in different countries, for the aspect of economic theory, may have interactive influences on each other. Respecting this viewpoint that the current account theory of the traditionally intertemporal model are actually unable to effectively support the inference of the model, the writer therefore adds the cross-country VAR estimation method analyze the transnational influences. I hope that the model can effectively modify the estimation index for the conventional model. In addition, a good model not only should contain in-sample goodness of fit, but also could reveal the variables of the future by using the out-of-sample. Therefore, according to the method of predictive capability assessment proposed by Diebold and Mariano (1995), I attempt to compare the out-of-sample prediction between the single and the cross-country VAR. From the aspect of the goodness of fit, the finding of this study has proven that the model considered the cross-country VAR indeed has a relatively better goodness-of-fit result in Japan, if compared to the traditional single-country. However, in the U.S., the traditional single-country model does not immensely improve the goodness-of-fit result. The finding shows that either the traditional single-country VAR or cross-country VAR, it possesses the perfect goodness of fit. The reason, perhaps, is that America itself has already been the center of the politics and economy. Also, it seems those Americans representative households have as well as the worldview. Therefore, people in the States might have considered the economic conditions of other countries when they are engaged in consumption behaviors. If this is the case, there are no many opportunities for those people to adjust their behaviors when considering the foreign economic situations. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the prediction capability, the final result conducted both in the U.S. and in Japan agreeably demonstrates that it is a better method of prediction using the cross-country VAR estimation than the traditional single-country one.

Att skapa starka och långsiktiga relationer till sina kunder har för företag blivit en nödvändighet i den industriella marknadsföringen, där relationerna i sig själva kan ses som den viktigaste tillgången för verksamheten. Från området inom relationsmarknadsföring har Key Account Management vuxit fram och blivit ett populärt begrepp, där en koncentrerad mängd av företagets kunder prioriteras högre än övriga. Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva och konkretisera det potentiella värde, sett som mellanskillnaden mellan fördelar och nackdelar, som skapas för det säljande tjänsteföretaget i användningen av KAM. Uppsatsen utgår från en kvalitativ ansats där en komparativ studie har genomförts genom att undersöka företag som uttalat använder Key Account Management mot företag som ej använder KAM, samt kundföretag. För att få tillgång till empririn har sex stycken intervjuer med företag genomförts. Två som har KAM, två som inte har KAM. Dessutom har intervjuer utförts med kund till ett KAM-företag, samt en kund till ett företag som inte använder KAM. Genom att ha en stödjande organisation, fyra centrala delar i sitt KAM, kompetenta Key Account Managers, samt aktiva kunder är mjuka värden såsom förbättrad relation och kundförståelse givet. Dessa kan i sin tur leda till andra mjuka och hårda värden och därför ökad lönsamhet. KAM är däremot en investering som tar mycket resurser, samtidigt som flertalet potentiella nackdelar är tänkbara. Värdet har i denna studie identifierats som skillnaden mellan tänkbara fördelar och nackdelar, men detta skiljer sig åt från företag till företag vilket gör att det faktiska värdet varierar. / To build strong and long-lasting customer relationships has become a necessity in industrial marketing, whereat the relationships in itself can be viewed as the most important asset for the company. Key Account Management has its roots in relationship marketing and has grown in popularity the past decades. By selecting and focusing primarily on a few key customers, which the company deems to be the most important, Key Account Management is purposed to generate and locate value. The purpose of this paper is to describe and substantiate the potential value, seen as the difference between advantages and disadvantages, that Key Account Management may provide for the selling company. The study has a qualitative approach consisting of six interviews. Two companies with Key Account Management, two companies without KAM and two customer companies were interviewed in a comparative design. One of the customers had a relationship to one of the companies with KAM, whilst the other one did not. By having a supporting organization, four critical aspects to the companies KAM, a qualified Key Account Manager, and active customers, soft values as improved relationships and customer understanding are guaranteed. These can in turn enable access to other soft and hard values that leads to higher profit. KAM is however an investment which occupies a lot of resources, alongside with creating potential disadvantages. The value has in this study been identified as the difference between potential advantages and disadvantages, but these differ from company to company which in turn makes the actual value from KAM various.

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The thesis compounds three views on the Key Account Management (KAM). Firstly, KAM is defined from a theoretical perspective. Secondly, a practical example of KAM is described within the international organization AIESEC; including feedback from a client. Finally, there are suggestions in order to improve KAM in terms of soft skills of Account Managers.

The objective of this diploma paper is to descibe basic theoretic recurrences of the application of marketing management, to analyse the application of marketing management in Canon CZ company and to make some proposals for steps leading to the improvement in Canon CZ company.

Doctor Educationis / The increase in trade, the increasing internationalisation of production and the improvements in communications, coupled with legalisation of foreign currency instruments have led to a liberalisation of the capital account in a growing number of countries. In line with this trend towards greater reliance on the open market, many governments of developing countries too, have considered the possibility of fully opening their capital accounts. In South Africa the issue was raised again in October 1991 when the financial rand discount dropped to 5.5 percent. This paper will attempt to provide a background to capital account liberalisation in general, and South