The strategic management of financial services firms has become an increasingly complex task over the last three decades. The banking industry, until the end of the 1970's, was heavily protected and characterised as a staid and stable industry in the age of '3-6-3' banking (borrow at 3%, lend at 6%, be on the golf course by 3 p.m.. This age came to an abrupt end and banks were forced to become competitive and fast [Matten: 1996]. Today, the banking industry is characterised by volatile markets, increasing consumerism, globalisation and competition, the rapid introduction of new technology, a changing regulatory environment and an increasingly inter-coupled business environment. Under conditions of increasing complexity and interconnectedness, it has become increasingly difficult to manage a modern financial services firm by intuition alone. The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate how a system dynamics simulation model can expedite learning, insight and foresight for a typical retail bank involved in lending and deposit-taking activities in a retail banking market. The model represents the interest income generating system of a typical retail bank embedded in its environment. The exogenous environmental inputs can be initialised with a wide range of different characteristics; a stable interest rate environment versus a volatile environment, a mature market with low loans growth versus a fast growing market, and so on. Similarly the characteristics of the retail bank may be initialised with a wide range of characteristics; a start-up bank versus an established bank with a large loan and/or deposit book, aggressive versus conservative credit policies, etc. In particular, we develop a dynamic hypothesis of the complex structure of the interest income generating system of a retail bank. This hypothesis is translated into a quantitative system dynamics simulation model that serves to provide an experimental tool for testing strategic responses of a typical bank under different environmental scenarios enabling us to infer how performance arises. The model demonstrates how performance arises ex-ante from the dynamic structure of the bank's resource system. The experimental results provides a dynamic view on the performance characteristics of the income generating system of a retail bank described in the language of the Dynamic Resource Systems View of Warren and Morecroft [Warren: 2000]. - Firstly, the results show the scale of the resources developed; the size of the loans book, the number non-performing loans, the size of the depositor book book, and the consequent financial performance at any cross-sectional view in time. - Secondly, the experimental results indicate at what rate the resources have developed; the speed at which the advances book has developed, the rate with which the depositor book is generated under a particular set of exogenous circumstances and endogenous policies. - Thirdly, the results show that the observed performance of a number of similar banks can be described by a single, generic systemic feedback structure. Performance differences arise due to different resource endowments and decision policies of decision agents with different dominant logics about how they should structure their business. - Fourthly, the results show that the time evolution of financial performance of the interest income generating system is path dependent, that is, the time path of performance is constrained by its current resource endowments, policies and capabilities. The central thesis of this dissertation is that the dynamic behaviour of interest income is a result of an endogenous systemic structure in response to external exogenous factors such as interest rate movements. It is our contention that the complex interrelationships between issues such as capital management, interest rate management, liquidity management, cost management, strategic objectives, etc, justifies the use of a more complex systemic and dynamic framework for analysis that may produce new insights into the behaviour and management of the interest income system for a typical retail bank. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how the dynamic behaviour of interest income generation of a typical retail bank arises as much from the interaction of decision agents and tangible and intangible resource flows within the bank's system as from any exogenous inputs into the system. The model developed here is a highly aggregate model of limited scope encompassing the traditional core issues facing a typical retail bank and sheds some light on the issues addressed by the model. Although being of limited scope, the model is deemed to be sufficiently comprehensive to demonstrate how the dynamics arise. The work presented here is not fully complete, it represents a plausible hypothesis of system under study but has not been sufficiently validated to be considered scientifically complete. Much further work is required. However, this dissertation represents work that has been undertaken to date in an attempt to understand the system under study from a systemic perspective. Further extensions may be undertaken to provide insight into some of the current issues facing the modern retail bank executive. Understanding the dynamic structure of a retail bank sheds some light on the potential responses available to improve performance. The contribution of this research lies in the systematic and systemic abstraction of the interest income generating structure of a typical retail bank, the development of a quantitative model thereof and the insights obtained from this. The model developed may be considered to be a generic model applicable to any bank with a similar structure but with different objectives, parameter values, resource levels, policy parameters and exogenous inputs and provides different performance time paths with the same structure. The insights about solutions are specific and time dependent. This provides an insight that traditional static models do not provide by identifying specific solutions applicable at specific time frames and valid for specific durations thus coupling a time dimension to all solutions. / Economics / M.Com. (Quantitative Management)

This thesis is made of two parts. Part I (Chapter 1 to 3) focuses on the ethical aspects of the current challenges in microfinance. Chapter 1 addresses the question of the place and importance of credit in development policies, through the debate on the right to credit. Chapter 2 and 3 then question the fairness of the interest rates charged by the microfinance institutions. Chapter 2 analyzes whether the fairness criteria depend on more basic principles of justice, such as Rawls’ principles described in A Theory of Justice (Rawsl, 1976). Chapter 3 then reviews some of the implicit and explicit definitions of fair interest rates and proposes an original methodology, with David Gauthiers’ contractuarian theory. It determines what a fair interest rate would be when lending to the poor. Based on the results of the two first chapters, Part II (Chapter 4 to 6) focuses on the role of donors in microfinance. Chapters 4 and 5 use two original databases, of 67 and 100 MFIs respectively to study the impact of subsidies on the MFIs’ management, through their rating evaluation (Chapter 4) and MFIs’ performance and management decisions (Chapter 5). Chapter 4 will analyze the relationship between the quality of management, as rated by a specialized agency, and the amount of subsidies. Chapter 5 will study pricing policy, the clientele and the potential moral hazard of subsidized institutions. Concluding this analysis, Chapter 6 gives some guidelines on the use of donor subsidies, especially in their interaction with the new private commercial actors, such as investment funds.

We have introduced the notion of user profiling with trust, as a solution to theproblem of uncertainty and unmanageable exposure of personal data duringaccess, retrieval and consumption by web applications. Our solution sug-gests explicit modeling of trust and embedding trust metrics and mechanismswithin very fabric of user profiles. This has in turn allowed information sys-tems to consume and understand this extra knowledge in order to improveinteraction and collaboration among individuals and system. When formaliz-ing such profiles, another challenge is to realize increasingly important notionof privacy preferences of users. Thus, the profiles are designed in a way toincorporate preferences of users allowing target systems to understand pri-vacy concerns of users during their interaction. A majority of contributionsof this work had impact on profiling and recommendation in digital librariescontext, and was implemented in the framework of EU FP7 Smartmuseumproject. Highlighted results start from modeling of adaptive user profilesincorporating users taste, trust and privacy preferences. This in turn led toproposal of several ontologies for user and content characteristics modeling forimproving indexing and retrieval of user content and profiles across the plat-form. Sparsity and uncertainty of profiles were studied through frameworksof data mining and machine learning of profile data taken from on-line so-cial networks. Results of mining and population of data from social networksalong with profile data increased the accuracy of intelligent suggestions madeby system to improving navigation of users in on-line and off-line museum in-terfaces. We also introduced several trust-based recommendation techniquesand frameworks capable of mining implicit and explicit trust across ratingsnetworks taken from social and opinion web. Resulting recommendation al-gorithms have shown to increase accuracy of profiles, through incorporationof knowledge of items and users and diffusing them along the trust networks.At the same time focusing on automated distributed management of profiles,we showed that coverage of system can be increased effectively, surpassingcomparable state of art techniques. We have clearly shown that trust clearlyelevates accuracy of suggestions predicted by system. To assure overall pri-vacy of such value-laden systems, privacy was given a direct focus when archi-tectures and metrics were proposed and shown that a joint optimal setting foraccuracy and perturbation techniques can maintain accurate output. Finally,focusing on hybrid models of web data and recommendations motivated usto study impact of trust in the context of topic-driven recommendation insocial and opinion media, which in turn helped us to show that leveragingcontent-driven and tie-strength networks can improve systems accuracy forseveral important web computing tasks. / <p>QC 20130219</p>

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka ett antal familjehemsföräldrars erfarenheter av att befinna sig i en juridisk process, där det placerade barnets biologiska förälder gjort en hemtagningsbegäran och yrkat på att vården enligt LVU skall upphöra. Mer specifikt avser studien att beskriva hur familjehemsföräldrarna upplever den juridiska processen avseende de placerade barnens känslomässiga, beteendemässiga och sociala utveckling, sin egen relation med barnen, kontakten med barnens biologiska föräldrar samt kontakten med barnets omgivande professionella nätverk. Studien bygger på kvalitativa halvstrukturerade intervjuer med åtta familjehemsföräldrar i fyra olika familjehem. Familjehemmen är geografiskt åtskilda och belägna på olika platser i Sverige. Som teoretiska ramverk har ett anknytningsteoretiskt perspektiv och teorier om barn och trauma använts. Tidigare studier och forskning visar på att de familjehemsplacerade barnen är en särskilt utsatt grupp i samhället och att barnens rättsskydd är mycket begränsat. Resultatet i denna studie utgör inget undantag. Intervjupersonerna beskriver att barnen under den juridiska processen är utsatta för mycket stark psykisk stress. Barnen uppvisar svåra psykiska symptom som tydligt följer den juridiska processens faser. I den stund de nås av hotet om uppbrott så ökar barnens symptom med dissociation, tilltagande mardrömmar samt svårigheter att hålla urin och avföring. Studien bekräftar således tidigare forskning som visar på att placerade barn ständigt omges av en oro och osäkerhet kring placeringens varaktighet och stabilitet i tillvaron. Även familjehemsföräldrarnas situation är utsatt. Flera av intervjupersonerna beskriver att de mått mycket dåligt under de omständigheter som den juridiska processen medför. Familjehemsföräldrarna upplever en känsla av maktlöshet och att de sviker barnen. Maktlösheten uppkommer också utifrån familjehemmens svaga rättsliga ställning som innebär att de inte är någon part i de rättsliga processerna och kan således inte driva barnens intressen. Resultatet visar också på brister i stödet, både till familjehemmen och barnen. Barnen som är i stort behov av terapeutisk behandling förvägras detta då det terapeutiska arbetet förutsätter stabilitet, vilket paradoxalt nog är det som saknas i dessa barns tillvaro. Utifrån ett anknytningsteoretiskt perspektiv så innebär otryggheten och avsaknaden av förutsebarhet under placeringen att barnen varken får möjlighet att knyta an till familjehemsföräldrarna eller hjälp med att separera från de biologiska föräldrarna.

This study was undertaken to determine the aptitude and interest profiles of industrial arts majors as derived from certain standardized tests administered to freshmen entering North Texas State University, Denton, Texas, from 1955 through 1959.

The relationship between social interest and personal adjustment described by Adler seems to imply that the CO score is positively correlated with personal adjustment. If the CO score in a human figure drawing indicates the degree of social interest manifested by an individual, it is reasoned that the CO score will measure that individual's adjustment level.

The primary goal of the current study was to extend previous research suggesting that coaches are the primary gatekeepers who may be a barrier to working with athletes by examining high school coaches likelihood to refer to, interest in, and intention to hire a sport psychologist. Specifically, the current study examined relationships between high school coaches’ sex, age, and type of sport coached (i.e., contact vs. non-contact) and their likelihood to refer athletes to a sport psychologist for a variety of presenting issues (i.e., poor attentional focus, poor leadership, family issues, etc.). It also examined relationships between coaches’ sex, age, and type of sport coached (i.e., contact vs. non-contact) and their interest in working with a sport psychologist. Finally, the study examined reasons why coaches did not plan to hire a sport psychologist. An examination of the possible reasons that high school coaches do not plan to hire a sport psychologist served an exploratory purpose. Participants included 450 coaches who coached high school sports in the United States. Results indicated that female coaches and non-contact sport coaches were more likely to refer athletes to a sport psychologist for a variety of referral issues than male coaches and coaches of contact sports. Similarly, significantly more female coaches and non-contact sport coaches showed interest in working with a sport psychologist than male coaches and coaches of contact sports. Coaches who did not plan to hire a sport psychologist reported that cost, lack authority to hire, and lack of availability as primary reasons. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

No description available.

- credit agreement Presented thesis deals with the credit agreement, risks related with this type of contract and legislation of this institute in selected Member States of the European Union. The credit agreements are concluded between the lender and the debtor. Through the credit agreement, the lender agrees to provide to debtor at his request and for his benefit funds to a certain amount, and the debtor agrees to return the funds back and pay interest. The credit agreements can be concluded between different types of subjects. In this case, attention was focused on a special type of credit agreement which is concluded between a consumer and a businessman. For the consumer credit market is typical an asymmetry of information, when subjects on one side of the market have better information than subjects on the other side. In this context, consumers are seen as weaker entities to which must be provided increased protection in legal relationships. In the EU consumer protection receive considerable attention. Union promotes consumer primarily through secondary sources of law - Directives (Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on consumer rights, Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts., Directive 2008/48/EC of...

Credit Contract This diploma thesis is concerned with the provision of credit on the basis of the Credit Contract under Sections 497 - 507 of the Commercial Code. The primary aim of this thesis is to provide a detailed analysis of the regulation of the Credit Contract in the Commercial Code. Within the analysis of particular questions concerned I try to take into consideration current developments in case law, doctrine and banking practices. The subject of my interest is not solely the Credit Contract itself. I also focus on imminently related contractual instruments such as the Loan Contract under the Civil Code or credit business terms. The goal of this thesis is also to point to significant interpretation problems along with my own critical view and proposed solutions. Furthermore, I point out in a limited extent to partial issues regarding the regulation of the Customer Credit. Finally, I could not omit the analysis of the regulation of the Credit Contract and its related contractual instruments in the new Civil Code. The definition, nature and economic importance of the credit are delineated in the first chapter. These opening remarks help the reader to better understand the further following chapters dealing with the Credit Contract itself. The second chapter concentrates on the system of...