The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine whether there is a significant degree of association between the extent of use or specific application of budget-related planning and control policies and procedures and firm performance, and (2) to determine whether there is a significant degree of association between the extent of use or specific application of budget-related planning and control policies and procedures and selected firm characteristics. This report concludes that manufacturing firms, when classified by performance, size, degree of capital intensiveness or degree of decentralization of decision-making, do differ with respect to budget practices. The relationship between firm performance or degree of capital intensiveness and budget practices, though, is not as extensive as the relationship between a firm's size or degree of decentralization and its budget practices. It was recommended that field studies be conducted to determine (1) why high performance firms were not more frequent users of budget procedures considered to be valuable and (2) why certain budget procedures considered valuable were not more frequently used by all firms.

M.Com. (Business Management) / The objective of this study is to establish an alternative method in the presentation of cash flow information in order to provide management with a more effective technique to assist them in their decision making process. The presentation of cash flow information in accordance with current South African accounting standards, includes movements in working capital to maintain operations as part of deriving the amount of cash retained from operating activities. In this study it is suggested that movements in working capital should be treated similarly to that of fixed assets in the cash flow statements. This implies that movements in working capital should be included in cash utilised in investing activities with a distinction being made between maintaining and expanding operations. From literature available a model was developed to incorporate the change in presentation of movements in working capital. This change in the presentation of cash flow information enables management to determine whether dividends are in fact paid from internally generated cash or not. This model was applied to financial information of seven companies quoted on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The results are presented in Appendix 1 to this study where it is demonstrated that the model developed provides a more efficient method for cash flow reporting and that it can be adopted by management in their decision making process...

M.Com. (Business Economics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Comm.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985. / Also available in print.

Traditionally, control systems are evaluated on the basis of the efficiency of their use and their effectiveness in accomplishing goals and objectives. The need to continuously improve efficiency has become a way of life for many organizations. During economic hardship such need is further amplified and emphasized. However, efficiency measures have little to do with the success of a given control system or the organization in general. Increasing efficiency may buy additional time, but only at the expense of risking the future; a penny wise and a pound foolish. Similarly, effectiveness measures provide management with too little information and too late to correct what is wrong or to help them avoid undesired results in the future. The current research was motivated by the criticism against organizational researchers as being "<i>primarily students of performance or efficiency, and only incidentally students of organizations</i>" (Thompson, 1967 :6). Much of organizational research remains confined to considering the efficiency of organizational actions or the effectiveness of its outcome, and may account for the little progress in understanding organizational behaviors. This study represents a new approach to researching organizations by focusing attention on the input side of budgetary systems. The findings from this study point to the need to include efficacy measure in the evaluation of the performance of control systems such as budgets. By considering efficacy measures, management can assume a proactive role in assessing the performance of a budgetary system at a point in time when potential problems can be resolved; during inception. The results from this study should not be construed as being against the consideration of effectiveness or efficiency measures. If anything, the current study emphasizes the need of having a systemic and holistic view of evaluating the performance of budgetary systems. Without efficiency measures, organizations risk entropy and chaos. Without effectiveness measures, there would be no feedback to fine-tune organizational actions. However, considering such measures alone will only reflect a partial and biased evaluation. / Master of Science

The investment decision-making techniques, financing methods and equipment needs of 1,818 sawmills and pallet manufacturers in the Eastern United States were studied. Information was gathered using a mail survey and 581 usable responses were received. It was found that discounted cash flow techniques have not been extensively adopted by the firms under study as primary methods of investment analysis. Undiscounted payback period was the most extensively used quantitative method. The majority of firms compared the expected return on an investment to a minimum rate of return but this minimum was often determined non-quantitatively. Firms most often accounted for the risk of an investment by subjective means. / Master of Science

published_or_final_version / Management Studies / Master / Master of Business Administration

Submitted by Elba Lopes (elba.lopes@fecap.br) on 2016-02-04T16:27:41Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Eduardo_Antonio_Stanisci_Pedro.pdf: 480497 bytes, checksum: 4ea5a6b0b6415717ef78f1afe7adc15a (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-04T16:27:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Eduardo_Antonio_Stanisci_Pedro.pdf: 480497 bytes, checksum: 4ea5a6b0b6415717ef78f1afe7adc15a (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003-06-09 / This research was done in order to help organizations, investors and managers to analyze the main market trends that influence them whenever it's necessary to make certain economic decisions that may cause a significant impact, when it's about such an interesting subject as e-commerce, that each day has been more and more discussed and spread quickly through the world. But, on the other hand, it doesn't have enough parameters that allow establishing rules for its analysis. In order to do a research about virtual commerce against traditional commerce, a powerful tool of management accountancy was used, that is a budgetary planning to improve the management process, covering both planning and results control. To reach this goal, the following things were detailed: merchandise budgetary phases (sale, logistics, purchase), expenses' and investments' budgets that happen between the two types of commerce, since the elaboration and preparation of the budgetary planning. The conceptual and technical differences of the operational and capital budget were explained through this budgetary process. And so the following processes were identified: the convergence and divergence of sales, logistics, expenses, capital investment and strategic planning processes between the traditional and virtual commerce. To obtain the aimed result, the hypothetic-inferential method was used with the formulation of presupposed ideas, which were tested along the research and evaluated through the exploration and examples of certain situations. All this resulted in an investigation capable to discover and analyze the technical and conceptual differences of the company's budget, and also the convergence and divergence existing in the budget's phases between the two types of commerce. The study result was very significant, as it was possible to point the innumerous technical and conceptual differences in the budget elaboration in all phases. It also showed a lot of convergence and divergence along the process that characterize both the traditional and the virtual commerce. As a consequence, the success was reached because the work could express the main relevant points to be considered between the two types of commerce and this way, to improve the company's view of those who are willing to ingress in the virtual world, without forgetting important concepts of the traditional world. / Este estudo explorat??rio visa contribuir com as organiza????es, investidores e gestores no sentido de auxili??-los a avaliar as principais tend??ncias mercadol??gicas que os influenciam, no momento em que seja necess??rio tomar determinadas decis??es econ??micas que possam causar um impacto significativo, quando se tratar de um assunto instigante como ?? o com??rcio eletr??nico, que a cada dia se torna mais discutido e difundido, mas que ainda n??o possui par??metros que permitam o estabelecimento de regras para sua an??lise. Com o prop??sito de pesquisar o com??rcio virtual em face do com??rcio tradicional, foi utilizada esta poderosa ferramenta da contabilidade gerencial, o or??amento empresarial, para tornar eficaz a execu????o do processo de gest??o, compreendendo tanto o planejamento quanto o controle de resultados. Para conseguir este objetivo, foram detalhadas as fases do or??amento de mercadorias (vendas e log??stica), o or??amento de despesas e de investimentos que ocorrem entre os dois tipos de com??rcio, quando da elabora????o e prepara????o do planejamento or??ament??rio. Foi atrav??s da utiliza????o do processo or??ament??rio que foram relatadas as diferen??as t??cnicas e conceituais do or??amento operacional e de capital, como tamb??m foram identificadas as converg??ncias e diverg??ncias dos processos de vendas, log??sticas, despesas, investimentos de capital e do planejamento estrat??gico entre o com??rcio tradicional e o com??rcio virtual. Para obter o resultado desejado utilizou-se o m??todo hipot??tico-dedutivo com a formula????o de pressupostos, que no decorrer da pesquisa, foram testados e avaliados a partir da explora????o e exemplifica????o de determinadas situa????es, que resultaram em uma investiga????o capaz de descobrir e analisar as diferen??as t??cnicas e conceituais do or??amento empresarial, e as converg??ncias e diverg??ncias existentes nas fases do or??amento entre os dois tipos de com??rcio. O resultado da pesquisa foi bastante significativo, pois conseguiu apontar em todas as etapas, in??meras diferen??as t??cnicas e conceituais quando da elabora????o do or??amento e mostrar v??rias converg??ncias e diverg??ncias no decorrer do processo que caracterizam tanto o com??rcio tradicional quanto o com??rcio virtual e por conseq????ncia, o ??xito maior foi alcan??ado, pois o trabalho conseguiu expressar as principais relev??ncias a serem consideradas entre os dois tipos de com??rcio e com isso melhorar a vis??o empresarial daqueles que desejam ingressar no mundo virtual, sem deixar de lado importantes conceitos do mundo tradicional.