SMEs are considered as the best possible vehicle to reduce the unemployment rate and increase economic participation in the country, specifically for historically disadvantaged people. Due to, among other things, the lack of small business management skills, the potential of SMEs cannot be fully realised. From the study it was found that one of the major reasons why SMEs fail to secure loans is a lack of management accounting skills. This lack of management accounting skills is due to a lack of mentors, training and business education. The study has identified a number of management accounting skills which most of the venture capital providers consider when they evaluate applications for loans. From empirical survey it was considered that budgeting, cash flow management and product costing were considered as imperative by most venture capital providers. / Management Accounting / (M. Com.)

by Chan Cheuk Tung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-90). / Abstract also in Chinese. / ABSTRACT (IN ENGLISH) --- p.ii / ABSTRACT (IN CHINESE) --- p.iv / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.ix / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.x / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Overview: Neglected Role of Investors' Emotion --- p.1 / Inadequacies in Existing Theory and Research --- p.3 / Significance of Present Study --- p.5 / Chapter II. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.6 / Demographic Studies of Investors --- p.6 / Decision Research on Choice Behavior --- p.7 / Personality Trait / Cognitive Style Approach --- p.7 / Situationist Approach --- p.8 / Interactionist Approach --- p.9 / Summary --- p.10 / Findings in choice behavior research --- p.10 / "Notion of ""Bounded Rationality""" --- p.10 / Frameworks for task and context effects --- p.12 / Decision-making as a Conflict Resolution Process --- p.13 / Generalized Cost/Benefit Analysis - the Emotional Dimension --- p.14 / Summary --- p.16 / Chapter III. --- HYPOTHESES --- p.18 / Information Acquisition --- p.18 / Negative Information --- p.20 / Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.23 / Evaluation and Judgment --- p.25 / Strategies Formulation --- p.28 / Trading Performance --- p.30 / Chapter VI. --- METHODS --- p.32 / Overview --- p.32 / Material and Apparatus Selection --- p.33 / Selection of Music --- p.33 / Selection of Currency Pair --- p.35 / System for Trading Simulation --- p.36 / Selection of News Items --- p.37 / Pretest of Treatments --- p.39 / Subjects --- p.40 / Procedure --- p.41 / Manipulation Check - Pretest --- p.42 / Likert scale Measure --- p.43 / Affect Grid Measure --- p.44 / Convergent Validity of Measures --- p.45 / Summary --- p.46 / Estimation of Power and Optimal Sample Size for the Main Experiment --- p.46 / Main Experiment --- p.46 / Subjects --- p.47 / Procedure --- p.47 / Measures of Studied Variables --- p.48 / Control Variables --- p.49 / Chapter V. --- RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS --- p.51 / Manipulation Checks --- p.51 / Reliability of Mood Measures --- p.51 / Effect of Manipulations --- p.52 / Effects of Control variables --- p.54 / Trading Performance --- p.55 / Information Acquisition --- p.59 / Negative Information --- p.59 / Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.62 / Time Allocation --- p.64 / Summary --- p.66 / Evaluation and Judgment --- p.66 / Decision Time --- p.66 / Decision Complexity --- p.68 / Decision Accuracy --- p.70 / Summary --- p.71 / Strategy Formulation --- p.72 / Use of Cut-loss Order --- p.72 / Use of Limit-profit Order --- p.73 / Investment Size --- p.73 / Summary --- p.75 / Discussion --- p.75 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.78 / Discussion --- p.78 / Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies --- p.80 / Suggestions to Investors --- p.76 / Individual Investors --- p.82 / Institutional Investors --- p.84 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.86 / APPENDICES --- p.91 / Appendix 1 News Selection Phase One: Judges' Rating --- p.91 / Appendix 2 Screen Layouts of the Internet Trading System --- p.92 / Appendix 3 Coding Scheme -Complexity of Reasoning --- p.93 / Appendix 4 Questionnaire --- p.94

This is a biographical case study of Mexican industrialization, focusing on expatriate U.S. businessman William O. Jenkins (1878-1963). I trace Jenkins' career in textiles, land speculation, sugar, banking, and film, using it as a forum for themes that flesh out the economic and political history of modern Mexico. Chief among these themes are Mexico's substantial but socially unequal capitalistic development; interdependent relationships between business elites and the state; the role of the regions in Mexican development; and a tradition of viewing U.S. industrialists as enemies of national progress. I use Jenkins to illustrate the ability of Mexico's business elite to negotiate the hazards of the 1910-1920 Revolution and the property expropriations that followed. Industrialists, many of them immigrants, helped to forge rapid economic development between 1933 and 1981. However, their behavior was often characterized by monopolistic and rent-seeking practices, to the qualitative detriment of industries including film and textiles. I demonstrate how the success of industrialists owed much to their relations with politicians, and how the persistence of authoritarian regimes at regional and national levels owed much to industrialists' support. For Jenkins, this symbiosis involved loans to state governors, campaign contributions, and support for the federal government by channeling cheap entertainment to urban populations. Such links help explain why fifty years of development saw little electoral democracy or progressive distribution of wealth. I "de-center" Mexico's economic and political narrative by focusing on the state of Puebla, showing how alliances between industrialists and authorities often begin in provincial arenas and how they can impact national economic and political trends. I also address the underdevelopment of Puebla City, long Mexico's second metropolis, which after 1900 fell significantly behind Guadalajara and Monterrey. Finally, I trace how Jenkins functioned rhetorically as the epitome of the grasping U.S. capitalist. His controversial image afforded leftist politicians, business rivals, and labor leaders with an inflammatory object of protest. Such "gringophobia" in turn contributed to a polarization within Mexican society that proliferated after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. I complement this theme with intermittent commentary on rarely-remarked similarities between business practice in Mexico and the United States. / text

SMEs are considered as the best possible vehicle to reduce the unemployment rate and increase economic participation in the country, specifically for historically disadvantaged people. Due to, among other things, the lack of small business management skills, the potential of SMEs cannot be fully realised. From the study it was found that one of the major reasons why SMEs fail to secure loans is a lack of management accounting skills. This lack of management accounting skills is due to a lack of mentors, training and business education. The study has identified a number of management accounting skills which most of the venture capital providers consider when they evaluate applications for loans. From empirical survey it was considered that budgeting, cash flow management and product costing were considered as imperative by most venture capital providers. / Management Accounting / (M. Com.)

This thesis focuses on a central behavioral paradox in the asset management community. Recent decades have brought an upsurge in initiatives throughout the investment community to voluntarily integrate sustainability issues into investment decisions. The financial crisis has however revealed behavioral inconsistency and deepening irresponsibility. Today, sustainable investments represent USD 10.7 trillion, or 7% of the entire market, of assets under management and it is growing steadily. <p>One important driver of this growth was the emergence of specialized research agencies that standardized measurement of companies’ environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance and sold such information as a tool to evaluate or pressure corporate conducts. More recently, sell-side research, financial news, and market-index providers joined the ESG information market, where they aim to support more mainstream asset managers in integrating ESG information into investment decisions. <p>A dominant assumption has taken hold in a large part of the investment and regulatory circles: asset managers’ use of ESG information will induce a behavioral change so that they automatically integrate companies’ sustainability to investment return concerns. Understandings of what constitutes sustainable investment have been largely practitioner-driven. The academic community took little interest to challenge the assumption. Remarkably, more scholars have come to assume that conformance to institutional pressures to add ESG information to investment strategies will induce more sustainable and long-term behavior of investors and companies. ESG information integration is believed to be a behavioral enabler for mainstream investors to systematically embed sustainability in investment strategies. Because of the assumption, theory building of asset manager intrinsic motivations to engage in sustainable investment remains unexplored. Main contribution of this research is to generate a deep theoretical understanding of asset manager non-conformance to the ESG pressure to engage in sustainable investment. <p>The research starts by questioning the dominant assumptions made in the sustainable investment field. While working in the industry, I witnessed some asset managers’ practices of replacing the externally defined ESG information with their own research based on narratives to better understand investee companies. The research question came out of this experience: why do some asset managers use ESG information to engage in sustainable investment while others do not? Do pressures to integrate ESG information really induce more sustainable behaviors on the part of asset managers? These self-inquiries led to a wide array of literature review to search for conformance and non-conformance drivers. Surprisingly, non-conformance was an under-researched theme. Given the scarcity of the research, I sought a method that would enable grounded theorizing based on asset managers’ own experience and interpretations. <p> Grounded theory research draws on asset manager interviews, archival documents, expert and practitioner consultations and feedback during 2007 and mid-2011. To reflect the global nature of sustainability, I focused on global equity asset managers working in thirteen institutions in three lead markets with most geographically diversified sustainable investment, UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. <p>Theory building from the ground up does not happen in vacuum. I developed a framework to study conformance and non-conformance drivers to facilitate the concept elicitation. The question of conformance and non-conformance has been studied by institutional, resource-based view of the firm, behavioral finance, cognitive and sensemaking theorists but in a disintegrated manner. I enhanced insights by way of aggregating and exploring the drivers. The framework illuminates the viability of both conformers and non-conformers in sustainable investment practices. Both are leadership activities of asset managers based respectively on explicit and implicit motivations. It illustrates short-term and opportunistic motivations of conforming managers, as opposed to long-term and substantial motivations of non-conforming managers to integrate sustainability and return-making in their investment decisions. <p>The research results presented hereafter provide a significant theoretical and empirical contribution. Drawing from insights and perspectives from the practitioners, a grounded theory model of asset manager conformance and non-conformance highlights a pivotal concept of sensemaking capacities. It reveals a counter intuitive pattern of asset manager learning. Non-conforming asset managers have developed a distinctive capacity to integrate sustainability and investment return concerns regardless of public pressures to do so. This distinctive sensemaking capacity, founded on behavioral integration of external expectations with own motivation, goal, competence and know-how, was the strategic resource for the organization. Their behavioral integration of sustainability and return generation is so highly developed, that adding the ESG information in their investment strategy would actually impair their capacity to make sense of sustainability. Indeed, I find that non-conforming asset manager teams have sustained consistent returns and increased client assets throughout the financial crisis. In absence of such behavioral integration and sensemaking capacities, conforming managers failed to sustain consistency or suffered from under-funding. To stay competitive, the latter managers have fervently demonstrated the ESG information use in their investment strategies. However, such explicit demonstration of leadership has not been accompanied by distinctive sensemaking capacities. I find that conforming managers were less capable of integrating sustainability and return-generation, which subsequently reinforced their short-termism and opportunism. <p>The finding of this thesis points to the importance of ‘behavioral integration’ instead of ‘explicit conformance’ of asset managers. The academic community may need to shed a more critical eye on ESG integration by asset managers. Institutional pressures to adopt such information may not induce more sustainable behavior, as ESG know-how is likely to deprive a chance to develop distinctive sensemaking capacities. Furthermore, it may even hurt the sensemaking capacities of managers who have behaviorally integrated sustainability and return-generation. While I hope to trigger a re-think amongst academics how to promote sustainable investment, my findings has theoretical and empirical contributions. The most important theoretical contribution is identification of non-conformance variables to engage intrinsically in sustainable investment. Empirical evidence on non-conformers, corroborated with resource-based view of the firm, also enhances the understanding of non-conformers’ motivation to sustain competitive advantage. <p>Findings also lead to managerial and policy implications. I carried out this research in the midst of the financial crisis, a time of mounting European policy debates how to build investor capacity to induce long-term and sustainable behaviors. The European Commission’s Internal Market Directorate-General is set to publish a directive proposal that mandate ESG information disclosure to companies and ESG reporting by investors. This adds weight to already published procedural measures to strengthen corporate governance at financial institutions. These policy initiatives emerged largely because of expert consultation and anecdotal evidences. In addition to recommendations to specific pieces of legislative proposals, this research makes an overarching policy proposal. The EU Commission needs to reexamine if the current policy measures lead to further symbolic demonstrations of ESG usage without accompanying sustainable behavior at the cost of real economy. EU equally needs to pay more attention to non-conforming asset managers’ distinctive capacities and enabling mechanisms. Reporting burdens may inadvertently impair non-conforming managers’ capacities to sustain long-term performance and may induce a contradictory policy consequence of increased public distrust. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The evolution of policy regarding the black bourgeoisie -- Issues in the struggle for black capitalism -- The roles and effects of NAFCOC (National African Federation Chamber of Commerce) and FABCOS (Foundation of Business and Consumer Service) -- The development of black capitalists in the urban areas -- Constraints on, and the performances of black entrepreneurs -- 'Normalisation' of the economic playing field.

The pattern of American institution building through private funding began in metropolises of all sizes soon after the nation's founding. But by 1840, Manhattan's geographical location and great natural harbor had made it America's preeminent commercial and communications center and the undisputed capital of finance. Thus, as the largest and richest city in the United States, unsurprisingly, some of the most ambitious cultural institutions would rise there, and would lead the way in the creation of a distinctly American model of high culture. This dissertation describes New York City's cultural transformation between 1840 and 1940, and focuses on three of its enduring monuments, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Opera. It seeks to demonstrate how trustees and financial supporters drove the foundational ideas, day-to-day operations, and self-conceptions of the organizations, even as their institutional agendas enhanced and galvanized the inherently boosterish spirit of the Empire City. Many board members were animated by the dual impulses of charity and obligation, and by their own lofty edifying ambitions for their philanthropies, their metropolis, and their country. Others also combined their cultural interests with more vain desires for social status. Although cohesive, often overlapping social groups founded and led most elite institutions, important moments of change in leadership in the twentieth century often were precipitated by the breakdown of a social order once restricted to Protestant white males. By the 1920s and 1930s, the old culture of exclusion--of Jews, of women, of ethnic minorities in general--was no longer an accepted assumption, nor was it necessarily good business. In general, institutions that embraced the notion of diversity and adapted to forces of historical change tended to thrive. Those that held fast to the paradigms of the past did not. Typically, when we consider the history and development of such major institutions, the focus often has been on the personalities and plans of the paid directors and curatorial programs. This study, however, redirects some of the attention towards those who created the institutions and hired and fired the leaders. While a common view is that membership on a board was coveted for social status, many persons who led these efforts had little abiding interest in Manhattan's social scene. Rather, they demanded more of their boards and expected their fellow-trustees to participate in more ways than financially. As the twentieth century beckoned, rising diversity in the population mirrored the emerging multiplicity in thought and culture; boards of trustees were hardly exempt from this progression. This dissertation also examines the subtle interplay of the multi-valenced definition of "public" along with the contrasting notion of "private." In the early 1800s, a public institution was not typically government funded, and more often functioned independent of the state, supported by private individuals. "Public," instead, meant for the people. Long before the income tax and charitable deductions for donations, there was a full range of voluntary organizations supported by private contributions in the United States. This dissertation argues that in a privatist spirit, New York elites seized a leadership role, both individually and collectively, to become cultural arbiters for the city and the nation.

觀察台灣近代的發展過程，學者主要將焦點放在國家（State） 對經濟場 域的干預或控制，尤其多著重國家在經濟發展過程的策略操導，至於維繫 生產活動的兩大族群：資本家和勞工，則明顯地沒有在「經濟發展」議題 上被同時納入來進行討論；換言之，在發展過程中‘國家與資本家’及‘ 國家與勞工’的關係為何？國家透過何種方式來掌握資本家和勞工？國家 對‘個別資本家’和‘資本家聯盟’的態度是否一致？這些問題當在解讀 台灣的經濟發展經驗時，顯然地並沒有被同時放在分析網絡中進行思考， 因此本文在解釋台灣的經濟發展經驗時，除了探討國家的角色扮演外，還 嘗試分析國家與資本家、國家與勞工的關係，期能週延地解讀台灣經濟的 「發展經驗」。本論文以國家統合主義檢視台灣的經濟發展，藉由‘攏絡 性統合主義’和‘排斥性統合主義’兩組概念可發現，國家在追求經濟成 長的前提下，和資本家維持著‘利益的合夥關係’：此不僅體現在生產過 程中國家以財政和金融政策來施惠於資本家，國家更配合資本家來提供生 產要素（土地、資本）以利生產活動的持續進行，而在特定時空下國家亦 扮演生產者（如委託商、上游獨占廠商）的角色，和資本家構築彼此合作 的生產型態。對國家而言，施惠於資本家的目的在求國內的經濟成長。另 一方面，國家對勞工階級的排斥則體現在其長期未調整勞工的基本工資基 數，藉以避免因工資上揚而抵消了資本家的投資意願，影響經濟成長；而 工資基數的長期凍結，除了使資本家能盡量壓低勞動所得外，亦使勞工所 得遠落後物價波動，導致勞工消費能力薄弱和偏低的生活水準；此外，國 家還透過法令編織強力禁制罷工活動，在此情況下造成勞工無法藉集體行 動來改善勞動條件。 儘管如此，國家與資本家的合作關係，似乎僅止 於在生產活動的個別授受，本文從「意識型態」、「組織設計」、及「組 織控制」等三個面向可發現，國家不管是對資本家聯盟抑或勞工聯盟，事 實上都有著強烈的干預現象－－即國家企圖將二者‘轉化’為整合及動員 機制。由於聯盟本質上蘊含龐大的動員力量，基於對聯盟的疑懼和防堵， 國家並不允許有組織的聯盟擁有真正的實力，進而藉此實力來挑戰或分享 國家在政╱經資源的分配權。於是種種干預措施使得聯盟力量被真正地化 整為零，無法壯大來抗衡國家。此不僅反應在資本家聯盟身上，在勞工聯 盟方面，亦同樣可見；在國家的強控制下，資本家聯盟和勞工聯盟僅具有 象徵意義而已。

The evolution of policy regarding the black bourgeoisie -- Issues in the struggle for black capitalism -- The roles and effects of NAFCOC (National African Federation Chamber of Commerce) and FABCOS (Foundation of Business and Consumer Service) -- The development of black capitalists in the urban areas -- Constraints on, and the performances of black entrepreneurs -- 'Normalisation' of the economic playing field.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1996. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-219). Also available on the Internet.