The Mack truck principle is the reason a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document is a good idea – so I was told by my boss in my early days working for Disney ABC Television Group. This principle is quite simple: if the one person who knows how to do the job walks out the door and is hit by a Mack truck, we have a problem; no one else knows how to do what that person did. And when it comes to television operations, that is a huge dilemma! Standard Operating Procedures is a document that lists the step-by-step process for completing tasks in order to, in this case, keep a network on the air. This document would be beneficial in cases of disaster recovery, but it might be just as useful for training new employees or for covering for someone who is out sick. There may be various reasons to go to the SOP, but they all have the same goal: to keep operations working to fulfill the business objective. An SOP for the operations of an entire network would likely fill at least one if not multiple books, so in order to keep this project manageable, I limited the development of the SOP to one department, Traffic Inventory, which is responsible for the commercial and promotional assets which are sold and scheduled to air on any of the Disney cable networks (Disney Channel, DisneyXD, and Disney Junior.) In order to develop an SOP, it was necessary to review the different software programs in use, and understand their purpose and application to the overall operations of the cable networks. This will be a “living” document, meaning updates and changes will be anticipated, requiring constant maintenance of the SOP in order to keep it up to the latest development. In an effort to make it truly useful, multiple screen captures are used, as this provides a more user-friendly tutorial and makes for a more effective “blueprint” to comprehend and follow. By having Standard Operating Procedures on hand, anyone in the department will be able to effectively follow the process for handling the commercial and promotional assets in an efficient manner, with minimal impact on the daily operation of the networks. This will then be a valuable document, helping the business to keep its commitment to both advertisers and viewers, without the fear of Mack trucks.

Univ., Diss.--Linz, 2004.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2004--Linz.

abstract: This paper studies the dynamic relationship between the pricing of Alternative Asset Management products and macroeconomic variables. It does so using an index of Alternative Asset Management products, employing a VAR framework and examining the implied impulse response functions. I find a bivariate causal relation between the expected rate of return on Alternative Asset Management products and the growth rate of industrial value added. I also find that the CPI, the yield on one-year national debt, the weighted average yield of bond repurchases in interbank bond market, and the one-year loan interest rate can influence the expected return rate of Alternative Asset Management products. An analysis of the variance decomposition suggests that macroeconomic variables have a different impacts on forecast errors variance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study assesses the policies for managing recovered proceeds of crime in three countries, namely, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria. It considers the role and relevance of asset management in the asset recovery regimes of the three countries. Managing the proceeds of crime divides into two stages: the pre-confiscation stage and the post-confiscation stage. International best practices (IBPs) in asset management have been employed as a yardstick for the assessment. On the face of it, asset management is complementary to asset recovery policy. The management of preserved and recovered assets maintains their value and enables states to apply the assets to other policy objectives after the finalisation of the recovery process. From this perspective, proper asset management arguably lies at the heart of asset recovery policy. Asset recovery as a policy is concerned with the pursuit of two objectives, namely, combating crime and correcting the harm caused by crime. These objectives are encapsulated in two prominent principles: the principle that crime should not pay and the principle of corrective justice. Thus, asset management policy, as an element of asset recovery policy, needs to express these two principles and address their corresponding policy objectives. A number of challenges face the asset management institutions (AMIs) in the three designated states. They fall into two categories: policy challenges and legal challenges. The main policy challenge pertains to unbalanced or skewed policy objectives. Tanzania and Nigeria, in particular, give too much consideration to combating crime and too little to correcting the harm caused by crime to the community. These policy objectives need to be balanced by the states taking seriously the principle of corrective justice as fundamental to asset management policy. In this connection, compensation to victims, funding of institutions dealing with the victims of crime, funding of public good projects and funding of law enforcement agencies are available as ways of addressing the harm caused by the offence and showing commitment to ensuring that nobody suffers loss as a result of crime. Despite the existence and implementation of a proper asset management regime, certain factors affect the value of the preserved and recovered assets negatively. They include enforcement of certain rights in favour of the defendant, such as payment of legal, living and business expenses from the preserved assets, and certain asset recovery procedures, such as plea bargaining, non-conviction based asset recovery and administrative asset recovery. Proper legal controls are required in order to reduce the impact of such factors upon the value of preserved and recovered assets. The study concludes with a focus on the asset management regime of Tanzania. Various recommendations are offered towards the attainment of a Tanzanian regime structured in terms of balanced policy objectives. The recommendations cover three aspects: the general coverage of the law, the functioning of AMIs and the legal control of the factors that were identified as affecting the value of assets during the recovery process.

General content: Current methods of estimation of cost of capital in the emerging markets are often neglecting various contradictions with the essentials of the model structure and assumptions. As the result of such imprecisions, the cost of equity is often understated (overstated). This thesis will attempt to assess current level of emerging market integration, liquidity and concentration. This will be followed by evaluation of traditional and alternative models for estimation of cost of equity. The author will address several currently available models such as Credit Rating Model, D-CAPM model, various versions of traditional CAPM models. Furthermore, she will compare and contrast their limitations taking into account the context of emerging markets. The testing of the models will be performed on country basis through the means of index data. In the last chapter, discussion of the results and possible improvements of the valuation approaches will take place.

The descriptive purpose of this study was to explore and describe the manner in which a South African informal settlement community is coping with HIV&AIDS, by relying on existing assets and local resources. The intervention-related purpose was to explore how an activist intervention research approach might facilitate change and empower an informal settlement community in relation to community members’ ways of coping with HIV&AIDS. Theoretically the study conceptualised asset-based coping, thus adding to available literature on the asset-based approach and coping. The practical value lies in documenting an example of one community’s coping with HIV&AIDS, which may inform other communities during future capacity building initiatives. Furthermore, the study provides methodological knowledge concerning the potential value of employing activist intervention research within the context of coping with HIV&AIDS. The conceptual framework of the study constituted the HIV&AIDS pandemic, coping theory and the asset-based approach. I followed a qualitative research approach guided by an interpretivist epistemology. I employed an instrumental case study design, applying PRA (Participatory Reflection and Action) principles. I purposefully selected the case (a South African informal settlement community and primary school through which I entered the community), as well as the participants (educators, community members and other stakeholders of the community). Data collection consisted of an intervention (focus groups combined with workshops that relied on PRA informed techniques), interviews, observation, a field journal and visual data collection techniques. Four prominent themes emerged subsequent to inductive data analysis. The community experienced certain challenges and stressors within the context of HIV&AIDS. Besides general challenges like poverty, unemployment and at-risk sexual behaviour, community members displayed vulnerability with regard to HIV&AIDS and identified challenges when supporting other people living with HIV&AIDS. Various assets and potential assets were identified in and around the community, upon which the community might rely in coping with the challenges associated with HIV&AIDS. Thirdly, the community displayed certain trends in coping with HIV&AIDS, relying on community-based coping to deal with being infected with HIV or living with AIDS, coping with other community members living with HIV&AIDS, or caring for children orphaned due to HIV&AIDS. Finally, participants’ active involvement in the intervention research resulted in unchanged-, as well as changed coping strategies. Based on the findings, I conceptualised the construct asset-based coping, defining it as the ability to deal with challenges, by identifying and mobilising existing assets, as well as external resources available. I proposed asset-based coping as one possibility of coping with HIV&AIDS. In terms of research methodology, I combined research and intervention in an innovative manner, by developing and employing an activist intervention research approach. Active participation and their role as research partners enabled educators to experience increased levels of self-worth, take agency and be empowered in the context of community-based coping with HIV&AIDS. / Thesis (PhD (Educational Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

The development of software products is a massive undertaking, and organisations have to manage all artefacts involved in the process. Managing such artefacts that, in many cases, become crucial assets is important for success. Recognising assets and letting them (unintentionally) degrade can result in maintainability problems. Thus, there is a need to create a structured and organised body of knowledge that can guide practitioners and researchers to deal with the assets during the product/service life-cycle. This includes, but is not limited to, what steps are needed to understand the assets’ degradation, investigating and examining the existing methods and metrics on how to estimate degradation and understanding the implication of assets’ value and degradation. This licentiate’s main objective is contributing to the software engineering field by providing a different perspective on assets focusing on assets’ value for the organisation. We have used literature reviews, focus groups, case study, and sample study to address this objective. The collected data is from peer-reviewed work, collaboration with five company partners, and 31 OSS from Apache Foundation. First, we have defined the concept and terminology in a position paper. We havecreated an asset management taxonomy based on a literature review and focus groups– fours focus groups conducted in 2019 with 29 participants. The extracted assets represent not only the stages of software development, from requirements to verificationand validation, but also operational and organisational perspectives. The taxonomy wascreated to be extendable as the field evolves and matures. Then, we have performed a more in-depth investigation of selected asset types. As a part of studying assets, in a case study, we present the impact of bug-fixing,refactorings, and new development to investigate how source code degrades. In anothersample study, we examine the longevity of specific source-code related issues in 31OSS from Apache Foundation using statistical analysis. The work done in this licentiate includes: defining the asset concept and relatedterminology, identifying assets and creating a taxonomy of assets, presenting the preliminary investigation of tools and methods to understand source-code and architecturerelated asset degradation. We conclude that a good understanding of the relevant assets for the inception,planning, development, evolution, and maintenance of software-intensive products andservices is necessary to study their value degradation. Our work builds on currentmethods and details the underlying concepts attempting to homogenise definitions andbring the areas of assets and degradation together. A natural progression of our workis to investigate the measurements to evaluate the degradation of assets. This licentiate thesis starts investigating the value degradation of source-code related assets. We planto continue investigating the degradation of architecture in our future work.

No description available.

In this dissertation I investigate and compare the impairments of long-lived operating assets under US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) from different perspective, including the informativeness, determinants, and market valuation of asset impairments. A firm invests in long-lived operating assets with the expectation of generating future benefit. The decision or recognition of asset impairments implies such future benefit is expected to be lower than originally estimated. US GAAP and IFRS both require the recognition of impairment losses but their standards and accounting approaches are different in several ways. These distinctions raise the question whether the reported long-lived asset impairments under US GAAP and IFRS are comparable and motivate this dissertation. I investigate the predictive ability of reported asset write-offs for firms' future performance and find negative associations suggesting the informativeness of impairment losses. But such informativeness depends on the type of assets impaired, the accounting standards adopted, and the institutional characteristics. In general, aggregate impairments are persistently associated with future performance under IFRS but not US GAAP. The impairments of tangible assets have more predictive ability than those of intangibles. For IFRS adopters, enforcement takes a more important role in determining the informativeness of asset impairments than legal origins. I also examine the determinants and attributes of asset impairments under US GAAP and IFRS. I find both of them reflect certain economic factors and reporting incentives. Under US GAAP asset impairments strongly reflect GDP growth, unemployment rate, industry-trend and reporting incentives, including taking a big bath and income smoothing. Under IFRS the impairments reflect most economic factors but less reporting incentives. However, when enforcement is low in IFRS countries, firms tend to manage earnings through asset write-offs. I further address the market valuation of asset write-offs under US GAAP and IFRS. The reporting of asset impairments improves the explanatory power of accounting information for equity prices under IFRS but not US GAAP, especially when enforcement is high. The associations between asset write-offs and equity prices under IFRS in high enforcement countries are significantly different from those under US GAAP, implying investors weigh reported impairments under IFRS. I also use stock returns as an alternative metric of market valuation. Under US GAAP, asset write-offs are negatively associated with past, current, and future stock returns. Under IFRS in high enforcement countries the effects of impairment loss concentrate on past and current stock returns. The results of comparisons suggest asset write-offs under US GAAP and IFRS are not totally comparable from a market perspective. This dissertation contributes to literature on special items, impairment accounting, and reporting under IFRS. It is also related to the comparability of financial reporting under US GAAP and IFRS. While studies have compared overall properties of the two standards, examining the differences in a specific accounting area is also important as U.S. SEC express concern about the convergence of different accounting standards and whether U.S. should incorporate IFRS into its financial reporting systems. / Business Administration/Accounting