The objective of this study was to determine the factors which can affect the adoption of e-banking in Cameroon. To conduct that research, we tried to understand how demographic characteristics, attitudes and social influences impact on the customer’s decision to adopt e-banking; to investigate barriers and challenges with regard to the adoption of e-banking; to identify the differences in perception regarding e-banking between e-banking users and non-users; and to determine whether or not e-banking offers more opportunities in comparison with the traditional banking system used in Cameroon. Through an in-depth interview and questionnaires filled by bank’s customer, the factors influencing the adoption of e-banking in Cameroon were identified. These were demographic factors such as age, income, educational level and occupation. Psychological factors such as perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity and perceived cost were also identified. Perceived risk was found to have a negative impact on e-banking adoption. A measure of the relationship between the factors and the adoption of e-banking was determined. Negative perceptions and attitudes influence the decision-making process, resulting in negative consumer behaviour outcomes. Social influences, including the opinions of friends, parents and colleagues, were found to have an influence on e-banking adoption. With regard to the research objectives that identified factors discouraging customers from using e-banking, the lack of trust, lack of information, lack of knowledge and perceived risk by non-users hindered the adoption of e-banking. Challenges and barriers with regard to e-banking adoption were also identified, namely resistance to change by bank employees, lack of knowledge, absence of e-laws and legislation for e-banking, absence of a proper telecommunications infrastructure and shortage of IT training. This research is especially valuable for the Cameroon banking industry, as the findings will provide insights for banks interested in implementing e-banking strategies. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

Orientador: Carlos Salas Páez / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T21:58:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Strong_StevenMichael_M.pdf: 4434873 bytes, checksum: 262e5c552d0eb06aeb40d7022effc867 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Trabalhadores do setor financeiro dos EUA apresentam a menor taxa de sindicalização em comparação aos trabalhadores de outras indústrias, e estão entre os menos organizados do mundo. À luz da recente crise econômica, o movimento operário dos EUA, junto com os sindicatos internacionais, tem tido grande interesse em reverter as sombrias taxas de sindicalização, devido à importância destes trabalhadores, que estão dentro de um mercado financeiro globalizado altamente dominado por empresas norte-americanas. O atual desafio em organizar estes trabalhadores está enraizado em uma história profunda de evasão, ignorância, desorientação, repressão, e derrotas para os interesses do sindicalismo dos trabalhadores de escritórios. Este trabalho explora as primeiras raízes dos obstáculos atuais que os trabalhadores do setor financeiro enfrentam na tentativa de se sindicalizar, examinando a resistência popular à formação do Setor Financeiro dos EUA no século 19. Uma visão geral do desenvolvimento inicial do setor financeiro, de suas respostas políticas e da organização do trabalho é fornecida, incluindo informações específicas sobre os trabalhadores do setor financeiro, quando disponíveis. O aumento da feminização do trabalho de colarinho branco após a Guerra Civil dos EUA também é explorado. Os fatores chave que contribuem para as baixas taxas de sindicalização incluem o impacto da liderança sindical influenciada pelo populismo, o que contribuiu para as reformas que promovem uma estrutura financeira descentralizada, a exclusão dos trabalhadores de escritório, a feminização da força de trabalho de escritórios, as atitudes das lideranças sindicais em relação às mulheres e trabalhadores de escritório, e a falta de um partido trabalhista nos EUA, tudo isso combinado com a repressão do governo contra os comunistas que pretendiam organizar o setor. Na conclusão, são apresentadas sugestões para a continuação da pesquisa sobre o porquê de os EUA não possuírem um sindicato dos trabalhadores do setor financeiro / Abstract: Financial sector workers in the US suffer from the lowest rate of unionization of workers in any of the industries in the US, and are among the least organized in the world. In light of the recent economic crisis, and given the importance of US financial workers within a globalized financial market highly dominated by US firms, the US labor movement, along with unions internationally, has taken great interest in reversing these dismal unionization rates. The current challenge to organizing these workers is rooted in a deep history of avoidance, ignorance, misguidance, repression, and defeats for the interests of office worker unionism. This work explores the early roots of the current obstacles these workers face in attempting to unionize by examining the popular resistance to US Financial Sector formation in the 19th century. An overview of early financial sector development, political responses, and labor organization is provided, including specific information on financial sector workers when available. The increase and feminization of white-collar work after the US Civil War is explored, especially in the clerical industries of the financial sector. Key factors contributing to low unionization rates include the impact of populist-influenced labor leadership that preferred a decentralized financial structure and excluded clerical workers, the feminization of the clerical labor force, the attitudes of trade union leaders towards women and clerical workers, and the combination of a lack of a labor party in the US and government repression of communists who had the vision to organize the sector. Suggestions for continued research on why the US does not have a financial sector workers union are presented in the conclusion / Mestrado / Economia Social e do Trabalho / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

The following is a case study report on the Cape Town business unit of Standard Bank Properties. The research project falls within the ambit of services marketing which introduces several unique management challenges for service businesses that sell services as a core offering. The principal aim of the case study is to gain an understanding of why customers bank at the business unit and to discover what aspects are critical to customer satisfaction. A further goal of the research is to examine how the business unit could improve customer satisfaction and to highlight any impediments to further improving customer satisfaction at the business unit. It is generally regarded that quality customer service is essential to building customer relationships and hence the research project emphasis on services marketing and customer satisfaction within a financial services context. The paper commences with an overview of the South African Banking Sector and its unique challenges such as the Financial Service Charter and newly introduced legislation such as Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The case study will specifically investigate the property finance industry and a detailed analysis of the business unit's operations and process flow will also be undertaken. The reason for this background information is to assist the reader to understand how the business unit operates. The research project will investigate four unique differences between goods marketing and services marketing whereafter three theoretical propositions are introduced, namely the dyadic interaction and service encounter, the Service Profit Chain and finally Relationship Marketing. Evidence in the form of a narrative will be led from insights obtained from interviews conducted with customers and staff at the business unit against these propositions with support (or otherwise) from independent surveys and documents from the business unit. The result of this analysis is the identification of several areas of concern specifically: New employees and the service encounter, Problems with FICA, Lack of a customer complaint handling system, Empowerment issues, Turnaround times, Reliance on key staff These insights together with the evidence from the literature review will be analysed and several recommendations made to improve customer service and ultimately customer satisfaction at the business unit. Several recommendations for further research are offered as well as the identification of limitations including but not limited to the specificity of the case study report.

This thesis provides international evidence relating to the impact of financial liberalisation on banking sector performance. Compared to a large number of studies linking financial liberalisation to economic growth and financial fragility, there is relatively little research at the international level linking financial liberalisation to banking sector efficiency and productivity. The research contributes to the literature by making a systematic, cross-country empirical investigation using domestic and international measures of financial liberalisation and evaluates their impact on bank efficiency and productivity by applying a combination of frontier estimation methods, dynamic panel data regressions and Granger causality techniques. The evidence is based on the use of bank-level accounting data and country-level economic data for a sample of 1536 commercial banks covering 88 countries over the period 2000 to 2009. Apart from using the global frontier for estimation of bank efficiency, empirical analysis is conducted across various levels including the use of separate income-group frontiers to determine the robustness of the findings. Using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) for the estimation of banks’ cost and profit efficiency, the evidence shows that financial liberalisation contributes positively to profit efficiency while the effect on cost efficiency is generally mixed, depending on the measures of financial liberalisation used. Additionally, the results show that while cost efficiency remains, on average, stable during the estimation period (2000-2009), average profit efficiency fluctuates in the pre-crises period (2000-06) but declines sharply during the post crises period (2007-09). Furthermore, accounting explicitly for the influence of risk in banking, the evidence suggests that financial liberalisation, lower cost efficiency and higher profit efficiency of banks all increase the potential for default risk, while the latter also reduces both cost and profit efficiency, providing support for the bad management hypothesis. Additionally, upon accounting explicitly for the role of market power or competition in banking, the evidence suggests that both financial liberalisation and greater market power contribute to higher default risk of banks. On the other hand, greater competition in banking contributes to higher cost but lower profit efficiency of banks under financial liberalisation. The cross-country empirical investigation is also extended to analyse the impact of financial liberalisation on banks’ technical efficiency and productivity growth, using a two-step approach of combining data envelopment analysis (DEA) with panel data regressions. The evidence here suggests that financial liberalisation is robustly and negatively associated with (pure) technical efficiency. Furthermore, the effect on the total factor productivity (TFP) growth (using two-step DEA-type Malmquist method) is positive, although not always statistically significant. The robustness analysis conducted across the different income groups (higher, upper-middle, lower-middle and lower) confirms that the impact on cost, profit and technical efficiency of banks is more pronounced in the more developed (higher and upper-middle) countries than in the less developed countries. In particular, the impact of financial liberalisation is largely insignificant in the lower income countries. This finding generally reflects the greater pace of capital account liberalisation in the higher and upper-middle income countries, where the impact on both cost and profit efficiency is positive. Throughout the analysis, the estimation takes into account country-specific differences in the regulatory, market structure, financial development and macro-economic conditions and the evidence shows that these influences are also mostly significant and robust under financial liberalisation. Hence, the thesis concludes by arguing that financial liberalisation exerts an independent effect on the cost, profit and technical efficiency of banks, while the risks associated with financial liberalisation should be mitigated with better regulatory and institutional structures.

This study investigates what impact mergers and acquisitions have on bank efficiency by examining both pre-merger and post-merger performance. Specifically, the research looks at the effect of bank efficiency on shareholder wealth creation upon bank merger announcement. The study finds supportive evidence that the market takes into account the pre-merger bidder bank’s efficiency in adjusting the bank stock’s price at the time of announcement. This suggests that bank efficiency has a significant positive effect on shareholder wealth creation when a merger is announced. Furthermore, in reacting to the announcement, the market also perceives the prospects for future enhancement of bank efficiency as a result of the current event. Thus, post-merger bank efficiency is found to also contribute to shareholder value creation on merger announcement. In particular, the study finds evidence suggesting that post-merger profit efficiency, rather than cost efficiency, has a positive effect on cumulative abnormal returns. The study investigates 56 commercial bank mergers that took place in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2007. The event study methodology is used to determine shareholder wealth creation, employing the market model in estimating expected returns. Efficiency is estimated using the parametric stochastic frontier approach. Performance improvement in the combined firm is obtained by comparing post-merger efficiency with pre-merger efficiency, which is the sum of bidder and target efficiencies after weighting them based on their pre-merger total assets. To find out whether efficiency has an effect on shareholder value creation, regression analyses are performed involving cumulative abnormal returns, a few efficiency variables, and a number of control variables. The main finding of this study is that pre-merger bank efficiency contributes to short-term shareholder value creation upon merger announcement. Some evidence is also found that post-merger bank efficiency has a positive effect on shareholder value creation at announcement time which is associated more with profit efficiency than with cost efficiency. Also, as the study finds statistically significant positive cumulative abnormal returns, the results of this study are supportive of the view that, increasingly, European merger studies that examine post-2000 data find that bank mergers are value-creating even for the bidding firms. Evidence that pre-merger bank efficiency has a positive effect on cumulative abnormal returns, and that the market takes into account perceived future bank efficiency on merger announcement, underscores the importance of efficiency as a performance measure. If how the market reacts to a merger announcement reflects future efficiency performance, shareholders, policy makers, and other stakeholders may be able to take that as one of the factors on which they can base their decisions regarding the yet uncompleted merger. They can also use previous efficiency records for predicting short-term and long-term performance of prospective parties to a merger before announcement.

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool KG (1770-1828), was First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister for almost fifteen years in the early nineteenth century. He survived in the premiership for longer than all but two of his predecessors and longer than all of his successors, at least so far. Liverpool is, however, one the most overlooked and underestimated of Prime Ministers. Norman Gash's book is the first and so far only modem biography of Liverpool. This study, however, is less than three hundred pages in length, is based on only seven of the hundreds of volumes of the Liverpool Papers in the custody of the British Library and is far from exhaustive in its use of printed sources. There is evidently considerable scope and need for further research on the subject of Liverpool's life and career especially during the period of his premiership and based on a trawl through all the manuscript sources now available. This doctoral dissertation seeks to examine Liverpool during his early premiership between 1812 and 1815, one of the least studied but most significant periods of both Liverpool's life and career, and his administration, from the point Liverpool succeeded to the highest office to the resettlement of Europe after the long war with France. The opening section aims to place Liverpool in his historical context. There is a particular emphasis here on an analysis of the political system that Liverpool was required to master. Liverpool's early life and career before he rose to the premiership is the focus of the next section. The main body of the thesis is divided into two parts. One part examines Liverpool during his early premiership in a mainly chronological style and is concerned almost entirely with the issues of war and peace, and the other part seeks to examine a number of major themes that are most satisfactorily looked at in isolation from the main narrative. For example, one chapter covers the premier's relationship with the monarchy.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / Union Régionale des Coopèratives d’Epargne et de Crédit (URCOOPEC) is a network of 10 savings and credit cooperatives, established in 1990 by UNDP in Chad to support the government’s strategy of strengthening and improving access to financial services to the population. All the cooperatives are located in and around N’djaména the capital city of Chad. URCOOPEC has developed as a microfinance model owned by the community that is able to help the poor population that is excluded from the formal financial services accessing these services. Despite its potential of reaching people even in remote areas, literature about previous studies in other countries has indicated that sustainability of savings and credit cooperatives is hampered by the issues in corporate governance, management, skills, product development amongst others. This study examines the viability of this model in the context of Chad; particularly it examines the conditions for which this model can better contribute to financial sector development in Chad. The findings reveal that the model was helpful and accepted by many users at its earlier stage. However, weaknesses in corporate governance, credit management and shortage of skills have led this URCOOPEC into difficulties. There is a need for training of technical staff and for the board to develop more products, sensitize the members about their rights and duties. URCOOPEC also needs financial support from government and donors as well as linkage with commercial banks to better contribute to the provision of financial services to the population.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: According to Vestergaard and Wade (2012:486), “No financial or bank crisis has ever occurred from something ex-ante perceived as risky”. On the contrary – according to Per Kurowski (2010 in Vestergaard & Wade 2012:486) “they have all resulted, no exceptions, from excessive lending or investment in something perceived as not risky”. BASEL III, also known as the Third BASEL Accord, was developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) as a comprehensive set of measures to strengthen regulation and risk management and, in doing so, to reform the way in which the banking sector operated in the past (International regulatory framework for banks (Basel III), 2014). According to Zerbst (2013), Basel III was introduced as a direct result of the financial crisis that hit the United States and spread throughout the world in 2008. After the financial crisis, the financial world lost confidence in banks in general. This made the regulators wary and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCSB) was formed. They were tasked to investigate how existing regulations could be revised to safeguard banks from landing in a similar situation. Currently, South African banks meet the minimum regulatory capital requirements introduced by Basel III. Capitec and African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL) are two prominent banks in the South African unsecured lending market. These two banks, although they seem alike, do not operate in the same way. They have different funding bases. Furthermore, unlike ABIL, Capitec does not have a furniture and appliance component (African Bank, 2014). This report aims to understand how Capitec and ABIL’s risk models measure up to what Basel III proposes banks use. The analysis in this research report will enable the reader to understand the capital structure of Capitec Ltd and ABIL better. This approach will allow for a better estimation of capital structure within the unsecured banking industry. This research report can further serve as an example of capital risk analysis for other bank executives in South Africa. A further benefit for this research is that it can be used as a case study for lecturers teaching corporate finance at academic institutions.

This is an exploratory study which investigated the process by which banks' lending behaviour in Myanmar (Bunna) was influenced by the institutional environment and their responses towards them. The theoretical framework used in this study was primarily drawn upon Scott's new institutional theory. Since the theory focused on the convergent perspective rather than divergent perspective, the theory of Oliver's strategic responses to these institutional pressures, coercive, normative and mimetic, was incorporated in the theoretical framework development. The main method of data collection was interviews. NVIVO was used to analyse these interviewed data. However, descriptive statistics were also used to provide a comprehensive picture of the context being studied. The findings suggest that banks' always attempted to extemalise risks to borrowers. Their responses to institutional pressures were to conform but a range of other forms of resistance were also found. However, strong forms of resistance were uncommon. I have also identified the situations in which the banks would choose either strong or weak forms of resistance to institutional pressures. Such identifications may add understanding to the specific lending strategies that are developed in different circumstances. The study also contributed to closing the gap in banking literature through conducting research in the context of Myanmar, which was previously unexplored. In addition, it suggests areas needed to be improved for financial sector development in Myanmar.

published_or_final_version / Management Studies / Master / Master of Business Administration