Abstract: This study examines the impact of working capital
management on firms- performance and market value of the firms in
Nigeria. A sample of fifty four non-financial quoted firms in Nigeria
listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange was used for this study. Data
were collected from annual reports of the sampled firms for the
period 1995-2009. This result shows there is a significant negative
relationship between cash conversion cycle and market valuation
and firm-s performance. It also shows that debt ratio is positively
related to market valuation and negatively related firm-s
performance. The findings confirm that there is a significant
relationship between Market valuation, profitability and working
capital component in line with previous studies. This mean that
Nigeria firms should ensure adequate management of working
capital especially cash conversion cycle components of account
receivables, account payables and inventories, as efficiency working
capital management is expected to contribute positively to the firms-
market value.
Abstract: A ten-year grazing study was conducted at the
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Brandon Research Centre in
Manitoba to study the effect of alfalfa inclusion and fertilizer (N, P,
K, and S) addition on economics and efficiency of non-renewable
energy use in meadow brome grass-based pasture systems for beef
production. Fertilizing grass-only or alfalfa-grass pastures to full soil
test recommendations improved pasture productivity, but did not
improve profitability compared to unfertilized pastures. Fertilizing
grass-only pastures resulted in the highest net loss of any pasture
management strategy in this study. Adding alfalfa at the time of
seeding, with no added fertilizer, was economically the best pasture
improvement strategy in this study. Because of moisture limitations,
adding commercial fertilizer to full soil test recommendations is
probably not economically justifiable in most years, especially with
the rising cost of fertilizer. Improving grass-only pastures by adding
fertilizer and/or alfalfa required additional non-renewable energy
inputs; however, the additional energy required for unfertilized
alfalfa-grass pastures was minimal compared to the fertilized
pastures. Of the four pasture management strategies, adding alfalfa
to grass pastures without adding fertilizer had the highest efficiency
of energy use. Based on energy use and economic performance, the
unfertilized alfalfa-grass pasture was the most efficient and
sustainable pasture system.
Abstract: Fast development of technologies, economic globalization and many other external circumstances stimulate company’s competitiveness. One of the major trends in today’s business is the shift to the exploitation of the Internet and electronic environment for entrepreneurial needs. Latest researches confirm that e-environment provides a range of possibilities and opportunities for companies, especially for micro-, small- and medium-sized companies, which have limited resources. The usage of e-tools raises the effectiveness and the profitability of an organization, as well as its competitiveness.
In the electronic market, as in the classic one, there are factors, such as globalization, development of new technology, price sensitive consumers, Internet, new distribution and communication channels that influence entrepreneurship. As a result of eenvironment development, e-commerce and e-marketing grow as well.
Objective of the paper: To describe and identify factors influencing company’s competitiveness in e-environment.
Research methodology: The authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistics method, factor analysis in SPSS 20 environment, etc. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by using scientific researches and publications, such as that from mass media and professional literature; statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the authors during the surveying process.
Research result: The authors detected and classified factors influencing competitiveness in e-environment.
In this paper, the authors presented their findings based on theoretical, scientific, and field research. Authors have conducted a research on e-environment utilization among Latvian enterprises.
Abstract: Prior research has not effectively investigated how the
profitability of Chinese branches affect FDIs in China [1, 2], so this
study for the first time incorporates realistic earnings information
to systematically investigate effects of innovation, imitation, and
profit factors of FDI diffusions from Taiwan to China. Our nonlinear
least square (NLS) model, which incorporates earnings factors,
forms a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) in numerical
simulation programs. The model parameters are obtained through
a genetic algorithms (GA) technique and then optimized with the
collected data for the best accuracy. Particularly, Taiwanese regulatory
FDI restrictions are also considered in our modified model to meet
the realistic conditions. To validate the model-s effectiveness, this
investigation compares the prediction accuracy of modified model
with the conventional diffusion model, which does not take account
of the profitability factors.
The results clearly demonstrate the internal influence to be positive,
as early FDI adopters- consistent praises of FDI attract potential firms
to make the same move. The former erects a behavior model for the
latter to imitate their foreign investment decision. Particularly, the
results of modified diffusion models show that the earnings from
Chinese branches are positively related to the internal influence. In
general, the imitating tendency of potential consumers is substantially
hindered by the losses in the Chinese branches, and these firms would
invest less into China. The FDI inflow extension depends on earnings
of Chinese branches, and companies will adjust their FDI strategies
based on the returns. Since this research has proved that earning is
an influential factor on FDI dynamics, our revised model explicitly
performs superior in prediction ability than conventional diffusion
model.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between financial
risks and profitability of the conventional and Islamic banks in
Malaysia for the period between 1996 and 2005. The measures of
profitability that have been used in the study are the return on equity
(ROE) and return on assets (ROA) while the financial risks are credit
risk, interest rate risk and liquidity risks. This study employs panel
data regression analysis of Generalised Least Squares of fixed effects
and random effects models. It was found that credit risk has a
significant impact on ROA and ROE for the conventional as well as
the Islamic banks. The relationship between interest rate risk and ROE
were found to be weakly significant for the conventional banks and
insignificant for the Islamic banks. The effect of interest rate risk on
ROA is significant for the conventional banks. Liquidity risk was
found to have an insignificant impact on both profitability measures.
Abstract: In the way of growing and developing firms especially
high-tech firms, on many occasions manager of firm is mainly involved in solving problems of his business and decision making about executive activities of the firm, while besides executive
measures, attention to planning of firm's success and growth way and
application of long experience and sagacity in designing business model are vital and necessary success in a business is achieved as a
result of different factors, one of the most important of them is designing and performing an optimal business model at the beginning
of the firm's work. This model is determining the limit of profitability
achieved by innovation and gained value added. Therefore, business
model is the process of connecting innovation environment and
technology with economic environment and business and is important
for succeeding modern businesses considering their traits.
Abstract: Investment in a constructed facility represents a cost in
the short term that returns benefits only over the long term use of the
facility. Thus, the costs occur earlier than the benefits, and the owners
of facilities must obtain the capital resources to finance the costs of
construction. A project cannot proceed without an adequate
financing, and the cost of providing an adequate financing can be
quite large. For these reasons, the attention to the project finance is an
important aspect of project management. Finance is also a concern to
the other organizations involved in a project such as the general
contractor and material suppliers. Unless an owner immediately and
completely covers the costs incurred by each participant, these
organizations face financing problems of their own. At a more
general level, the project finance is the only one aspect of the general
problem of corporate finance. If numerous projects are considered
and financed together, then the net cash flow requirements constitute
the corporate financing problem for capital investment. Whether
project finance is performed at the project or at the corporate level
does not alter the basic financing problem .In this paper, we will first
consider facility financing from the owner's perspective, with due
consideration for its interaction with other organizations involved in a
project. Later, we discuss the problems of construction financing
which are crucial to the profitability and solvency of construction
contractors. The objective of this paper is to present the steps utilized
to determine the best combination of minimum project financing.
The proposed model considers financing; schedule and maximum net
area .The proposed model is called Project Financing and Schedule
Integration using Genetic Algorithms "PFSIGA". This model
intended to determine more steps (maximum net area) for any project
with a subproject. An illustrative example will demonstrate the
feature of this technique. The model verification and testing are put
into consideration.
Abstract: PT XYZ is a bottled drinking water company. To preserve production resources owned by the company so that the resources could be utilized well, it has implemented maintenance management system, which has important role in company's profitability, and is one of the factors influenced overall company's performance. Yet, up to now the company has never measured maintenance activities' contribution to company's performance. Performance evaluation is done according to adapted Balanced Scorecard model fitted to maintenance function context. This model includes six perspectives: innovation and growth, production, maintenance, environment, costumer, and finance. Actual performance measurement is done through Analytic Hierarchy Process and Objective Matrix. From the research done, we can conclude that the company's maintenance function is categorized in moderate performance. But, there are some indicators which has high priority but low performance, which are: costumers' complain rate, work lateness rate, and Return on Investment.
Abstract: This paper argues that a product development exercise
involves in addition to the conventional stages, several decisions
regarding other aspects. These aspects should be addressed
simultaneously in order to develop a product that responds to the
customer needs and that helps realize objectives of the stakeholders
in terms of profitability, market share and the like. We present a
framework that encompasses these different development
dimensions. The framework shows that a product development
methodology such as the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the
basic tool which allows definition of the target specifications of a
new product. Creativity is the first dimension that enables the
development exercise to live and end successfully. A number of
group processes need to be followed by the development team in
order to ensure enough creativity and innovation. Secondly,
packaging is considered to be an important extension of the product.
Branding strategies, quality and standardization requirements,
identification technologies, design technologies, production
technologies and costing and pricing are also integral parts to the
development exercise. These dimensions constitute the proposed
framework. The paper also presents a mathematical model used to
calculate the design targets based on the target costing principle. The
framework is used to study a case of a new product development in
the telecommunications services sector.
Abstract: The ubiquitous payment problems within construction
industry of China are notoriously hard to be resolved, thus lead to a
series of impacts to the industry chain. Among of them, the most direct
result is affecting the normal operation of contractors negatively. A
wealth of research has already discussed reasons of the payment
problems by introducing a number of possible improvement strategies.
But the causalities of these problems are still far from harsh reality. In
this paper, the authors propose a model for cash flow system of
construction projects by introducing System Dynamics techniques to
explore causal facets of the payment problem. The effects of payment
arrears on both cash flow and profitability of project are simulated into
four scenarios by using data from real projects. Simulating results
show visible clues to help contractors quantitatively determining the
consequences for the construction project that arise from payment
delay.
Abstract: Automobile Industry has great importance in the
Spanish economy (8,7 % of the active Spanish population is
employed in this sector).The above mentioned sector has been one of
the principal sectors affected by the current economic crisis,
consistently, the budgets in advertising have been severely limited
(46,9 % less in the period of reference), these needs of reduction
have originated a substantial change in the advertising strategy (from
2007 the increase of the advertising investment in Internet is 251,6
%), and increase profitability. The growing use of social media by
consumers therefore makes online consumer conversations an
attractive additional format for Automobile firms to promote
products at a lower cost. This research analyzes the relation between
the activity in Social Media and the design in the car industry,
looking for relations between strategies of design based on Social
Media and sales and a channel of information for companies to know
what the consumer preferences. For this ongoing research we used a
longitudinal withdrawal of information has been used using
information of panel. Managerial and research implications of the
finding are discussed.
Abstract: Selection of the best possible set of suppliers has a
significant impact on the overall profitability and success of any
business. For this reason, it is usually necessary to optimize all
business processes and to make use of cost-effective alternatives for
additional savings. This paper proposes a new efficient context-aware
supplier selection model that takes into account possible changes of
the environment while significantly reducing selection costs. The
proposed model is based on data clustering techniques while
inspiring certain principles of online algorithms for an optimally
selection of suppliers. Unlike common selection models which re-run
the selection algorithm from the scratch-line for any decision-making
sub-period on the whole environment, our model considers the
changes only and superimposes it to the previously defined best set
of suppliers to obtain a new best set of suppliers. Therefore, any recomputation
of unchanged elements of the environment is avoided
and selection costs are consequently reduced significantly. A
numerical evaluation confirms applicability of this model and proves
that it is a more optimal solution compared with common static
selection models in this field.
Abstract: Environmental factors affect agriculture production
productivity and efficiency resulted in changing of profit efficiency.
This paper attempts to estimate the impacts of environmental factors
to profitability of rice farmers in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. The
dataset was extracted from 349 rice farmers using personal
interviews. Both OLS and MLE trans-log profit functions were used
in this study. Five production inputs and four environmental factors
were included in these functions. The estimation of the stochastic
profit frontier with a two-stage approach was used to measure
profitability. The results showed that the profit efficiency was about
75% on the average and environmental factors change profit
efficiency significantly beside farm specific characteristics. Plant
disease, soil fertility, irrigation apply and water pollution were the
four environmental factors cause profit loss in rice production. The
result indicated that farmers should reduce household size, farm
plots, apply row seeding technique and improve environmental
factors to obtain high profit efficiency with special consideration is
given for irrigation water quality improvement.
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of corporate diversification on the profitability of the Financial services sector in Nigeria. The study relied on historic accounting data generated from financial (annual) reports and accounts of sampled banks between the period 1998 and 2007 (a ten-year period). A regression equation was formulated, in line with previous studies to shed light on the effect of corporate diversification on the profitability of the Financial services sector in Nigeria. The results of the regression analysis revealed that diversification impacts strongly on banks profitability. Conclusively the paper produces strong evidence to assert that diversification impacts positively and significantly on banks profitability because among other things such diversified banks can pool their internally generated funds and allocate them properly.