Strategic Financial Management - Marks and Spencer Essay

Strategic Financial Management - Marks and Spencer - Essay Example In other words, the strategy of a company may be just to make money or it may be to provide the customers with socially and environmentally beneficial products the society may demand (Henriques, 2010, p.17). A company may have its focus only on selling its products and generate revenues. However, in that case, the company may never realize how the money is made. On the other hand, focusing on social and environmental objectives of a firm enable the company to consider its responsibilities sincerely towards the society and the environment that may include increasing employments, having no discriminatory measures within the organizational activities, manufacturing products that are pollution free and hence eco-friendly in nature (Henriques, 2010, p.17). These factors enable a company to more effectively satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers which in turn is bound to positively impact the company’s sales and financial performances. Thus the rationale behind a compan y considering non-financial objectives like social and environment issues is primarily the fact that non-financial objectives enable a company to realize the measures it needs to consider along worth selling of products, to successfully and more satisfactorily fulfill the needs of their customer having concern and facilities for the society as a whole and the environment eventually reflecting desired financial results. b. Marks and Spencer: Reporting of its performances reflecting financial and non-financial objectives: The Marks and Spencer company leading in its market in providing its customers with high quality clothing and home products as well high value for the food products it sells. The... The intention of this study is Marks and Spencer as a brand of retailer group in the United Kingdom leading among several companies. The company provides its customers with clothing and other home products that are superior in quality and provide high value for money to the customers. The company is into the businesses of clothing, home products as well as food. It is also presently known for its environmental friendly activities. The Marks and Spencer company leading in its market in providing its customers with high quality clothing and home products as well high value for the food products it sells. The reporting of the company on its performances reflect that the company not only focuses on selling products and generate revenues, but it also has social and environmental objectives that deal with serving the society and the environment as a whole. As the reporting of the company reflects, the company’s turnover has been recorded to be  £8.7 billion in the last year obtain ed from clothing, home and food products. The clothing and home products have been found to gain sales revenues of  £4.2 billion showing an increase of around 3.9 percent from the previous year. Food products have also reflected increase in sales from the previous year generating revenues of  £4.5 billion from sales. The company has around 700 stores that make the products of the company available to its customers (About M&S, 2011). The above mentioned results reflect the financial performances of the company that has shown highly improved and satisfactory results for the company implying the financial objectives of the company to be successful in its implementation.

Scars Of War :: essays research papers

The ride through the countryside was quite amazing. If you did not know, you would swear you were driving down a back road in Pennsylvania. The only visible difference were signs written in Cyrillic for little shops along the road. As the contours of Sarajevo came into focus, you could not miss the gaping, rubble-filled holes that were once buildings. I was not ready for the scenes of destruction that I was about to witness. I have hiked the hollow fields of Gettysburgh, read stories of the war in Vietnam, listened to stories from friends and colleagues that had served in Panama and Somalia, and watched the “100 Hour War'; on CNN. Who really witnesses the effect and the price a city pays years after the bombs stop falling? As you walk around the once beautiful city, five years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords ended the war, the physical, damage cannot be ignored.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On April 5, 1992 Sarajevo, the capital of the Republic of Bosnia- Herzegovina, was attacked. The city lies in the valley of the Miljacka River and is surrounded by mountains. The 260 tanks and many other weapons placed on these mountains could destroy the city. On May 2, 1992 Serbs completely blockaded the city. The parts of the city that could not be occupied by the Serbs were exposed to a barrage of   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  2 shelling and artillery fire. Everyday the city was hit by some 4,000 shells. Targets included hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, libraries, and museums.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As you cross the last crest coming into the city, the first image you see is the Unis Skyscrapers. These two skyscrapers are of equal height and were built to symbolize the brotherhood and unity of Sarajevo. Before the war, citizens called the buildings by the names of two famous characters from Sarajevo jokes, Momo and Uzeir. The names are of different national origin to show the multi-ethnic background of the city. The skyscrapers were continually hit by artillery fire because of their equal height to break apart the united spirit of the city. Both still stand like skeletons above the city. The progress of rebuilding is slow as only the first ten floors have been repaired. Fragments of concrete and glass still hang from iron pillars high above the street.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Grabavica Cemetery, which dates back to the 17th century, was used extensively by snipers.

Book Review on Poor Economics

BOOK REVIEW POOR ECONOMICS: A RADICAL RETHINKING OF THE WAY TO FIGHT GLOBAL POVERTY By: Abhijit V Banerjee & Esther Duflo POOR ECONOMICS argues that so much of anti-poverty policy has failed over the years because of an inadequate understanding of poverty. The battle against poverty can be won, but it will take patience, careful thinking and a willingness to learn from evidence. Banerjee and Duflo are practical visionaries whose meticulous workoffers transformative potential for poor people anywhere, and is a vital guide to policy makers, philanthropists, activists and anyone else who cares about building a world without poverty.CHAPTER 1: THINK AGAIN, AGAIN Poverty and development can sometimes feel like overwhelming issues – the scale is daunting, the problems grand. Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and inertia at the level of the implementer. In fact, we call these the â₠¬Å"three I’s† – ideology, ignorance, inertia – the three main reasons policies may not work and aid is not always effective.But there’s no reason to lose hope. Incremental, real change can be made. Sometimes the change seems small, but by identifying real world success stories, facing up to real world failures, and understanding why the poor make the choices they make, we can find the right levers to push to free the poor of the hidden traps that keep them behind. CHAPTER 2: A BILLION HUNGRY PEOPLE? Jeffrey Sachs, an advisor to the United Nations and director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, is one such expert.In books and countless speeches and television appearances, he has argued that poor countries are poor because they are hot, infertile, malaria-infested, and often landlocked; these factors, however, make it hard for them to be productive without an initial large investment to help them deal with such endemic problems. But they cannot pay for the investments precisely because they are poor — they are in what economists call a â€Å"poverty trap. † Until something is done about these problems, neither free markets nor democracy will do very much for them.The basic idea of a nutrition-based poverty trap is that there exists a critical level of nutrition, above or below which dynamic forces push people either further down into poverty and hunger or further up into better-paying jobs and higher-calorie diets. These virtuous or vicious cycles can also last over generations: early childhood under-nutrition can have long-term effects on adult success. Maternal health impacts in  utero  development. And it’s not just quantity of food – quality counts, too. Micronutrients like iodine and iron can have direct impacts on health and economic outcomes.But if nutrition is so important, why don’t people spend every available extra cent on more calories? From the look of our eighteen-count ry dataset, people spent their money on food†¦ and festivals, funerals, weddings, televisions, DVD players, medical emergencies, alcohol, tobacco and, well, better-tasting food. CHAPTER 3: Low-Hanging Fruit for Better (Global) Health? Every year, nine million children under five die from preventable diseases such as diarrhea and malaria. Often, the treatments for these diseases are cheap, safe, and readily available.So why don't people pick these ‘low-hanging fruit'? Why don’t mothers vaccinate their children? Why don’t families use bednets, or buy chlorinated water? And why do they spend such large amounts of money on ineffective cure instead? There are a number of possible explanations. These can include unreliable health service delivery, price sensitivity, a lack of information or trust, time-inconsistent behavior and the simple fact that the poor may not be able to tackle big, chronic illnesses. None of these reasons explains everything in isolation.But understanding what stops the immediate spread of our ‘low-hanging fruit’ – bednets, de-worming medication, vaccines, chlorinated water – is an important step in improving global health, and may finally help to eliminate health-based poverty traps. CHAPTER 4: TOP OF THE CLASS Over the past few decades, children have flocked into the schools, but schools seem to have delivered very little: teachers and students are often absent, and learning levels are very low. Why is this happening? Is it a supply issue, where the government needs to provide children with better schools, better textbooks, better teachers and better facilities?Or is it demand, where parents would lobby for quality education if and only if there were real benefits? There seems to be a problem with both. For example, parents expect both too much and too little from the schools: government jobs for those who graduate from secondary school, and nothing for the rest. Teachers seem focused on te aching small elite, and undervalue the regular students. These expectations affect behavior and generate real world waste. But the good news is that these expectations and these real world outcomes can be changed CHAPTER 5: Pak Sudarno's Big FamilyMost policy makers consider population policy to be a central part of any development program. And yet, unexpectedly, it seems that access to contraception may not be the determining factor in the poor's fertility decisions. So how can policy makers influence population? Instead of contraception, other aspects like social norms, family dynamics, and above all, economic considerations, seem to play a key role, not only in how many children people choose to have, but how they will treat them. Discrimination against women and girls remain a central fact of the life for many poor families.Going inside the â€Å"black box† of familial decision-making – that is, understanding how and why decisions are made the way they are – is essential to predicting the real impact of any social policy aimed at influencing population. CHAPTER 6: BAREFOOT HEDGEFUND MANAGERS The poor face a huge amount of risk – a friend of ours from the world of high finance once noted that they're like hedge fund managers. These risks can come from health shocks – like an accident – or agricultural shocks – like a drought – or any other number of unexpected crises.Often, the poor just don't have the means to weather these shocks, and so they get pushed into poverty traps. The steps they take to protect themselves form these risks are insufficient and often costly: they choose less profitable and less risky crop, they spread themselves too thin across a great number of activities; they exchange favors with neighbors. Yet all this doesn't always even cover large shocks. CHAPTER 7: MICROFINANCE The fact that banks are often unwilling to lend to the poor, coupled with the extremely high interest rates m oneylenders charge, was a call to action for the founders of microfinance.Enforcing credit contracts involves collecting extensive information about the borrower to ensure repayment. The high cost of gathering this information makes neighborhood moneylenders the easiest source of credit. Microfinance institutions rely on their ability to keep a close check on the customer, in part by involving other borrowers who happen to know the customer: This was a recipe for enormous success, there are more than 200 million microfinance borrowers today. Many MFIs were unwilling to evaluate whether their lending programs were helping the poor.The MFIs were financially sustainable and borrowers kept coming back, which the MFIs saw as proof enough. When an Indian MFI, Spandana, was rigorously evaluated, there was clear evidence that microfinance was working. People in Spandana neighborhoods were more likely to have started a business and made large purchases. However, there were no detectable impa cts on women's empowerment, spending on education or health, or in the probability that kids would be enrolled in private schools. One of the limits of microfinance is its inflexible structure and focus on â€Å"zero default. It may not be an effective borrowing channel for entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks and will go on to set up a large business. More established businesses do not find it that much easier to get credit. In particular, they run the risk of being too large for the traditional moneylenders and microfinance agencies, but too small for the banks. We need to see the equivalent of the microfinance revolution for small and medium firms; figured out how to do it profitably on a large scale is the next big challenge for finance in developing countries. CHAPTER 8: SAVING BRICK BY BRICKJust as with lending, banks have not found a good way to adapt their services to the poor. The administrative costs associated with managing small accounts are too high. Instead, th e poor find unusual and ingenious ways to save. They buying durable goods like jewelry or new bricks for their house. Many form savings â€Å"clubs† such as the popular rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) in Africa. However, the fact that the poor have to adopt complicated and costly alternative strategies to save means that saving is harder than if they had a bank account: access to a saving accounts increases profits and consumption.With new technology and innovations like M-PESA in Kenya which allows cell phone users to send money with their phone, microsavings might become the next microfinance revolution. However, not all barriers to savings are externally imposed. The poor, like anyone else, easily give in to the temptation to spend money in the present rather than save it for the future. They have difficulty, for example, saving enough over a short season to buy fertilizer; but a program to help them buy it early increased fertilizer use. The poor may be more subject to temptations than the rich because the items they dream of may be further from their reach.Poor people who feel that they have opportunities have strong reasons to cut down on â€Å"frivolous† spending and invest in the future. Those who feel that they have nothing to lose, in contrast, save less: hope matters! CHAPTER 9: RELUCTANT ENTREPRENEURS Many expect that the poor will find successful business opportunities. They haven't been given a chance, so their ideas are fresher: MFIs have many examples of successful clients, like a garbage collector turned recycling empress! The sheer number of business owners among the poor is impressive. When tiny grants were made to small businesses in Sri Lanka, their profits increased rapidly.However, while many of the poor operate businesses, most of these businesses are tiny. The businesses of the poor tend to have few if any employees and very limited assets. The businesses run by the poor are also generally unprofitable, which may well explain why giving them a loan to start a new business does not lead to a drastic improvement in their welfare. Many businesses suffer from the â€Å"empty shelf† problem: a space a created for a shop, but no inventory fills the shelves. Even a small investment in more inventory will have large marginal returns, but once the shelves are full, the business has no further scope to grow.Despite initial large returns to small investments, many small businesses hit at point at which a substantial capital investment is needed in order to continue growing. However, few people are willing to give such large loans to the poor. Because of this trap, the poor may not invest as much (both money but also emotions and intellectual energy) into their businesses because they know that their business will always remain too small to make real money. Often, the enterprises of the poor seem more a way to buy a job when more conventional employment opportunities are not available t han a reflection of a particular entrepreneurial urge.One of the most common dreams of the poor is that their children become government workers – a stable, though not always an exciting job. A sense of stability may be necessary for people to be able to take the long view. People who don’t envision substantial improvements to their future quality of life may stop trying and end up staying where they are. Creating good jobs could go a long way in increasing the stability of the lives of the poor, which will, in turn give the poor the opportunity and the urge to invest in their children and save more.There are more than a billion people who survive off of the earnings of their own farm or business. We must be impressed by their resilience. But these small businesses will probably not pave the way for a massive exit from poverty. CHAPTER 10: POLICIES, POLITICS Even the most well-intended and well-thought-out policies may not have an impact if they are not implemented pro perly. Corruption, or the simple dereliction of duty, creates massive inefficiencies. Many people believe that until political institutions are fixed, countries cannot really develop. There may be no natural process to completely eliminate bad institutions.Institutional change from the outside is probably an illusion. But it is not clear that things will eventually fix themselves. However, fighting corruption appears to be possible to some extent even without fixing the larger institutions. Relatively straightforward interventions, such as threatening audits or publicizing corruption results have shown impressive success. Often, small changes make important differences. In Brazil, switching to a pictorial ballot enfranchised a large number of poor and less educated adults. The politicians they elected were more likely to target their policies to the poor.In China, even imperfect elections led to policies that were more favorable to the poor. In India, when quotas for women on villag e councils in India were enacted, women leaders invested in public goods preferred by women. Policies are not completely determined by politics. Good policies (sometimes) happen in bad political environments. For example, Suharto built tens of thousands of schools in Indonesia. And bad policies happen in good environments, because what the government is trying to do is hard: generally, the government tries to convince people to do something they would not like to do, like wearing a helmet on a motorcycle!The opportunities for corruption are rife. Bad policies are often a product of the three I's: ideology, ignorance, inertia. For example, nurses in India, whose job description is so overwhelming that they have decided that they cannot possibly do it, and instead do nothing. Careful understanding of constraints can lead to policies and institutions that are better designed, and less likely to be perverted by corruption. Changes will be incremental, but they will sustain and build on themselves, and perhaps even improve the political process.

Critical Thinking Is A Rational Pathway - 894 Words

Critical thinking is imperative in this profession. It is my understanding that critical thinking looks at the whole situation and evaluates all contributing factors and dissects all angles. Critical thinking also allows for me to take into consideration who will be effected by the decision. believe critical thinking is a rational pathway to making informed decisions. Questions In both my personal and professional life I have felt comfortable in asking questions. I always seek to understand something and don’t mind admitting when I am not knowledgeable or simply don’t understand. I remember a long time ago someone saying something like â€Å"the only stupid question is a question not asked.† Not sure why but it has always stuck with me. I also feel comfortable with reasoning things out. I think it is always beneficial to seek out others perspectives. I feel I am pretty aware that most human beings look out of their own lens and I know as much as I’d like to think I am always right, that is not the case. I think it is also important to note that my perception can change depending on my mood and my self-talk. For example, at work when I drive up the hill I can either love or hate my job and that is all dependent on how I look at it in that specific moment. Attitude When I first started working at Maryhurst nine years ago I don’t think I knew fully what critical thinking was but learned throughout the years from both experience and good supervisors to learn how to thinkShow MoreRelatedCompare and Contrast two criminological approaches to understanding the commission of crime1081 Words   |  5 Pageswas emphasised over religion, secularisation transformed society, new ways of thinking were introduced which influenced the Classicalism theory. This approach was first developed by the Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria, who argued that it is very natural for humans to engage in deviant and criminal thoughts, and it is then an individuals choice whether they want to pursue these deviant thoughts, as â€Å"man [is] a rational calculating animal† (Bentham, 1749) when it comes to crime. For instance if theRead MoreQuestions On Rational Number Assessment1240 Words   |  5 PagesRational Number Assessment Charizma Laughton Australian Catholic University Teacher report on your student’s Rational Number Knowledge and any misconceptions (300 words) Montana demonstrated a number strategies and skills throughout the rational number interview. She used appropriate language when referring to fractions. For example, â€Å"two thirds† rather than â€Å"two over three† and she was able to divide 3 pizzas equally between 5 people using a partitioning method (cut/divided the 3 pizzas intoRead MoreDifferent Kinds Of Phobias And Their Treatments955 Words   |  4 Pagessomething; that’s over 10 million people suffering from phobias. Phobias are in the same class as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorders. (Winerman, 2005) Literature Review Phobias involve a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm; just thinking about what you’re scared about can make you fearful. Some symptoms are dizziness, nausea, a sense unreality, a fear of dying and, can even lead to a full scale anxiety attack and symptoms usually happen when the person is scared. (Winerman, 2005)Read MoreCognitive Process And Consumer Behavior And Purchasing Choices1746 Words   |  7 PagesCognitive process illustrates unconscious cognition associated with an involuntary process which is instigated without considered intention. It is assumed that unconscious processing depends on attentional amplification of task-related processing pathways as a function of perception, memory, learning and language. (Blythe, 2008). According to (Van Gaal Lamme (2011), prefrontal initiations are useful, for they are connected with behavioral impact of cognitive control, such as response inhibitionRead MoreCritical Thinking And Learning Are Interrelated Lifelong Processes1631 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"Thinking and learning are interrelated lifelong processes† (Institute, 2013). The knowledge and every day experiences gained in the nursing profession, help nurses’ to make thoughtful and appropriate decisions. Nurses are constantly involved in making decisions within their practice. These decisions are constantly affected by situations where there is no single or absolutely correct response, therefor critical thinking, reflective practice and analysing in health are three of the key componentsRead MoreCritical Thinking Is Not The Assault Of Sustained Thinking1591 Words   |  7 Pagesonce said, â€Å"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking† (â€Å"Voltaire Quotes†) What Voltaire intended to convey was that extensive and critical thinking can allow people to arrive at rational solutions to problems. This is one of the reasons why the significance of thinking critically has become a popular issue that is discussed about in educational systems nowadays. It is imperative that students develop critical thinking skills and not just blindly be taught what to think, but ratherRead MoreThe Principles of Buddhism1261 Words   |  5 Pagescondition is met. In addition, many of us are constantly thinking about our future dilemmas or past experiences, making it difficult to focus on actually living and enjoying the present moment. These constant thoughts of suffering and worry are all created by the egotistical mind, one that is never conform and filled with greed and selfishness. Self-hood, or always thinking about I and me is the leading cause to our suffering. Our thinking brain, which is the source of our self, is the organ of theRead MoreThe Applica bility of Resiliency Models in Explaining the Prediction of Depressive Symptoms From Rumination1597 Words   |  7 Pagesstudy was to examine the applicability of resiliency models in explaining the prediction of depressive symptoms from rumination, and the role of agency and pathways as protective factors among Australian adults. The first hypothesis, based on the direct effects models, that high levels of rumination and that low levels of agency and pathways would be associated with high levels of depressive symptoms was supported for both men and women. The second hypothesis, based on the compensatory model, thatRead MorePros and Cons of Using Electronic Gadgets in Studying1694 Words   |  7 Pagesexcessive amount time of texting, talking on cell phones, tweeting, facebooking, skyping, gaming and engaging in other social networking activities. There seems to be this constant need–actually, compulsion–to let others know what you are doing or thinking every particu lar minute of your waking hours. In addition, there might be a steady stream of incoming messages or tweets to which there is an obsession to respond–not to mention the hope of receiving this litany of incoming messages. Some are notRead MoreApplied Research Methods in the Business Environment1786 Words   |  7 Pagesstudy will examine management theory including both historical and traditional theories in management and how each of the theories is relative to specific paradigms or mindsets. Brief Critical Review of Key Academic Sources and Main Issues The work of Hartman (nd) states that the evolution of modern management thinking started first in the nineteenth century and flourishing during the twentieth century, which is reported to have witnessed a revolution in management theory ranging from classical theory