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Investing in a better Ghana: Does the 2009 budget address the current global economic crisis?
Get PDFImproving the strategic investment decisions: The essence of active decision support system
No full textStrategic investment decisions are both important cnnd difficult as they concern very serious issues /requiring a lot of investment in terms of finance and /manpower which is considered as important and • critical in any serious organisation. These strategic investment decisions are more easily understood and controlled than most of the other activities undertaken within the framework of strategic management. Traditional approaches to strategic investment appraisal have been criticised on a number of grounds among which are their narrow organisational perspective, exclusion of nonfinancial benefits, overemphasis on short-term, faulty assumptions about the status quo alternative, inconsistent treatment of inflation and promotion of non-value adding behaviour. Yet in spite of these apparent flaws with traditional investment appraisal techniques, businesses continue to rely upon them; as a consequence, there is a possibility not only for misguided investment decisions but also the possibility of a perversion of senior manager\u27s business imperative: instead of investing in the company\u27s long-term core business, senior managers become side-tracked and start investing for short-term cash flows. In the light of these criticisms, two basic approaches that can be taken to develop alternative investment appraisal techniques were proposed; with the first approach involving the modification of the traditional investment analysis framework to correct its various technical shortcomings such as inflation inconsistencies, the use of inappropriately high discountfactors and its narrow focus expanded to include commonly neglected benefits such as improvements in flexibility, improvements in information quality, timeliness etc. while the second approach involves reliance on analytical framework that represent significant departures from the traditional methods; such as strategic cost management, the multi-attribute decision model, value analysis, the analytical hierarchy method, uncertainty method etc. Beyond these available alternatives, this paper concludes that since Hyperknowledge, an active support systems have been used as problem solving and decision support environments for strategic management and for strategic decision making in a number of industries in recent years; it appears that the logic of a strategic investment decision is complex enough for a decision maker to benefit from the use of a hyperknowledge environment, and that a hyperknowledge support system could help a management team to control the problems with deciding, launching and following up on strategic investment projects
Corporate governance and strategic management
Get PDFThe strategic role of board of directors in ensuring organizational success cannot be gainsaid. This paper examines the concept of corporate governance and how it affects strategic management. For the eleven public companies surveyed, the evidence indicates that, they have good corporate governance practices. In terms of membership, outside directors were more than inside directors. The companies also had important sub-committees of the boards to deal with matters in detail before they pre-presented to the Boards. There is seemingly low female representation on the boards of public companies. Overall, the public companies adhere to good corporate governance
Sexual harassment in the workplace: A literature review
Get PDFSexual Harassment (SH) is one of the challenging human resource management problems in the work environment. It usually has a great impact on individuals and affects the image and profitability of the organisations. It can be classified into two; the quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment. Apart from its effect on the victim\u27s psychological, economic, and physical stability which influences their ability to work effectively, it also causes incalculable harm to their families. Although the majority of sexual harassment complaints come from women, the number of complaints filed by men is swiftly increasing. In order to mitigate SH in the Ghanaian work environment, clearer policies and laws should be formulated and enacted so that perpetrators and victims alike will know what constitutes SH, and the corresponding punishments. Both employer and employees have a role to play to curb its effect; while the onus lies on employers to draw SH policies, employees must acquaint themselves with it, and discourage the act immediately it starts. This paper discusses sexual harassment in the work environment from the literature review perspective and provides an in depth review of the issue from different countries and institutions. It also examines some trends in the issue, and explores some causes of SH in Ghana. In addition, the paper provides precautionary measures that can be adopted by both victims and organisations to curb the menace and enhance stability and growth in organisations. 
Analysis of cost for pricing: An exploration of the gap between theory and practice
Get PDFOver the years, there has been several discussions over the alleged gap between management accounting theory and practice. As a result, researchers sympathetic to neoclassical economies have sought to rationalize the gap in terms of information economics and have proposed constrained optimisation as the norm. Scapens (1994) and Ahmed & Scapens (2000) have suggested that, the old institutional economics framework might better explain management accounting practice. The old institutional economics originated about the same time as neoclassical economics and in opposition to its rationalization of the gap, it largely rejects rational optimisation as the basis for much of human behaviour and stresses, instead rule following and adherence to custom. This research paper reports on the findings of two case studies undertaken as part of a programme of case studies intended to examine the power of the old institutional economics framework to explain the gap between management accounting theory and practice, in the realm of costing for pricing. The paper concludes that, much observed management accounting practice is difficult to reconcile with ex ante constrained optimisation, but is explicable in terms of conditioning by various institutions in question
Internal branding in multicultural services organizations an exploratory study of Barclays Bank (Ghana)
Get PDFAn insight into how the internal branding process is to be managed to create a coherent brand understanding and commitment among multicultural organisations is largely lacking. The main aim of this study was to investigate and highlight the key factors involved in successful internal branding in a multicultural services organisation. Through an exploratory study of Barclays Bank-Ghana, a brand whose financial value has appreciated following a brand driven restructuring, this study has surfaced the key factors involved in internal branding. The findings show that the transformational role of leaders, brand alignment with business strategy, attention to building a purposeful brand-centred unifying culture, enabling employee buy-in, are critical to successful internal branding. The study also found that processes and systems alignment with brand values, cross-functional approach to performance management, and strong customer orientation, were other factors that are critical to successful internal branding at Barclays Bank. Concluding with a suggested modeling of the internal branding process, the study found the generation of brandcentred distinctive competences, through empowered and motivated HR as the goal of internal branding at Barclays
Assessing the impact of microfinance on gari processing in Northern Region: A theory of households in the West Gonja District
Get PDFCassava processing plays significant roles in reducing the poverty levels of women through job provision and increase in income levels. Available evidence shows that little research has been done particularly on assessing the impact of microfinance on gari processing focusing on a single approach. Cognizant of the various methodologies of impact assessment, this particular study used eight indicators to assess the impact of microfinance on households engaged in gari processing. Data were obtained from a random sample of 124 household respondents and 4 microfinance institutions. Empirical findings indicate that microfinance increases income levels of participants and thus their ability to acquire productive assets, save, expand and diversify production. The implication is that they have improved on their basic needs. However, participants indicate high interest rates on loans, lack of grace period on loans collected, lack of access to market information and poor processing equipment as the major setbacks. It is recommended that interest rates on loans should be reviewed so that more people con have access to loans to help them expand their production levels so as to escape the vicious cycle of poverty
Investment decisions by users of annual financial reports Investment decisions by users of annual financial reports
No full textThe study focuses on the use of annual financial report information as a basis for investment decisions by individual educated investors in Ghana. This is informed by the assumption inherent in financial reporting standards that investors allocate funds to portfolio firms based on information from the annual reports. It is a descriptive study which uses legitimacy and agency theories as the theoretical foundation. The study concludes that individual investors in Ghana do not use information from annual reports for their investment decision making. They depend instead on media adverts on the companies and daily stock price movements
The concept of ‘Informal Economy’ revisited: A review of related literature
Get PDFThe informal economy occupies a centre stage in today\u27s development agenda. It is an avenue for people to put their entrepreneurial ingenuity into fruition - majority surviving through evasion of tax and other forms of enterprise regulation. However, there is no consensus on exactly what the informal economy stands for and what it constitutes. The paper substantiates this argument with literature. Illustrations of the problem are provided with empirical data on 85 Ghanaian manufacturing micro and small enterprises. Evidently, the place of unregistered businesses that pay \u27taxes\u27and the selfemployed that offer employment to other people in the formal-informal economy cannot easily be determined. It is concluded that until the present cloud of confusion surrounding the concept is well addressed, the informal economy is less likely to properly function os an ideal pro-poor growth platform for development and poverty alleviation
Despite its humanistic values, organisation development consultancy practice appears to be facing implementation challenges, especially regarding development programmes in the public and private sectors. OD\u27s agenda for development programmes is to ensure
No full textFundamental to the Network Administrator\u27s consideration of risk on a network are issues of security namely; confidentiality, integrity and availability of information assets. The ability to effectively and efficiently manage the network and make room for growth without degradation in network performance are equally considerable concerns. The segmentation of a significantly large Local Area Network with a possible annual growth rate of over 10% is undoubtedly the surest way to effectively manage the network, ensure security of information assets and make it scalable. This paper seeks to assess the Pentecost University College(PUC) campus network at Sowutuom to determine how optimally segmented it is and the most practical option of using Virtual LANs to optimize the segmentation for effective and efficient security, management and scalability. Based on the information gathered and analysis carried out on the network, a proposal is advanced to enhance the segmentation of the campus network with an eye towards the future growth