Search results

At the end of this chapter, learners should be able to:

• Identify and describe the main functions that fall within the activities labelled ‘accounting’ and ‘finance’ and relate these functions to one another.

• Locate these functions within the structures typical of small and large organisations and relate these functions:

  • (a)

    to organisational success and failure and

  • (b)

    to other business functions.

• For each of the main class of decision made by human resource practitioners identify the information required and the ways in which this information is, in part, generated by the accounting and finance function.

Identify and describe the main functions that fall within the activities labelled ‘accounting’ and ‘finance’ and relate these functions to one another.

Locate these functions within the structures typical of small and large organisations and relate these functions:

• (a)

  to organisational success and failure and

• (b)

  to other business functions.

to organisational success and failure and

to other business functions.

For each of the main class of decision made by human resource practitioners identify the information required and the ways in which this information is, in part, generated by the accounting and finance function.

The finance function and the financial system require finding a balance between wealth maximization, social and ecological aspects, and managing the triple bottom line of business sustainability. The main aims of this chapter are to: (1) describe (with the help of the literature review) relevant strategies in firms, financial institutions, and governments followed within the finance function on the way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) propose practical guidelines for CFOs and managers to respond to the new challenges, learn positive lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, and thus keep improving to achieve more sustainability in the finance function. According to Lawson (2020), the current finance function priorities mentioned in a global study are (1) risk management, (2) cash management, and (3) cost management and control. In the hardest hit industries (e.g., hospitality sector) from COVID-19 lockdowns, the continued innovation of the business model is an important key to create new revenue streams and secure a better level of liquidity (Breier et al., 2021). During the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, social entrepreneurship funds reported more returns that are positive, suggesting that fund managers have changed from a high-risk style to low risk regarding size and investment strategy (Rizvi et al., 2020).

The past two decades have witnessed a transformation in the corporate human resource (HR) function – moving away from a role of balancing multiple interests toward a narrower focus on business objectives – yet we know little about how this change occurred. This study finds that the functional backgrounds of senior HR managers played an important role in determining the changing health benefits of large corporations. Managers with finance backgrounds controlled costs more than those with traditional HR backgrounds and contracted with fewer health plans – yet surprisingly without measured differences in health care quality management. These results suggest that more attention should be paid to the backgrounds of managers in the wider evolution of HR.

The chapter contains a methodology for formalized evaluation of the public fiscal policy from the view point of its impact on the financial stability of a national economy using the example of the Russian Federation and taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ effects. The significance of this problem is predetermined by recent trends in Russia’s development, when the national economy legs twice behind the world indicators. Taking into account the importance of the Russian budget system as a mechanism for the redistribution of gross domestic product (GDP), the financial stability safeguarding has been connected with the public finance sustainability and with the federal budget revenues and expenditures equilibrium. There are used the methodology of analysis of economic systems’ dynamic factors of financial stability as well as fiscal multipliers’ effects, aiming at managing national economy’s long-term development with the ultimate purpose to maintain the GDP growth rates. Taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ values, the model comparisons of the macroeconomics and budget parameters’ dynamics prove the necessity of the budget consolidation policy in 2018–2020 provided that the budget expenditures efficiency increases. The latter has been proved by modeling dependences represented by the fiscal multipliers’ effects in terms of national financial stability.

Integrating interdisciplinary studies with Human Capital Management Accounting (HCMA) refers to the dynamics of organized interdisciplinary action that are transversal or cross-cutting. This approach requires the mastery of a certain number of technical skills and disciplines, as well as the capacity to use them in a process to solve problems of financial performance. This is accomplished through the specific interaction tasks that are performed by each management function and operational unit, which act in real time with others, in the same direction as an organizational team, using a selected risk appetite threshold base.

Putting business fields side by side, (i.e., business disciplines silos, as is normally the case in MBA programs), is not enough to create the transversal interaction dynamic needed for firms to achieve expected financial performance goals. As a result, few graduates today have the cross-cutting or vertical skills required to act, in real time, from their workstation in accordance with the pyramid shape of the organization chart in order to create value.

This chapter presents the results of the interface established by a faculty member in the Accounting Department of the University of San Francisco with a “seasoned leader in the FinTech industry.” It proposes a single portal for employers and HRMs to which the continuing education services of professional training associations, executive education departments of colleges, and MBA schools and universities, can connect to issue the HCMA certificate supplementing their training offerings focused on “Leadership Development”.

Using data from a top-five global executive placement firm, the authors explore how an organization's financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory, they hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization years before the misconduct, these alumni experience a compensation penalty. The stigma effect increases in relation to the job function proximity to the misconduct, recency of the misconduct, and an employee's seniority. Collectively, results suggest that the stigma of financial misconduct could reach alumni employees and need not be confined to executives and directors that oversaw the organization during the misconduct.

Despite the need for effective global leaders on the part of business (McKinsey, 2012) and the growing body of empirical research related to the topic of global leadership (Osland, 2013a), very little is known about what global leaders actually do. How do they spend their time? In what kinds of activities are they involved? How do they communicate, coordinate, make decisions, and lead? How is their work similar to or different from that of domestic leaders? In this chapter, we respond to these questions by exploring the nature of global leaders’ work using an approach similar to Mintzberg (1973) in his classic book, The Nature of Managerial Work. We observed five global leaders from five different industries, each for 1 week, and compared our results with Mintzberg’s (1973). In addition, we conducted informal interviews and collected archival data. We content-analyzed the data using the conventions of grounded theory and identified 10 distinguishing characteristics of global leaders’ work. It is characterized by (1) multiple time zones and geographical distance; (2) long hours; (3) flexible schedules and fluid time; (4) dependence on technology; (5) time alone connected to others; (6) extensive travel; (7) functional expertise with global scope; (8) facilitation of information, advice, and action; (9) management of complexity; and (10) confrontation of risk. We conclude by discussing implications for future global leadership research.