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Increases in productivity have their origins at the level of the individual firm and are reflected through improved efficiency. Improved efficiency is brought about by more effective use of scarce economic resources and unless some satisfactory measure exists for the evaluation of the effectiveness of industry in utilising the resources at its disposal, national objectives aimed at securing growth without inflation cannot be incorporated into the individual objectives of industrial firms themselves. Irrespective of the needs of the economy for growth most industrial firms have their own growth targets the assessment of which equally require a reliable measure of efficiency. To be satisfactory, the measure of efficiency employed must permit comparison of performance by firms over time, as well as comparison with other firms in the same industry and, ideally, in other industries also. There is no unanimity of opinion as to what is the most reliable single yardstick of industrial efficiency.

This study examines the effect of working capital management and board diversity on firm profitability and firm value for a sample of Indonesian firms listed in the LQ45 index. The interaction of board diversity components with working capital management adds a comprehensive discussion to enhancing working capital management efficiency.

This study engages a panel multiple regression method. Data from a sample of LQ45 companies from 2010 to 2016 are analysed using a fixed and a common effect model. Board diversity is further analysed in interaction variables, whether it holds the moderating role in the relationship of working capital and firm performances. This study operates return on capital employed (ROCE) as the proxy of profitability performance and EVA-Spread for the firm's value performance. The simultaneous effect test is used for the robustness test.

The results indicate that working capital management and board diversity have no significant impact towards profitability. However, they significantly positively impact firm value, meaning that the market is attracted by effective working capital management and board diversity. However, the interaction variable analysis shows that gender diversity and education level diversity weaken the impact of working capital management towards firm value.

This study is not limited to one industry; therefore, future studies may focus on one industry and detect the pattern of working capital components in the particular industry. This study focuses on quantitative numbers to explain board diversity's interaction in working capital management to maximise shareholders' wealth. Future studies may consider a qualitative discussion to describe the quality of women's presence on the board, education level and educational background of board members.

Unlike most studies in which authors relate working capital and board diversity to firm performances separately, this study combines both components and analyses whether board diversity can act as a moderator effect. As part of corporate governance, it is expected that board diversity can enhance working capital management efficiency.

This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate characteristics on leverage in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) non-financial listed firms.

A sample comprising a balanced panel for eight years from 2009–2016 for four Gulf countries is used. In total, 85 non-financial listed companies have been selected using a non-probability sampling technique. Corporate characteristics are represented by return on assets (ROA), return on equity, return on capital employed, market value-added, Tobin-Q, liquidity and firm size. The study used fixed and random effect models to estimate the results.

The findings of the study revealed that both ROA and FSIZE have a significant negative effect on leverage. However, market value-added, return on capital employed and Tobin-Q exhibited a statistically significant positive effect on leverage. Further, the results indicated that Qatar is better than kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Oman and the UAE. In addition, evidence noted that KSA is better than both UAE and Oman in terms of the overall impact of corporate characteristics on the leverage. However, this effect is not statistically significant.

This study provides an open insight for managers, bankers, financial analysts in the GCC countries and some other developing economies by highlighting the relationship between corporate characteristics and leverage in an emerging market.

The current study provides an important insight into corporate characteristics and leverage. By so doing, it provides an attempt to identify the factors influencing corporate financing behavior taking into consideration different issues such as different proxies of firms’ profitability, market capitalization, market value added and liquidity, which provides original evidence from Gulf countries emerging markets. These countries are characterized by low tax rates and high liquidity. High liquidity may reduce the cost of borrowing and debt financing may not be a huge burden on firms’ profits. This makes the investigation of leverage and corporate characteristics, particularly, firms’ profitability and liquidity, very important. Therefore, the study tries to bridge an existing gap in the body of literature of capital structure and debt financing in Gulf countries emerging markets.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

A self‐help guide to achieving success in business. Directed more towards the self‐employed, it is relevant to other managers in organizations. Divided into clear sections on creativity and dealing with change; importance of clear goal setting; developing winning business and marketing strategies; negotiating skills; leadership; financial skills; and time management.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize relevant theoretical and empirical literature to develop propositions and suggest a research agenda on the antecedents and organisational performance implications of internal audit effectiveness.

The paper employs institutional theory and Karl Marx's theory of the “circuit of industrial capital” to synthesize relevant internal audit literature to develop theoretically justifiable propositions and highlight an operational research agenda.

Propositions and a research agenda are provided on potential antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its possible association with company performance measured as rate of return on capital employed. Also, key variables are identified and operationalisation issues discussed.

As the extant literature does not provide a canon of internal audit effectiveness, the paper's originality is its argument that a positive association between compliance with standards for the professional practice of internal auditors and organisational goal achievement could serve as an approach to assess internal audit effectiveness. Furthermore, the use of the two theories in combination provides additional insights into identifying the antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its measurement.

Investment analysis is still a young and imperfect science, but the opinions of the analyst are often crucial in deciding what new issues the capital market is prepared to accept. Is the analyst using the correct criteria to assess a share or company loan stock? If not, there is some doubt whether companies who can use capital most efficiently are those most likely to be able to obtain it from the market.

This paper offers a framework for understanding the financial system using Marx’s theory of value. It examines how to interpret the Marxist concepts of the rate of profit and fictitious capital when analysing the financial sector, showing how accounting terms such as ‘return on equity’ and ‘leverage’ can also be understood in this context. The analysis argues that the capitalist system’s rate of profit should be conceptualised in a way that includes finance, but that one should not mix up the accumulation of financial assets with the accumulation of advanced capital. While the costs of finance are negative for the system’s average rate of profit, the paper concludes by noting how this is not inconsistent with financial operations being very profitable for imperialist powers that can use the financial system to appropriate surplus value from elsewhere in the global economy.

The failure of the efficient market hypothesis has a direct bearing on the Geometric Brownian Motion model of asset returns. The current paper aims to investigate the effect that the autocorrelation in the time‐series of returns has on the calculation of expected shortfall (ES) for an asset‐liability investor.

The regression model is selected according to the Akaike and the Schwarz information criterion. A series of tests are used to insure the stability of the autocorrelation parameters. Autocorrelation‐adjusted formulas for volatility and cross‐asset correlations are then employed for the computations.

The presence of autocorrelation changes the values of most of the correlation parameters used in the calculation of the ES of the risk bearing capital (RBC) – in some cases the cross‐asset correlation parameters double. Once the presence of smoothing is accounted for, the ES increases by 1 per cent in relative value.

Other asset classes may also feature smoothed time‐series requiring thus an account of their autocorrelation structure and their interaction with the property asset. An analysis of the time stability of the cross‐asset correlations may also improve the estimation of the optimal RBC.

The proposed method focuses on the proper calculation of the RBC through the judicious estimation of the relevant risk measure for an investor who, while not having access to the underlying data pool from which the property index is computed, cannot adjust the index for the potential presence of temporal aggregation and market illiquidity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and examine whether there is any significant relationship between the extent of business diversification and the performance of construction firms in South Africa. The rationale for the examination stems from the view that the relationship between diversification and the performance of construction firms raises important issues in strategic management and cross‐border business. In contractors' growth however, there is a dearth of empirical research and theoretical arguments regarding the effects of business diversification on construction company performance in South Africa.

The study employed the use of a case study and archival approaches using semi‐structured interviews to elicit primary qualitative and quantitative data over a period of five years for large construction companies listed in Grade 7‐9 on the Construction Industry Development Board (cidb) contractor register. The scope of services and geographic diversification are computed from the sourced data. Dependent variables are the measure of performance using Return on Total Asset (ROTA), Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) and Profit Margin (PM); independent variables used are service/Product Diversification (PD) and Geographic Diversification (GD); while control variables used are size, age, technical capability and capital structure of the construction firms.

It emerged that established construction companies on the cidb contractor registers perform and diversify more in their service/product better than the newly upgraded contractors and this was evident in their performance with respect to profit margin. The results also indicated that there are no statistically significant differences in the performance of diversified and undiversified firms, although diversification was found to have a positive impact on the corporate performance of construction companies.

The outcomes of the research are useful to decision makers and managers of construction companies, as they will help in making viable corporate strategic diversification decisions. The study also engenders a better understanding of the effect of both product and geographic diversification on the performance of contractors.