అకౌంటింగ్ & మార్కెటింగ్

The recent financial crisis has triggered a series of failures of many conventional banks and led to the rise of the interest in the Islamic banks. In this study, we seek to address the following question: What was the effect of the financial crisis and the political uncertainty on the financial stability of both Islamic and conventional banks? The conditional variance (volatility) of returns was used to measure financial stability. The various GARCH models were used to estimate volatility due to their ability to take into account the leverage effect; however they depend on the log likelihood results. The study covers a sample of 11 Islamic banks (IBs) and 17 conventional banks (CBs) for three major regions (the GCC, the Mediterranean and the MENA) for the period from (09/11/ 2005 to 09/12/2013). Our major findings are as follows. First, we document a significant increase in the volatility of conventional banks (CBs) during the period of the financial crisis whereas this crisis has had no significant effect on the volatility in Islamic banks (IBs). Second, the volatility of IBs has increased during the recent political turmoil and that of their conventional counterparts remain low in the Golf countries and the MENA region but more than in the Mediterranean region, this increase remained very moderate. In general, the findings are important for the understanding of the role of financial crisis and the Arab spring on the financial stability of IBs and CBs, suggesting that they are of great significance to investors.

This study implemented the concept of LCC to select between two alternative models from three different sets of medical devices, including two electrolyte models, two X-ray models and two infant incubator models as case studies. For LCC calculations, Kaufmann approach was used, which defines the operating profile, utilizing factor, the most critical cost parameters (i.e. failure rate and repair rate) and any related cost component (i.e. operating cost and maintenance cost). Our results showed that LCC could improve the range and quality of information available for decision-making when a comparison is performed between two alternatives. When comparing the annual LCC values for each two alternative models, the key effective cost categories affecting LCC were the consumable power cost and/ or consumables costs and the maintenance cost. Results showed that LCC and device age are linearly related indicating the increase of the cost to maintain the device in service by increasing the device age. Paired test showed significant differences between each two alternative models in annual LCC estimates. In this study, for the electrolyte devices (Model 2) displayed 25% lower annual LCC as compared with (Model 1). Higher annual LCC value (4.4%) was found for the X-ray device (Model 1) than ( Model 2) suggesting that (Model 2) is better alternative than (Model 1), even though foe the infant incubator devices (Model 2) has higher capital cost. The annual LCC estimate for (Model 1) was 5% lower than (Model 2) due to lower initial cost and maintenance cost. In conclusion, LCC analysis used in this study is vital for decision making for justifying certain model selection among a group of alternatives based on total costs rather than on the initial purchase price of a device.

Marketing ethics is the subset of business ethics, which deals with the systematic study of how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviors and institutions. Within the marketing ethics field, the presumption of the unit of analysis as a large firm has always been the norm. In recent years, however, recognition that this narrow approach is in appropriate has been rising. This paper also investigates marketing ethics practices of small business firms, in Addis Ketema sub city and their effect on consumers’ purchase intention. In order to do so, the researcher first collected data from consumers and used both qualitative and quantitative type of research to know the effect of unethical marketing practice of cloth shops on consumers purchase intention. In the process of collecting data, the researcher took 291 small sized cloth shop consumers using a Time Location sampling technique. After data collection, it was analyzed using descriptive statistics techniques, like tables and percentages, mean, standard deviations, graphs, frequency and logistic regression (inferential statistics). The result of this study showed that small sized cloth shops in Addis Ketema sub-city exhibit unethical marketing practice in the area of product and price ethics. Additionally, it was found that consumers have purchase intention even if firms’ behavior was found to be unethical. Finally, the researcher concluded that the unethical practice of marketers may lead to consumers’ lack of confidence in the market and recommended awareness programs, strengthening consumer protection act as well as establishment of consumer associations in the area.

The purpose of this study was to understand the various factors that are associated with the behavioural aspects of males and females in the Indian cosmeceutical market. In this study we also tried to find out various influencing factors among males and females and what are the differences between these two whit respect to their cosmeceutical product types. We also tried to find out the differences between the consumption patterns among people of different regions of India. The study was carried out in different regions of India and on an age group between 15 years to 45 years people who belong to different occupation. A standard questionnaire was implemented in the market which is same for both males and females. Questions were related to the consumption habits of the consumers for their cosmeceutical product. The data was collected from a sample of 240 people among which 120 are males and 120 are females. The results were analysed through SPSS software version 16 by applying different statistical tests.

We explored some links between earnings management and accounting fraud. Most previous studies ignored the connections between earnings management and accounting fraud. This study attempted to find the linkage between them by exploring some cases. In particular, we focused on M&A deals. Accounting for acquired goodwill has been subject to considerable debate for at least the past 50 years because the accounting tends to provide managers with discretion to manipulate accounting figures. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) reported that overall impairment losses on goodwill amounted to only €40 billion from the €790 billion of goodwill in spite of the EU sovereign debt crisis in 2011. This showed that managers tended to intentionally avoid impairments losses. Goodwill accounting gives managers opportunities to manipulate accounting figures. This study used two case studies to explore the accounting manipulation through M&A transactions. The first case is the scandal of Olympus Corporation (Olympus) which is one of the most famous accounting fraud. Olympus had hidden more than $1.5 billion of investment losses through M&A transactions until the scandal exposure in 2011. The second case is the unintentional mismanagement by HP. HP recorded $8.8 billion of the impairment loss of goodwill after the detection of Autonomy’s fraud. The boundary between earnings management and accounting fraud is unclear. Managers have a broad discretion into the accounting for goodwill. This would lead to a high possibility that many companies poorly comply with the requirements of accounting.

Portfolio Management is used to select a portfolio of new product development projects to achieve the following goals: Maximize the profitability or value of the portfolio, Provide balance, Support the strategy of the enterprise. Portfolio Management is the responsibility of the senior management team of an organization or business unit. This team, which might be called the Product Committee, meets regularly to manage the product pipeline and make decisions about the product portfolio. Often, this is the same group that conducts the stage-gate reviews in the organization. A logical starting point is to create a product strategy - markets, customers, products, strategy approach, competitive emphasis, etc. The second step is to understand the budget or resources available to balance the portfolio against. Third, each project must be assessed for profitability (rewards), investment requirements (resources), risks, and other appropriate factors. The weighting of the goals in making decisions about products varies from company. But organizations must balance these goals: risk vs. profitability, new products vs. improvements, strategy fit vs. reward, market vs. product line, long-term vs. short-term. Several types of techniques have been used to support the portfolio management process: Heuristic models, Scoring techniques, Visual or mapping techniques. The earliest Portfolio Management techniques optimized projects’ profitability or financial returns using heuristic or mathematical models. However, this approach paid little attention to balance or aligning the portfolio to the organization’s strategy. Scoring techniques weight and score criteria to take into account investment requirements, profitability, risk and strategic alignment. The shortcoming with this approach can be an over emphasis on financial measures and an inability to optimize the mix of projects.

This study examines whether specific audit committee (AC) characteristics, including indpendence, knowledge, experience and training, and interaction between audit committee members and the internal audit function are associated with AC effectiveess. We find that AC effectiveness is higher when members are more independent affected mainly by their ability to express an opinion regarding doubt of continuity and having compensation within the acceptable limits, knowledge and experience affected mainly be the existence of at least one member who as strong accounting, financial and auditing expertise, and effective interaction with internal audit function measured mainly by AC reviews of the programs and procedures related to risk management process and AC determination of the internal audit annual budget. These findings are consistent with an increased demand for higher quality auditing by audit committees, and by firms that make greater use of internal audit.

Globalisation is causing a convergence of economic, trading, political and social process. Recent years have seen major changes in financial reporting worldwide under which the most obvious is the continuing adoption of IFRS worldwide. An upcoming economy on world economic map, India, too, decided to converge to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). While regulators, standard setters and law makers sit together to rollout the road map for implementation of IFRS in India, a wide section of the industry is already debating about the impact that they are going to have on transitioning to IFRS. This paper explores the impact of adoption of IFRS, challenges that will come up and its adoption procedure in India. It also discusses the problems faced by the stakeholders (Regulators, Accountants, and Firms etc) in the process of adoption of IFRS in India. This paper discuss the IFRS adoption procedure in India and the utility for India in adopting IFRS, the problems and challenges faced by the stakeholdersand its impact on India.