This book is a guide to how financial steering is designed, measured and implemented with a special focus on the energy industry. The authors offer an overview of and practical insights into the links between financial steering and accounting, and the temporary cycles of investment, divestment, return and loss, market highs and lows that form the framework of the entire energy industry across all value chain stages. The faster and the larger the cash cycles of investments and their returns, the greater not only the value created, but also the potential loss if the financial steering is not properly designed and managed. Value and value generation require an understanding of how value is both defined and measured in both and how the business/project economics model of a company works – financial steering provides this. Further, the book also discusses accounting topics such as impairments, new IFRS standards and the impact of accounting on key performance indicators of financial steering, which are associated with these investment decision valuations. The combination of accounting with the cash flow perspective provides a complete understanding of selected practical topics of financial steering which are explained in detail in a large number of examples and case studies. The book is intended for a wide range of finance/controlling/treasury/accounting professionals and students. It is written in practical and simple terms to outline the financial steering concept and to bring it to life in daily work and in the decision making process for financial steering. All illustrated concepts are in the same manner relevant and applicable to all other asset-intense industry sectors and their financial steering processes.

The present report examines how governments use financial incentives to promote a better alignment between labour market needs, on the one hand, and the supply of skills, on the other.

Chinas Einsatz von Industriepolitik hat die Debatte über staatliche Intervention in der Wirtschaft neu entfacht. Nur wenige Branchen erleben die lenkende Hand des Staates wie der chinesische Elektrizitätssektor. Dieser sieht sich aber einem radikalen Umbruch ausgesetzt. Der Begriff "Smart Grid" umfasst technische und systemische Reformen, die für einen Strukturwandel erforderlich sind. Diese Studie untersucht durch die Linse der Steuerungstheorie die Auswirkungen einer Gesetzgebung auf Machtkämpfe im Elektrizitätssektor Chinas. Anhand von Dokumentenanalyse und Interviews wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Steuerungsprozesse durchgeführt und Gegensteuerungsstrategien entwickelt werden, um Verhandlungen auf politischer Ebene zu beeinflussen.

Even the strongest of marriages may face tough challenges during the course of a lifetime. Couples who maneuver through the child-rearing years successfully may be surprised to discover that, down the road, a financial setback or a major illness can rock the foundations of their union. In Steering Your Marriage, author Dr. Suzanne Burger offers couples a toolkit to navigate life's challenges while remaining in a committed and vibrant relationship. Through anecdotes and case histories, Dr. Burger provides a guide for those seeking insight and wisdom in their journey together. She explores potential issues such as finances, the death of a child, career changes, aging parents, chronic illness that couples often encounter and uses examples and checklists to illustrate how to find new understanding in one another. Steering Your Marriage presents the latest research on what helps couples shift course as they adapt to a variety of challenges, and it offers detailed examples of couples who have successfully navigated through hardships and around unforeseen detours in their lives. This guide provides couples with the skills necessary to move through time together.

Publisher description

This volume is part of the ongoing collaboration between the RMC series and the Socio-Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations (ISEOR), a French intervention-research think tank co-directed by Henri Savall and Véronique Zardet. Building on an earlier collaboration on the ISEOR approach – Socio-Economic Intervention in Organizations: The Intervener-Researcher and the SEAM Approach to Organizational Analysis (IAP, 2007) – Buono and Savall bring together over 30 talented intervener-researchers to explore and examine the ongoing evolution of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM). This volume revisits the application of SEAM in the context of intervention challenges in the wake of the recent economic crisis and the disruptive change that has taken hold across the world. The basic foundation of SEAM – built on the idea of strategic patience, the need to undertake holistic intervention in organizations, and the challenge to get organizational members to listen to themselves (through what they refer to as the mirror effect) – has remained the same. In response to economic and organizational pressures in the current environment, however, there has been a concomitant emphasis on helping client organizations achieve short-term results while still maintaining focus on the long term. Many ideas that have become part of the current discourse within ISEOR today were not as explicitly addressed in the initial volume – from the destructive effect of the Taylorism-Fayolism-Weberism (TFW) virus, to the need to focus on ways to ensure the sustainability of a SEAM intervention, the growing importance of collaborative interactions between external and internal consultants, and the growing importance of cocreating knowledge with client firms and organizations.

Traditionally, much of big business in the industrialized Western world has been organized around particular corporate societies—notoriously referred to as “old boy” networks. With the recent drift toward a more liberal market economy, however, these networks have been showing signs of decline—in some cases, all but disappearing. Eelke M. Heemskerk combines formal network analysis and interviews with key members of the corporate elite in order to examine how this decline has affected Dutch capitalism. Even in a liberal market economy, however, corporate directors need social networks to communicate and coordinate their strategic decisions, and Decline of the Corporate Community considers the shift of the corporate elite to the new private and informal circles where networking takes place.

Corporate Governance (Fourth Edition) continues to inform on all aspects of corporate governance, while keeping readers up to date with the latest developments. It is now established as the leading South African work on the subject. The past five years since publication of the third edition has seen a number of changes in the application of corporate governance in South Africa and beyond. Locally, we have seen the application of the 2008 Companies Act, and in the United Kingdom, a new Corporate Governance Code has been introduced. Significant developments have taken place in the area of corporate reporting, via the appearance of an International Integrated Reporting Framework, widening the scope of the traditional annual report. The Fourth Edition deals with these changes. Key additions are chapters on types of entities, and a comparison of local and international practice. Corporate Governance was first published in 2002 shortly after the publication of the original King Report, to help explain the need for corporate governance in the private and public sectors and to provide South African executives and professionals with a practical framework to establish governance systems and practices in their own organisations.