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PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: In South Africa, corporates are annually spending billions of rands on corporate social investment (CSI) initiatives, while municipalities are challenged with regard to local economic development (LED RESEARCH PROBLEM: It is not known if companies collaborate with municipalities during the design and development of CSI initiatives, nor whether LED officials communicate with corporates to collaborate or invest in community projects. Primary objective was to determine whether corporates design and implement their CSI initiatives to link to municipalities' LED strategies for communities. Indicate the aim of the study and justify the significance of undertaking the study DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Following mostly a qualitative research approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with organisations with CSI projects (19), CSI consultants (4) and LED officials (4) of municipalities in the Gauteng province. Electronic notes and transcribed interviews were analysed using both thematic analysis and descriptive statistics FINDINGS: It seems that CSI projects tend to first fit the business strategy of the corporates and then target community needs that fit the corporate's area of focus. Although most of the participating corporates and all the CSI consultants are aware of the South African National Framework for LED (NFLED), the majority have never used its guidelines for CSI planning RECOMMENDATIONS/VALUE: It provides insight into the relationship, or the lack thereof, between corporates, CSI consultants and LED officials at municipal level with regard to the design and development of community social projects MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: Through collaborating with LED officials, private corporations can form a productive partnership aligning their corporate social investment projects with LED projects that would contribute to the development of the communities where some of their stakeholders are situated CLASSIFICATION JEL: R5; R58

Management education is one of the most popular professional degrees for people all across the globe. Since the inception of management education, corporates look forward to hire management students for meeting their different business requirements as per the changing market dynamics. But, over a period of time, it is getting difficult for industry to get the right talent and the right fit for their different roles. The study was an attempt to capture the expectation of different companies from MBAs. While understanding the expectation of companies, an effort was also made to understand the experience company has with currently hired MBAs. The perceptions were analyzed based on primary research on sample of 423 representatives from different companies by administering the questionnaire to them. SPSS software and MS-Excel was used for the detailed analysis. The results indicated that there was significant difference between expectation and experience of companies on different attributes for hired MBAs. The most widely used selection criteria by the industry for making a job offer to MBAs was personal interview. The analysis was conducted on the data collected from company representatives hiring MBAs from B-schools in Mumbai. Further research can be done by using data collected from representatives from different companies all across the country., {"references":["Adele, S. (2004). On-Campus recruiters apply the pressure;recruitment;In a tight jobs market employers can be choosy and recent MBAs are having to get used to rejection. London: Financial Times","Alagh, S. K. (2018). This is what is wrong with MBA programmes in India, and her's how to fix it. New-Delhi: Hindustan Times.","Barker, R. (2010, July-August). No, Management is Not a Profession. Harvard Business Review, 52- 60.","Bohra, N. S. (2013, February). Enhancing quality of management education in the average Indian business school through shared responsibility. Prabandhan:Indian Journal of Management, 6(2), 32-39.","Datar, S. M., David, G. A., & Patrick, C. G. (2008). Rethinking the MBA:Business education at a crossroads. Boston: Harvard Business Press","Gosling, J., & Mintzberg, H. (2003, November). The Five Minds of a Manager. 1-15","Jones, A. (2018). An analysis of industry orientedness of B-schools. Mumbai: KPMG India.","Leavitt, H. J. (1989). Educating Our MBAs:On Teaching What We Haven't Taught. California Management Review, 38-50."]}

Perspectives on new European law on corporate transparency on sustainability, its reliability and the eventual impact on business

The S3E REVERSEOpen Call documents includetheGuidelines for Applicantsand theOpen Call Textand are mandatory to read and follow in order to apply for the S3E REVERSE Open Call for Challenge Organisations. Any doubt, please contact the S3E Consortium through thisHelpdesk.&nbsp

Hackathons are events in which diverse teams work together to explore and develop solutions, software, or even ideas. Hackathons have been recognized not only as public events for hacking but also as a corporate mechanism for innovation. Hackathons are a way for established large-scale agile organizations to achieve increased employee wellbeing as well as being a curator for innovation and developing new products. The sudden transition to the work-from-home mode caused by the COVID-19 pandemic first put many corporate events requiring collocation, such as hackathons, temporarily on hold and then motivated companies to find ways to hold these events virtually. In this paper, we report our findings from investigating hackathons in the context of a large agile company by first exploring the general benefits and challenges of hackathons and then trying to understand how they were affected by the virtual setup. We conducted nine interviews, surveyed 23 employees, and analyzed a hackathon demo. We found that hackathons provide both individual and organizational benefits of innovation, personal interests, and acquiring new skills and competencies. However, several challenges such as added stress due to stopping the regular work, employees fearing not having enough contribution to deliver, and potential mismatch between individual and organizational goals were also found. With respect to the virtual setup, we found that virtual hackathons are not diminishing the innovation benefits. However, some negative effects surfaced on the social and networking side.

The implementation of Industry 4.0 concepts is in full swing, digitalization is progressing faster than ever, and today's economy is characterized by an urgency to seek open innovation strategies, which increase the commitment of established companies to cooperate with startups in order to improve the organization's innovation capabilities as well as its competitive position. Cooperation can be mutually beneficial, as startups gain a certain pool of resources, visibility, and organizational know-how, while companies gain access to new technologies and innovative solutions. Overall, the topic of cooperation between startups and corporates is still quite unexplored, as well as how the exact process of unlearning can be implemented in organizations to achieve better cooperation. For this reason, the purpose of this thesis was to identify factors that are crucial for successful collaboration between corporates and startups, and in particular, what perceptions and barriers exist on both sides. Based on a qualitative analysis through semi-structured interviews with Austrian-based corporate innovation managers and startups (n=7) with experience in startup-corporate cooperation, this study identifies common barriers/factors that hinder successful cooperation between corporates and startups. Similarly, this thesis provides insights into the different perspectives of startups and corporates from their experiences with cooperative relationships, including their motivations/benefits, perceived challenges, and their suggestions for improvement for future startup-corporate cooperation. The analysis of the interviews illustrates that knowledge structures can be outdated and so-called unlearning processes are necessary to change or remove outdated structures to make room for new knowledge. Author Anna Bendra, BSc Universität Linz, Masterarbeit, 2021 (VLID)5898268

This dissertation aims to understand and analyse the use of the Foreign Exchange Market by non-financial corporations that regularly deal with different currencies from economic and financial transactions carried out with clients, suppliers, banks and other parties. This dissertation analyses the evolution of the forex markets and the associated risks of operating in foreign currencies as well as investigates strategies that can be adopted by corporations to cope with those risks. The information about the forex impact and risks on the business units were gathered using a qualitative research approach based in interviews made with professionals of the industry, namely, FX Salesmen and Corporate Hedging strategists. It is imperative that corporations are able to use the financial market effectively as it is essential in today’s global economy. Esta dissertação visa analisar a utilização do Mercado Cambial por empresas não financeiras que lidam diariamente com moedas diferentes das transações económicas e financeiras realizadas com clientes, fornecedores, bancos e outras partes. A dissertação analisa a evolução dos mercados FOREX e os riscos associados de operar em moedas estrangeiras e quais as estratégias que podem ser adotadas pelas empresas para fazer face a esses riscos. As informações sobre o impacto e riscos da FOREX nas unidades de negócio foram recolhidas utilizando uma abordagem de pesquisa qualitativa baseada em entrevistas feitas com profissionais do sector, nomeadamente, vendedores de FX e estrategas de cobertura de empresas. Este mercado financeiro é essencial numa economia global e, consequentemente, importante para a maioria das empresas poder utilizá-lo eficazmente.

The research is aimed at “To evolve a method of sustainability reporting practices for social expenditure incurred by business organizations so that the information to the creditor and stakeholders becomes “impact measurable” thereby, becomes more meaningful & relevant.”Since sustainability reporting practices are getting more & more adopted by many companies there is a great need to come out with an appropriate method for reporting which may cover quantitative & qualitative aspects & also measure the impact of such contribution. In contrast to financial reporting, the history of sustainability reporting (SR) is comparatively recent. The proposition that organizations, and business organizations in particular, should supplement their financial accounting with accounting on their environmental, social and other 'non-financial' performance - or 'sustainability reporting'. Responding to the increasing media attention to environmental problems, most reports focused on environmental policies and performance. This present research paper attempts to evaluate the Creditors' participation in framing sustainability reporting practices in India. Result Mean weighted score towards awareness on sustainable reporting practices (SRP) of their clients is 3.71, i.e.74.2 percent level of awareness that provides satisfaction on their client’s repayment terms to the extent of 3.10 score or 62 percent only. Therefore, it can be concluded that the impact of sustainable reporting practices of SENSEX companies on their creditors’ terms is significant statistically. Hence, it is suggested to the creditors to examine the variables (such as ASRP, PSA, and SDI) which have a negative impact on the creditors and further it should improve the variables (CEPCD, CSSR, G, AG & Q) which have a positive impact but not significant statistically.

This paper documents a new stylised fact in foreign exchange markets: intraday currency returns display prolonged reversals around the major benchmark fixings, characterised by an appreciation of the U.S. dollar pre-fixing and a depreciation thereafter. Tracing returns around the clock, the major fixing during Asian trading hours (Tokyo) and two major fixings during European and U.S. hours (Frankfurt and London) generate a distinct `W' shaped return pattern over the 24-hour trading day. On either side of the reversal, price drifts persist for hours; moreover, they are a systematic feature of the data being present every day of the week, month of the year, and during each of the 20 years in our sample. We argue these findings require two ingredients (i) a structural demand for dollar immediacy at local currency fixing times; and (ii) pre-fix hedging risk management practices by financial intermediaries. Consistent with this conjecture, we show our findings are unique to the U.S dollar numeraire, amplified in states of high anticipated volatility, low liquidity, and that arbitrageurs can exploit these patterns after taking transaction costs into account.

Context: To keep the competitive advantage and adapt to changes in the market and technology, companies need to innovate in an organised, purposeful and systematic manner. However, due to their size and complexity, large companies tend to focus on the structure in maintaining their business, which can potentially lower their agility to innovate.Objective:The aims of this study are to provide an overview of the current research on innovation initiatives and to identify the challenges of implementing those initiatives in the context of large software companies.Method: The investigation was primarily performed using a systematic mapping approach of published literature on corporate innovation and entrepreneurship, which was then complemented with interviews with four experts with rich industry experience.Results: Our mapping study results suggest that, there is a lack of high quality empirical studies on innovation initiative in the context of large software companies. A total of 7 studies are conducted in the context of large software companies, which reported 5 types of initiatives: intrapreneurship, bootlegging, internal venture, spin-off and crowdsourcing. Our study offers three contributions. First, this paper represents the map of existing literature on innovation initiatives inside large companies. The second contribution of this paper is to provide an innovation initiative tree. The third contribution is to identify key challenges faced by each initiative in large software companies.Conclusions: At the strategic and tactical levels, there is no difference between large software companies and other companies. At the operational level, large software companies are highly influenced by the advancement of Internet technology. In addition, large software companies use open innovation paradigm as part of their innovation initiatives. We envision our future work is to further empirically evaluate the innovation initiative tree in large software companies. More practitioners from different companies should be involved in the future studies.

In order to enhance the understanding of credit cycle dynamics in Croatia, we explore the evolution of credit demand and credit supply of corporates and households in Croatia and identify their determinants based on the switching regression framework. These results are crosschecked by the insights from the bank lending survey. The conducted analysis shows there are both supply and demand-side factors that limit the possibility of intensifying household and corporate credit activity. However, a more pronounced drag seems to be coming from subdued demand, which is greatly influenced by the unfavourable domestic macroeconomic environment and, particularly, GDP developments. This suggests that it is not unusual that credit recovery is still missing but also confirms that the scope for monetary policy to stimulate lending is limited.

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On 21 March 2013 a summit on the future of India’s digital media – titled ‘Big Tent Activate’ – was held at the Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. The Googlefunded summit, which I attended as a delegate, exemplified the neoliberalisation of India’s cyberspace. While I was in New Delhi, I also visited Sarai, an interdisciplinary research centre that is part of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). This intervention briefly critiques the Big Tent Activate’s vision of digital public space dominated by global corporates, and offers Sarai’s Cybermohalla as an example of a progressive space of alterity within a context of corporate domination. The intervention concludes by reflecting on strategies academics can use to help address complex global North-South geographies of representation in their work and beyond.

A dissertation submitted in partial Fulfillment of the Degree of Master in Business Administration (MBA) The objectives of the study were to establish the challenges faced by firms issuing public offering in Kenya; to determine strategic implications ofthese challenges; and to establish how corporate firms in Kenya respond to these challenges. Descriptive survey was adopted and semi - structured questionnaires were administered by the researcher as well as discussions with the respondents. The study was a census of all companies which have issued initial public offering in the last 13 years. Data was analysed using descriptive and advanced statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean scores and standard deviation. Government privatization policy was the main driving factor for issuing initial public offering in Kenya and the other main reason for going public by firms being the need raise capital for growth. The study established younger firms spent less time preparing for IPO as compared to older and more established firms which spent more time making preparations before commencement of IPO issue. It was established that initial public offering led to more than 49 percent ownership surrender to investors by 38 percent of the firms. Retail investors were the major beneficiaries ofIPO's in Kenya as was demonstrated by the proportion ofshares reserved for them. The major strategic issues for issuing firm were diversion of management time, offer timing, approval by regulators, IPO transactions processing, offer price determination and the refund process. From findings, it was concluded that successful execution of IPO strategy require a lean and focused team; scaling down of activities; timely, complete and adequate information; adequate competent and facilitated employees; publicity; and use of state - of- the - art technology. Following findings of the study, it was recommended that: > Superior technology is the bedrock to success in emerging economies such as Kenya. There is need for technology upgrading to partly reduce diversion of management time by adopting video conferencing and accurate market forecasting and real time processing of the IPO transactions including refunds. > Issuing firms should develop strategies for addressing political risks such as manipulation of IPa issue by single or group of influential politicians to the detriment ofordinary investors. > Results showed that firms did not have response mechanisms to price shocks. There is need for issuing firms to hedge investors to losses resulting price shocks in the secondary market. > Future studies should investigate the impact of lockup agreement on share price performance and investor confidence in Kenya.