Search results for "MF"

Risk Management and Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions

2018

Risk management and efficiency are very crucial for the survival of every organization. “Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking” (Alan Greenspan) and “the obvious rule of efficiency is you don’t want to spend more time organizing than it’s worth” (Daniel Levitin). In microfinance, risk management and efficiency are important for the achievement of both the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions, which aim primarily to provide financial services to the unbanked populations in the world. Giving uncollaterized loans to vulnerable borrowers is risky yet that is what microfinance institutions do. In this dissertation, I …

The Paradox of Skill in Norwegian Mutual Funds

2020

Master's thesis in Business administration (BE501) This thesis examines Norwegian mutual funds’ performance, and specifically whether that performance is due to luck or skill under the null hypothesis of no true performance. We use an extensive dataset of 107 Norwegian mutual funds free of survivorship bias, over the period 1987-2019. We use the Carhart (1997) four-factor model as our performance model, both on the aggregate and individual level. On the aggregate level, we find no significant evidence for abnormal risk-adjusted returns. Looking at the funds on the individual level, we use a bootstrap approach to distinguish luck from skill. The bootstrap is implemented to evaluate our resul…

Essays on Cultural Intelligence

2021

Papers II and III are excluded from the dissertation until they will be published. This dissertation consists of three essays/papers on cultural intelligence. The first essay/paper is a systematic review using bibliometric methods that explored the CQ literature in international business, including the two concepts cross-cultural competencies (CC) and global mindset (GM). The paper complements past reviews by broadening the focus and offers an objective and reproducible approach to assessing the current state of the literature, provides improved understanding of the intellectual structure of research on the three constructs, and their effects on different outcomes through presenting its fin…

Human Resources and Performance in Social Enterprises : Evidence from Microfinance Institutions

2022

The learning way to production performance : An evolutionary perspective on company-specific production systems (XPS)

2021

Manufacturing companies (MCs) implement “best-practice” concepts such as Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS) for enhanced production improvement. However, 30 years of research have shown that very few succeed in this implementation, which is often related to the challenge of copying Lean and TPS in various technological, political, and social contexts. As a reaction to this, MCs have explored new strategies for implementing bestpractice concepts. Instead of copying a concept, the company tailors its own “self-adjusted” concept that is built on one or more standard concepts. This phenomenon goes by the name of “company-specific production systems” (XPS) and seems to be an important t…

Forbedret produksjonsflyt : simulering av hengebanen for Farsund Aluminium Casting AS

2012

Masteroppgave industriell økonomi og teknologiledelse IND590 - Universitetet i Agder, 2012 Konfidensiell til / confidential until 01.07.2017

Essays on the Implications of Accounting and Audit Regulations

2021

Papers I-III are excluded from the dissertation until they will be published. In this dissertation, some questions relating to the implications of these developments, particularly regarding audit pricing, accounting quality, and auditors’ use of experts are examined. In the first essay, a bibliometric review of the literature is conducted to synthesize the academic research with a focus on insights about the impact of these regulatory and technological changes on audit fees. Given that audit fees is a function of audit effort, stakeholders including regulators, practitioners, and investors have been interested in understanding the impact of accounting and audit regulations on audit fees. Se…

Aligning University Roles and Strategic Orientations: When Local Mandates and Global Aspirations Meet

2022

Recent policy developments in Norwegian higher education, aiming to nurture world-class environments, have focused on the need to strengthen teaching quality and research excellence. However, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly under pressure to make local contributions (“impacts”), for example, in the form of job creation, technology transfers, local economic developments, and so on, which result in tensions and dilemmas at multiple levels, not least as regards strategic management. This chapter investigates how universities align education and research on the one hand and how they navigate the tensions between local demands and global aspirations on the other. Firstly, w…

Family and non-family business in Iran: Coupling among innovation, exporting, and growth-expectation

2021

Gallo and Sveen, in 1991, specified problems of whether family businesses can take advantage of factors facilitating internationalization. We compare family and non-family businesses in innovation, export, and growth-expectation, and consider how outcomes are aligned, with a coupling that may be loose, with a synergy that benefits the business. This raises a further issue, is governance of a business affecting not only each of the outcomes but also their coupling. A representative sample of 530 Iranian businesses was surveyed in 2018 for Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Innovation, export, and growth-expectation are found to be lower in family businesses. Coupling between innovation and exp…

Procurement and inventory control in Engineer-to-order businesses

2012

Master's thesis in Industrial and Information Management IND590 - University of Agder, 2012 Konfidensiell til / confidential until 01.07.2017