Business & Economics

To properly understand advertising or to learn even its rudiments one must start with the right conception. Advertising is salesmanship. Its principles are the principles of salesmanship. Successes and failures in both lines are due to like causes. Thus every advertising question should be answered by the salesman's standards.

Let us emphasize that point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.

It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen. Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesmen do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.

The difference is only in degree. Advertising is multiplied salesmanship. It may appeal to thousands while the salesman talks to one. It involves a corresponding cost. Some people spend $10 per word on an average advertisement. Therefore every ad should be a super-salesman.

The literature on Þnancial stability often argues that increased competition causes riskier banking behavior and deteriorates bank assets, and therefore, financial liberalization is a source of Þnancial instability. Examples are Chan et al. (1986), Riordan (1993), Gehrig (1998), Schnitzer (1999), Dell’Ariccia (2000), and Hellmann et al. (2000). Despite such a consensus, the empirical findings regarding the effects of increased competition on risk are mixed.On the one hand, there is evidence of a link between financial crises and Þnancial liberalization1. On the other hand, among the European emerging economies, it seems that those banking sectors with better performances are those that greatly reduced their entry restrictions. Lifting intrastate restrictions of the US banking sector also contributed to the substantial improvement in loan quality, according to Jayaratne and Strahan (1996). This raises the issue whether the current consensus regarding the relationship of banking competition and risk taking is justified.

This issue is directly related to the on-going effort of building sound banking systems. In the past two decades, many Þnancial markets have resorted to Þnancial liberalization in order to foster Þnancial deepening. In the mean-time, the frequency and degree of severeness of Þnancial crises have increased. The question is whether there are inherent trade-offs between efficiency, indicated by lower loan rates, and safty of the Þnancial system, and between Þnancial deepening and stability. If there are such trade-offs, is increased competition a source, as has been widely accepted?

The main objective of this paper is to present the impacts of information technology (IT) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in business process renovation and to discuss selected aspects of the business processes and information modelling. This study presents the results of research conducted on
reengineering business processes in Croatian companies, together with the results of analysis of the status and characteristics of ERP systems in Croatian companies. The results of this study were used to form hypotheses, which were then analyzed and compared against the results of a case study conducted by the authors on business process reengineering and the implementation of the SAP software solution in PLIVA pharmaceutical industry, Incorporated (PLIVA pharmaceuticals, Inc).

Time is finite. We have only so many hours available in a day to live our lives, accomplish the tasks that we need to accomplish, and enjoy our lives.
Every minute we waste in frustration over a task that seems overwhelming is a minute subtracted from the time we’ve allotted to enjoy life. Even our jobs should provide us with pleasures a sense of accomplishment, the gratification of recognition for a job well done, and financial rewards, too—that enable us to enjoy our personal lives even more. It can be done. Less stress, more confidence, reduced frustration, greater fulfillment these are all benefits that flow from leading a time-managed life. Our hope is that Time Management will help you achieve all these things and more.

The primary benefit to you, as you read and absorb the lessons here, will be an increase in your on-the-job productivity. But, like other books in the Briefcase Books series, Time Management is designed to provide you with far more than that.
It’s intended to assist you, as well, in helping your frontline staff refine their own time-management skills, in making their jobs easier, and in making them more productive. Even more, it will help you to apply the skills you learn to your life outside the workplace—to your home, your relationships with family and friends in short, to your life in general.

This sub-theme—that these skills go beyond your own job will be evident throughout the book. It’s interwoven into the content through examples from ordinary life and from the kinds of jobs done by your staff. These examples will serve, we hope, to pique your imagination—to get you to think about other waysto strategically apply the lessons they illustrate. And you’ll realize that they can apply in many areas of your own life and the lives of others around you, as well.

Performance reviews seem to be a lightning rod for disappointment, dread, or even wrath on the part of employees who have to be “reviewed” and managers who feel they have to do the “reviewing.” It’s hard to find people who express satisfaction with their review processes, and it’s not an understatement to say that, by and large, almost everyone hates them—whether getting them or giving them ... and for very good reasons.

Somehow or other, we’ve managed to forget what performance reviews are for, and even in situations where someone does remember, the process is so poorly implemented that it ends up having no value to anyone. Worse, poorly conducted performance reviews create more problems than they solve and end up costing real time and money that should be used more productively.

It’s almost as if human resource departments, managers, supervisors, and employees conspire to make sure performance reviews end up as wasted effort. You couldn’t mess them up more if you tried.