Standing Against to Workplace Discrimination (In the Name of Law & Order, Humanity, Religion, and Better Management): A Literature Review

Rational judgments and decisions should be based on solid logic and rationale as well as numeric variables. On the other hand, irrational judgments and decisions rely on feelings, linguistic variables. Appointed executives who manage acting businesses must demonstrate solid logic, numeric and linguistic justifications for their decisions to the stakeholders: business owners, government, share-stakeholders. The study examines the justification and logic of the four main factors why humanity fights against discrimination during the promotion: legally, humanitarian reasons, religious grounds, and administrative reasons. The study strongly suggests that discrimination during the promotion is against the law, religion, humanity, and efficient management. For these reasons, honest, fair people and organizations have to fight against discrimination; in the name of law, in the name of religion, in the name of humanity, and in the name of managerial efficiency. Discriminators, who are unfairly making the lives of innocent employees, their children, and partners hell, have to be punished by the law, religion, humanity, and management for realizing humanistic and holistic justice.

GENDER, BOARD, AND WORKING CAPITAL

This paper examines the effects of gender board diversity on working capital. The study uses a sample of S&P1500 firms, resulting in 9,157 firm-year observations from 2005 to 2019. Our findings show that greater gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with lower liquidity ratios, including lower non-cash ones. The results are robust to a battery of gender board diversity definitions and to a 2SLS analysis which employs the gender ratio in the county’s population in which the firm is headquartered as an instrumental variable. Based on additional tests of the effects of gender board diversity on managerial efficiency ratios, we conclude that the results are driven by superior monitoring associated with gender diversity on the board.

Project management system in State bodies from the standpoint of organizational and managerial efficiency

Subject. This article discusses the importance of project management in the activities of public authorities. Objectives. The article aims to determine the current level of development of project management techniques and trends in their progress with the public authorities of the Russian Federation. Methods. For the study, I used general scientific and special research methods. Results. The article describes the advantages of the project management methodology, which can contribute to saving from 20 to 30% of time and from 15 to 20% of the funds spent. Conclusions. The development of a fair system of motivation for project stakeholders, helping ensure a higher level of responsibility, is an important step in the development of project management in the public sector.

Efficiency of Shadow Banks in India and Its Drivers

With the growth of shadow banking (SB) across the globe, their importance as an inevitable segment of the financial system is already established. Therefore, along with banking institutions, the assessment of the efficiency of this segment has become imperative. This article tries to look into the aspects of their efficiency in the Indian context. With the data set of all the listed companies in the SB category for the past 10 years, the efficiency score is ascertained and the drivers of efficiency are identified. Data envelopment analysis and Malmquist Index are employed to ascertain the efficiency score and analyse the efficiency change, respectively. Tobit regression is employed to identify the drivers of efficiency. The findings reveal that many of the firms are operating at the efficiency frontier with the maximum score of 1, and few others are yet to achieve the same. The size of the institution, earning capacity and liquidity drive the efficiency further, whereas the quality of the assets drags it down. There is a need to improve the managerial efficiency for inefficient firms to achieve economies of scale and optimum efficiency. As size has emerged as an important driver, small SBs need to scale up their operation. Furthermore, there is a need to improve the quality of loan assets.

Determinants of Firm Profitability in Africa

Using a large firm-level data set of 896 firms selected from 27 African countries between 2005 and 2017 and the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique, this study investigates the firm-specific, industry-level, and macroeconomic factors affecting firms’ profitability in Africa. Unlike existing studies that adopt non-standard measures of a firm’s managerial efficiency, this study introduces the standard measure of managerial efficiency into the determinants of a firm’s profitability. The empirical results show that managerial efficiency, size, age, leverage, tangibility, and firm’s growth are significant firm-level determinants of a firm’s profitability in Africa. Similarly, an industry-specific factor of competition exercises a significant effect on a firm’s profitability. However, the role of macroeconomic factors are not validated by the study. Policy recommendations follow the study.

China on the Way to Achieving Carbon Neutrality

Sustainable development is recognized as a concept that can interrupt a series of crises observed today and bring the world to a new effective and fair level. The mechanism for implementing the concept is an approach that integrates into the decision-making process, in addition to the already existing criterion of economic efficiency, ESG-criteria, namely: criteria of environmental friendliness, social responsibility and managerial efficiency. Countries integrate these criteria in different ways into national development strategies. This is due to the nature of the problems they face and the solution of which seems to be a priority. Of great interest in this regard is the experience of China — the largest economy in the world, which has also embarked on a phase of active integration of ESG criteria into the national strategy, with an emphasis on the E-criterion (environmental), assuming that the achievement of efficiency for the rest criteria is impossible without first-priority solution of the accumulated problems in the field of ecology. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the strategic decisions of the Chinese government under the influence of the environmental factor. The article analyzes the approaches to substantiating the ideology of environmental reforms (building an ecological civilization) and its key components, namely: the national climate program, the ecological red line, combating desertification and mitigating climate change, combating water pollution and eliminating water shortages. The following conclusion was made. China has rich and interesting experience in solving the problem of modernizing production, ensuring its rational distribution and reducing the environmental burden on the territory, primarily in the framework of combating environmental pollution and climate change. The Chinese experience may be interesting for other countries, including Russia.

Educational complexes as a stage of reform general education – is optimization for the good?

The article considers the issues of the processes of merging, consolidation, and unification of various educational organizations (preschool educational organizations and municipal general education schools) into educational complexes (on the example of Moscow and the Moscow region). The accumulated experience of the existence of educational complexes is summarized, the positive and negative aspects of the association of educational organizations in general education are described. Among some positive results, the availability and opening of additional high schools were noted; accessibility, openness and diversity of specialized classes; some "strong" schools managed to pull up more "weak" schools. Among the negative aspects of the association, the following are highlighted: the gap in continuity between various links: primary, secondary and senior; low psychological safety of participants in the educational process in educational complexes; the achievements of schoolchildren in different divisions of the educational complex and in different classes are uneven and can vary greatly; additional paid education for children is additionally costly for their parents; the possibility of undermining the psychosocial and age-related aspects of normal socialization and personal development of a student due to the heavy workload of academic subjects; disproportionate funding between the structural divisions of the complex; reduction of teacher rates; destruction of a unique director's corps (directors and his deputies within one school as an established team of professionals); loss of the individuality of the educational organization, established values and traditions; a preschool educational organization can become, as it were ,an "appendage" of the school; with a large number of children in the educational complex, the phenomenon of depersonalization can occur, students become a "gray mass" , etc. It is emphasized that not only economic and managerial efficiency is important, but also pedagogical. Education specialists need to take into account the existing shortcomings of already operating educational complexes in order, as a result, to achieve the goals and content of education, primarily for students.

Financial Management Practices And Profitability of Small Scale Enterprises Uganda, A Case of Kabale Municipality

The purpose of the study was to examine how financial Management Practices affect profitability amongst small scale enterprises. The study adopted descriptive and correlational research designs. The study used a multi regression analysis that determined the linear effect of financial management practices on profitability. A multi regression model also provided a basis for hypothesis testing. The findings established a significant influence of financial management practices on profitability. Evidence showed that working capital and cash management practices had strong associations with profitability. This study also established a triad-factor that limits profitability, characterizing operational costs, microeconomic, and personal characteristics. This study provided empirical evidence on the contribution of the innovation theory and managerial efficiency theory of profits to management of operational and production costs in business. The study recommends that Small business firms should ensure sound financial management practices in order to experience positive changes in their profitability levels. Small scale enterprise owners must pay a lot of attention to their working capital dynamics, cash management which highly affect their profitability levels. Small scale entrepreneurs should hire professionals and experts in financial management.