ESTABLISHING THE PRODUCT REALIZATION CONCEPT IN RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY

Railway industry owes its ever-growing importance to several factors, chiefly the fact that it is considered a relatively more comfortable and efficient mode of transit in the face of rapid urbanization. This study deals with the ways of improving the manufacturing process of components used in the railway industry.In this regard, IRIS plays a vital role in the process of ensuring the customer satisfaction, product quality, efficient process management and innovation for all components. Hence, the study attempts to investigate into the ways to obtain more optimized results drawing upon the IRIS standards.

ANALYSIS OF ELDERLY FINANCIAL STABILITY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES – CLASSIFICATION APPROACH

The purpose of the paper is to analyze and compare the financial situation of elderly people in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The above countries have gone through similar transformation path to market economy in their socio-economic development and they have been faced similar demographic and economic problems. The financial situation of elderly people in CEE region has been strongly influenced by demographic trends, changes in macroeconomic situation and reforms of existing pension systems. Increasing lifetime, low replacement rate from the public pension systems and little pension savings or even a lack of them cause that increasing number of elderly people can be exposed to financial instability or even poverty risk. Consequently, the examination of the financial standing of the elderly in CEE region seems to be an important scientific and practical issue.In the analysis, six variables measuring the level of income and expenses, exposure to poverty risk as well as gender differences in disposable income for age group of 65 years or over were included. The data characterizing the financial situation of elderly people in eleven CEE countries was acquired from Eurostat database. The authors applied Ward’s method and the k-means method in order to classify the examined countries according to the financial standing of elderly people. The obtained results allow to indicate countries with similar financial situation of elderly people in 2007, 2010 and 2014 as well as changes in clusters over the analyzed period. Moreover, the variance analysis was applied to indicate the influence of particular variables on the clustering results. The main findings show that the financial situation of the elderly in CEE countries is very differentiated and changeable, however over the analyzed period financial standing of the elderly seems to be the most similar in Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.

DETERMINANTS OF THE EXTERNAL DEBT IN TOGO: WHAT TEACHING FOR TOGO?

This work aims to highlight the characteristic elements of Togo's external public debt. The results after estimates, revealing the external debt as the dependent variable, indicate that, in the short term, the quality of the institutions and imports have significant effects on the external debt and the effect of the 1994 devaluation. In the long run, imports, export variation, and the quality of institutions have a significant impact on external debt and the effect of the devaluation in 1994.

IS THE CLUB CONVERGENCE HYPOTHESIS VALID FOR TURKEY TOURISM MARKET?

This study empirically revisits and investigates the tourism convergence via using the convergence club algorithm developed by Phillips and Sul (2007: Transition Modeling and Econometric Convergence Tests. Econometrica.75, 1771–1855). Abbott, De Vita and Altinay (2012: Revisiting The Convergence Hypothesis For Tourism Markets: Evidence From Turkey Using The Pairwise Approach. Tourism Management, 33, 537-544.) not to support club convergence hypothesis valid for Turkey tourism market. Yilanci and Eris (2012: Are tourism markets of Turkey converging or not? A Fourier stationary analysis. Anatolia, 23, 207-216 ) and, Ozcan and Erdogan (2015: Are Turkey's tourism markets converging? Evidence from the two-step LM and three-step RALS-LM unit root. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-18 ) support convergence hypothesis valid for some Turkey tourism market among countries. Therefore, unlike the findings of previously studies, we submit a club convergence for Turkey.

DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IN PAKISTAN: A STRUCTURAL VECTOR AUTO REGRESSION (SVAR) ANALYSIS

The study follows Structural Vector Auto Regression (SVAR) approach proposed by the so-called AB-model of Amisano and Giannini (1997) to find out relevant macroeconomic determinants of economic growth in Pakistan. Annual data is taken from World Development Indicators (CD-ROM, 2015) for the period 1976-2014. The widely-used Schwarz information criterion and Akaike information criterion is considered for the lag length in each estimated equation. Main findings of the study are that remittances received, gross national expenditures and inflation are found to be the best relevant positive and significant determinants of economic growth. Based on these empirical findings, we conclude that government should focus on overall economic growth augmenting factors while formulating any policy relevant to the concerned sector.

THE DRAMATIC SHIFT IN EMPHASIS FROM A SHAREHOLDER-DOMINATED APPROACH TO A STAKEHOLDER-ORIENTED CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MODEL

Corporate governance (CG) has emerged as one of the most recognized areas for researchers, academics, practitioner, and regulators over the last few decades. This paper will initially present an epigrammatic overview on key developments in corporate governance along with the intellectual foundations of the ‘shareholder versus stakeholder’ argument. Additionally, this study tries to analyze the contemporary shift in the perception of corporations from the shareholders wealth maximization to stakeholder’s valuation. It has been noticed that investigating cross country and firm based variances in wealth distribution between diverse interest groups is likely to continue as major focus for CG study. It has been experienced that the nature of the corporation is changing around the globe, Big multinationals have been splitting into smaller liberated corporation, access to capital market is become easier and physical resources are easily replaceable and less exclusive to business strategy therefore the human resources turn into significantly important means to a corporation’s existence and growth. In addition to that firm’s relationships with community and goodwill are becoming equally crucial. In line with that, the implementation of corporate governance principle in every country can be vary because of their different cultural, existing legal system, environmental condition, social and historical values. In addition to the principle differences regarding the interests of the parties served, the two orientations of corporate governance also differ in terms of purpose. This means that the corporate governance evolution will be progressive and different according to individual countries. Furthermore, from a systems-based viewpoint, recent progresses are often viewed as a “mixture” of domestic CG framework. Fundamental features from stakeholder leaned system are reframed with latest aspects of equity-holder leaned models, such as comprehensibility and precision. Shareholder and stakeholder focused CG, might help to create an equilibrium or complement each other such as happening in Germany and Japan. Global standards are also playing a major role in the recent convergence of CG.

PROBLEMS OF THE BUSINESS INCUBATORS IN MÉXICO

The Faculty of Accounting and Management of the Autonomous University of Coahuila projects to create a business incubator to support students that are entrepreneurs. Incubators created in other universities of the country; do not achieve continuance and the expected success. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the problems faced by other incubators to know the panorama that are before them. The results show that the informal economy, the excessive bureaucracy and the corruption beset the creation and permanence of such incubators. It is concluded that the government should show more political will to support the business incubators and counteract the poverty that in a good measure is the incubator of hired killers (sicarios) trapped by the organized crime.

CHALLENGES THE MEXICAN FAMILY OF ENTREPRENEURS FACES

Given that the Mexican family provides more support and assurance than the State, the family still takes an important place in the Mexican`s life. Therefore, this work describes and analyzes how this phenomenon can impact the profitability and continuity of the family businesses in our country. To achieve this objective it was done a documentary interdisciplinary consultation including classic authors of the Mexican`s psychology and present contributions from the field of the family business. The results obtained showed that the expectations that a family who owns a business has respect to the family and the family business itself have an effect on the assets and the family business`s legacy. It is concluded that it is not about to nullify the influence of the family in the family business, but rather to manage it adequately.

Do M&A deals create or destroy value? A meta-analysis.

Empirical research on the effect of M&A transactions on companies’ performance has not shown clear results of success. It is often assumed that these transactions destroy rather than create value. This study employs meta-analytical techniques to evaluate the outcomes of M&A transactions empirically. This method allows a large quantity of transactions to be examined. Additional factors influencing the performance of M&A transactions are found using a moderator analysis. In total, 55,399 transactions between 1950 and 2010, extracted from 33 previous M&A studies, have been examined. The results of this study confirm findings from previous empirical studies, stating that M&A transactions predominantly do not have a positive impact on the success of a company. A moderator analysis indicates that the type of M&A and the time frame used for measurement influence the success of M&A transactions.

A Comprehensive Framework for Developing Industry Scenarios

The purpose of this paper is to help a business to develop scenarios for the future of its industry. It is intended to find the factors that would affect and change the outlook mostly in the current status and anticipated future, based on the results obtained from environmental analysis.By using the trends to be revealed by the environmental analysis, it is possible to anticipate how the field of business in which we operate or plan to enter will evolve in the future. The status is reviewed according to the assumptions and the results to be obtained are evaluated. Thus, assumptions are grouped under various scenarios, their potential impacts on the industry are identified, and the potential status in the industry is defined.