Identifying A Profile Of Key Competencies For Financial Planners

In order to provide quality professional education programs to advance knowledge, skills and competencies of individuals in the financial services industry and in continuing education courses, there is a need to identify a professional’s key competencies profile. In recent years, many financial planning associations worldwide have become interested in establishing competency-based requirements for certifying professionals and have adopted competency-based approaches for continuing education. The purpose of this paper is to identify a profile of key competencies for financial planners.  The empirical study is carried out through a stratified survey of financial planners within insurance companies, commercial banks, consulting firms, credit unions, security dealers and brokers, trusts and independent professionals.  More than individual knowledge or skills, this research views professional competence as result-oriented, expressing an optimal mobilization and use of resources available in the multidisciplinary areas of financial planning, according to professional standards and in harmony with best practices to achieve customer satisfaction. The research design presents an innovative conceptual framework which facilitates the identification of a profile of key competencies for financial planners. Findings enable an advance in knowledge, both at an academic and a professional level, by identifying a profile of twelve specific dimensions of key competencies for financial planners within the financial services industry

The Role of Inbound Open Innovation Sources on Innovativeness and Advantage of New Products in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

This Ph.D. thesis provides a quantitative empirical study based on a theoretical model, which deepens and extends previous models by analyzing the different constructs that concur to innovation performance by utilizing various sources of inbound open innovation in SMEs. It empirically investigates the causal relationship of different sources of inbound open innovation and their effects on new product innovativeness and the effect of new product innovativeness on new product advantage in small and medium-sized enterprises in Petroleum and Gas equipment industry in Iran. The theoretical model considers the relationship between different sources of outside-in (Inbound) open innovation collaborating with external partners like customers, competitors, suppliers, universities, research institutions and consultants, and their separate diverse effects on new product innovativeness and measuring new product innovativeness effect on new product advantage of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Petroleum and Gas equipment industry. Furthermore, based on previous studies, this research contributes to the concept of internal R&D capability and firm's innovation performance, this thesis measures the effect of internal R&D expenditures as annual sales percentage on new product innovativeness, which regarded as organizational R&D strengths and intensity in SMEs of Petroleum and Gas equipment industry. In addition, building on previous literature, organizational declarative memory as one of the components of organizational memory, which interacts, with concepts of facts, events, and propositions is considered to measure its effect on new product advantage. Likewise, in order to ensure the robustness of results, several control variables were included in this research. These controls have to be considered as the internal organizational component or external organizational elements. Firm size, technology turbulence, market turbulence, and competition intensity were added as control variables to account for the effects of extraneous factors on new product advantage (NPA). The research method of this study is a survey, causal (Explanatory) and descriptive quantitative research method based on structural equation modeling (SEM). It is based on a quantitative method using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The survey was done among 150 firms in Petroleum and Gas equipment industry in the Iranian context and the empirical analysis had been done at the firm level. For data collection procedure, the simple random procedure as the sampling method was used between 150 firms in Tehran as the capital region of Iran where the main head offices of these 150 firms are located. 150 SMEs were selected as the target population of this Ph.D. thesis and the dataset was collected from such firms. As the research method is based on partial least square structural equation modeling, (PLS-SEM), the purpose of this research is not only based on predictive approach and forecasting but also to contribute to developing and extending the current existing theory of outside-in (Inbound) open innovation activities in SMEs. This research contributes to theory development of surveying and examining the exploitation of different inbound open innovation sources and their effects on new product innovativeness performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The data collection had been done at the firm level, the CEOs, marketing managers, R&D managers, and new product development managers were the respondents to the questionnaire. The results indicate that not all different types of outside-in (Inbound) open innovation sources positively and significantly affected new product innovativeness in SMEs. This is because of this reason that some sources are financial based which SMEs cannot afford to exploit it inside their firms, and SMEs' weaknesses and challenges in innovation practices arise from their size as well. SMEs in general and in Petroleum and Gas equipment industry in particular in this research according to their small scale and size can limit SMEs potential capacity and organizational capability to use all external sources. Furthermore, SMEs suffer from resource limitation or traditional closed innovation models. SMEs prefer to collaborate with sources that can foster and increase their internal organizational and innovation capabilities and capacities based on partnering/collaborating approach, which do not require investment strategies or investing their financial resources in external innovation sources in order to leverage the level of new product innovativeness. They prefer to use a more collaborative approach and partnership with other external innovation sources rather than exploiting sources, which require financial and monetary sources

How does rumination impact cognition? A first mechanistic model.

Rumination is a process of uncontrolled, narrowly-foused neg- ative thinking that is often self-referential, and that is a hall- mark of depression. Despite its importance, little is known about its cognitive mechanisms. Rumination can be thought of as a specific, constrained form of mind-wandering. Here, we introduce a cognitive model of rumination that we devel- oped on the basis of our existing model of mind-wandering. The rumination model implements the hypothesis that rumina- tion is caused by maladaptive habits of thought. These habits of thought are modelled by adjusting the number of memory chunks and their associative structure, which changes the se- quence of memories that are retrieved during mind-wandering, such that during rumination the same set of negative memo- ries is retrieved repeatedly. The implementation of habits of thought was guided by empirical data from an experience sam- pling study in healthy and depressed participants. On the ba- sis of this empirically-derived memory structure, our model naturally predicts the declines in cognitive task performance that are typically observed in depressed patients. This study demonstrates how we can use cognitive models to better un- derstand the cognitive mechanisms underlying rumination and depression