The importance of colour on the communication of financial data in management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of colour on the communication of financial data in management and to encourage future discussion on related topic. Design/methodology/approach – Hypothesis was designed building on relevant literatures. Quantitative discrete data were collected through a mini-test activity in a lecture from students. The results were reviewed and evaluated by relevant statistical tool. Findings – The authors found consistent statistical significance results in the mini-test. The findings support that users prefer to choose the financial data presented in cool colours in business management context. Research limitations/implications – Gaining the understanding of colour’s influence on decision making and behaviour is subjected to complexity. There are many other contextual factors should be taken into consideration in practice. Although the design of the mini-test in this study is relatively simple, it still provides clues for the issue. With the discussions and findings of this paper, the authors shed some light on the direction of potential uses of colour on the communication of financial data in management context. The findings could also be used by management educators to facilitate related discussions among students regarding the complexity of business communication and the importance of perception in decision making. For example, decision making could be affected by various factors (such as colour) outside verbal and text. Originality/value – Managers often need to use financial data in communication for various purposes in work place. The authors believe this is the first time that a study like this had been conducted to specifically review and discuss the importance of colour on the communication of financial data in management. Hopefully, the work reported in this paper could be viewed as reference for management educators, researchers and managers in future research or practical applications on related topics

FRACTAL FETISHES Essays on the Organization of the System of Information

Fractal Fetishes is a philosophical investigation of the nature and organization of the global system of information, which comprises our knowledge and experience of the social and which defines our individual and collective existence. This thesis contends that digital technologies have brought about the genesis of a world, where everything is, and it is not or it can be at the same time. In this world the way in which the global system of information is organized, distributed and consequently, individually or collectively incorporated, leads to unchallenged conceptual misrecognitions and logically unjustified receptions of anything as being true and real . The later add up to the body of social knowledge as critical conceptual inaccuracies and inconsistencies which make our understanding of the ways social knowledge is constructed and our actual understanding and evaluation of this knowledge, problematic. Information processing uncontrollably creates conceptual confusions and disillusions, adding to the recycling procedure of already inadequate and problematic scientific justifications and mistakenly-thought-as-obsolete conclusions. The thesis calls for fresh new thinking, accepting that there can only be variations on given issues, that there can be only theoretical approximations to the true or the real; truth and reality, and meaning themselves have become ambiguous and, in a sense, of unimportant priority. The priority is rather to set individual standards in a redefinition of the content of the available bodies of knowledge within a global context. The challenge we have to accept is to reconsider our ways of processing information, and hopefully reach an adequate degree of understanding of, how ourselves and the world around us, are constructed within our daily digital environments and informational landscapes. At the core of the analysis in this thesis is the concept of information. The thesis examines various aspects of the system of information, leading to a series of theoretical approximations regarding the structure and organization of information systems, and information processing by machines and human agents. It aims to identify patterns of power, domination and struggle within digital information channels of human/machine communication and interaction, in order to advance our understanding of the ways in which digital information processing organizes our representations and realities of the world around us, and consequently necessitates and directs decisions of social action. This thesis proposes an analytical model of the structure and organization of information, termed as Infogramic Analysis. It is suggested that, the system of information spans along multiple coexisting space-time coordinates: an Era of Romanticism (actuality), an Epoch of Ersatz (imitation), and an Age of Chimera (fantasy). Within these coordinates, the processes of Virtual Implosion and Fractal Dynamics are proposed, referring to the dynamic change of the global system of information along distinctive phase spaces towards a fractal state of meaning and value. Virtual Implosion produces irregular, contradictory and chaotic distortions of authentic informational patterns, in three trajectories of fractal mutation: Syghysis (deconstruction), Molynsis (differentiation), and Photococciasis (reconstruction). Fractal Dynamics refer to a series of five powerful structural micro-processes which power up and interlink the trajectories of virtual implosion: Catastrophe: (destruction), Orgasm (excitement), Metamorphosis (transformation), Epigenesis (rebirth), and Anomia (lawlessness). In this context, the concept of information is analyzed through what is termed here its Infotype; the infotype refers to the relation of a set of information to meaning and on the type of representational code of the specific set of information. It is suggested that the infotype of each set of information can be mapped with distinct characteristics, what is here defined as an Infogram. Infograms (composed of smaller units termed as datagrams) are packets (groups) of informational patterns of accumulated communicated information and existing cloned libraries of acquired knowledge and experience. Infograms can be distinguished according to the core theme to which the set of information is referring to, in: Authentic, Simulated, and Fractal. Infograms develop unpredictable communicational exchanges due to dynamically present or potentially existent informational associations and interactions. Informational interactions, are here defined as Endogenesis, referring to three levels of innate structural condition: Organization, Lethargy, and Disorganization. Information associations, are defined as Exogenesis, referring to three levels of external interactions: Simplicity, Apathy, and Complexity. Within the proposed framework of infogramic analysis, it is argued that bodies or segments of social knowledge may as well implode towards states of genuine fractal formations of authentic and simulated infograms. In this context then, information, hence, systems and bodies of social knowledge based on it, they all mutate to digital illusions, altered states of reality which come to dominate our so-conceived real and conceptual imaginations through a series of daily communication practices and experiences. We do live in a diverse and uncharacteristic world that moves fast at varied levels and directions locally, globally, and multi-directionally. We hardly get a glance of part or of the whole picture rather we only manage to feel the imprints of change, which nourish our insecurities for the reassurance for progress and development. In the contemporary global information society, of hyper-real landscapes and fantasy worlds, fractalized information establishes new relations of meanings and understandings of the world. What is needed are different ways of thinking on survival in an informational ocean of lived illusions and lost meanings. Human consciousness and awareness find it more and more difficult to see directions, to survive, and to sustain their existence. Whether it is a new starting point is one question, but is definitely a point of no return to an ambiguous future