The Missing Curriculum Link: Personal Financial Planning

With increasing personal and business financial challenges facing today’s professionals, we, as business school faculty, have a responsibility to offer the educational background that should enable rising professionals to successfully manage finances.  Unfortunately, the results of a recent analysis of curriculum offerings in Personal Financial Planning indicate that we, as faculty, have not fully accepted this responsibility.  Only three out of the 131 four-year institutions reviewed have a required Personal Financial Planning course in their curriculums. Quite frankly, we’re permitting launching a generation of students who are unprepared to manage both their own and potentially others’ financial affairs.  With that shortfall of a course offering as a backdrop, we suggest the following content for a required Personal Financial Planning course for all students majoring in Business Administration

Doing Business In..: A Class Exercise For International Accounting

International accounting is taught in the curriculum of about one-third of the largest institutions in the US.  Within the context of this course, many instructors will attempt to cover a diverse array of business topics while integrating financial reporting standards worldwide.   This breadth of topics is frequently challenging in obtaining a cohesive set of knowledge for the enrolled students.  The use of a research paper documenting the business practices within a particular country and the subsequent presentation to either the international accounting class or preferably a larger audience can serve as a tool for organizing students’ understanding of the breadth of the material and having individual students present a deeper depth of understanding within the selected country.&nbsp

Doing Business In Australia: Illustration Of A Class Exercise

In this paper, the authors will discuss the current regulations and culture of Australia as an educational tool for an ex-patriot hoping either to locate a business there or obtain more insight into doing business in the country.

Transitional Economies Of Europe And The Development Of Financial Reporting Standards: A Look At The Correlation Between A Successful Economic Transition And The Development Of Financial Reporting Standards And Laws

During the late 1980s to early 1990s, countries around the world, such as Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, began transitioning their economies from planned socialism, more specifically, Communism, to free market capitalism. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these economies of Europe and Asia and their adoption of appropriate financial reporting. With Poland and the Czech Republic, there is a positive correlation between a successful transition and the number of financial reporting standards implemented. However, deviations from this correlation can arise, such as in the cases of Lithuania and Russia, where the promulgation of accounting standards is delayed or there is no organization to regulate the implementation of the accounting standards

Changes In Higher Education: How To Address The Learning Needs Of The Latino Population

Institutions of higher learning in the United States are facing challenges associated with changing demographics. Latino students are making up an increasing portion of the incoming student body than previously.  The unique cultural characteristics of Latino students will require adaptations to the teaching techniques typically used in American business schools.  The unique environment in business schools provides opportunities and challenges for Latino students and their instructors.  We use Hofstede’s cultural classifications in order to map the characteristics of Latino students and suggest six business teaching suggestions designed to increase the learning outcomes for the Latino students

Microlending: What Business Can Do To Facilitate Community-Based Growth

Billions of dollars have been expended in foreign assistance throughout the third world, with much of this aid being provided by the not-for-profit community. While frequently effective in facilitating short-term benefits, these projects often do not improve the continuing living conditions for the residents of the community.  Not-for-profits generally are in the business of short-term crisis relief; consequently, they do not have a focus on job provisions in the affected community that would increase their living standards in the long-term.  Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are in the business of job creation, which not only provides long-term benefits for the entrepreneur, but also for the entire community.  Microlending, a term coined originally by Muhammad Yunus to describe very small loans made in third-world countries, has had an enormous impact on the lives of entrepreneurs, their families, and their communities.  Many not-for-profits may wish to employ the techniques illustrated by Yunus and other successful microlending institutions.  They may find the task overwhelming, however, without employing business professionals, whose services can be costly.  For not-for-profits who might be interested in starting such a program, this paper will describe the process of microlending, articulate methods of selecting a loan recipient, and show mechanisms for documenting a microloan

Cultural Factors, Economic Affiliations And The Adoption Of International Financial Reporting Standards

We examine cultural characteristics in the context of economic affiliation and the timing of IFRS adoption. Prior work identifies cultural characteristics as key factors in the development of accounting systems world-wide. Our analysis extends this literature by showing that these same factors lead to economic clusters and to the propensity for adopting a universally accepted set of accounting rules. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that, at least in one case, cultural factors are able to predict economic affiliations. Second, we provide evidence that certain cultural characteristic are affiliated with the delay in adoption of IFRS. Our results are valuable to local as well as international accounting standard setters as they look to negotiate common ground for convergence. Our examination of the cultural aspects distinctive in adoption patterns may provide insight into what specific aspects of the IFRS must be modified to expand and accelerate convergence

Performance, satisfaction and turnover in call centers: The effects of stress and optimism

Abstract This paper reports the results of a study, which measured the role of optimism and its effect on stress in call centers. Service providers at inbound call centers answered questionnaires designed to measure their personal orientation towards optimism, perceptions of job stress, work/nonwork conflict, performance, absenteeism and intent to turnover. We found that optimists did perceive lower levels of job stress and lower work/nonwork conflict. However, pessimists reported higher levels of performance and satisfaction and lower turnover intent. Implications for future research are discussed.

Service Learning: Bringing The Business Classroom To Life

While service-learning may be easily incorporated into medical or legal fields, this type of active learning generally has not been historically integrated into any discipline within the business curriculum. This is unfortunate, as the utilization of business students in not-for-profit environments can provide a triple-win scenario:  the students receive an enriched learning experience, as they likely will confront opportunities at the entry level that are not generally experienced until the middle-management level; the administrators at the not-for-profit have access to business students with skills that are necessary but typically expensive to acquire; and the constituents served by the organization are enriched by having improved delivery or efficiency of service.  Within this paper, we will discuss the service-learning environment and will then detail a project we have worked on in a service-learning-oriented class, with the hope that others may use our experience to facilitate their own service-learning projects as students or within the context of a class

Education & Entrepreneurship: Implications For Contemporary Microfinance

In world regions receiving direct foreign aid, beneficiaries of aid often lack the education required to remove themselves from poverty. Micro-lending refers to the initiation of small loans to the neediest of borrowers who are unable to secure traditional financing from financial intermediaries. In order for micro-lending to thrive as a viable alternative to traditional government aid, borrowers must not only receive a loan, but also an education in business to fully equip borrowers with necessary resources to establish and operate a prosperous business entity. The authors will argue for the provision of increased educational resources and discuss the disparities between the US model of education and that of third-world nations. Furthermore, the authors will prescribe steps to develop educational materials and train micro-credit borrowers to better guarantee the viability of microfinance