Mental budgeting and the management of household finance

Mental budgeting and financial management were investigated in a large sample of the Dutch population. Mental budgeting was quite common, and was explained from general education, having saving goals, financial knowledge, time orientation, and financial situation. Also, mental budgeting, in addition to effects of financial situation, time orientation and financial knowledge, was positively associated with having an overview of expenses and current accounts, and household financial management.     

Responsibility,planning and risk management: moralizing everyday finance through financial education

The individualization, privatization and marketization of risk management represent a fundamental dimension of the financialization of everyday life. As individuals are required to engage with financial products and services as the main way of protecting themselves from risks and uncertainties, their economic welfare and security are construed as depending largely on their own financial decisions. Within this setting, the concept of financial literacy and accompanying practices of financial education have emerged as a prominent institutional field handling the formulation and communication of the attributes and dispositions that arguably constitute the proper financial actor. This article analyzes financial education programmes currently conducted by state agencies in Israel, examining the notions and principles they articulate when defining and explaining proper financial conduct. The study indicates that moral themes and categories occupy a salient place in the formulation of the character traits that constitute the desired literate financial actor. Notions of individual responsibility, planning ahead and rational risk management are presented not merely as instrumental resources, but as moral imperatives. Through these notions, the programmes moralize a broad array of everyday practices of personal finance such as saving, investing, borrowing and budget management, thereby connecting the sphere of financial matters to the domain of moral virtues. Offering a representation of particular modes of financial conduct as constitutive components of morally virtuous personhood, these practices imbue the financial field as a whole, especially its current generalized logic of individualized and marketized risk management, with moral meanings, hence contributing to the normalization and depoliticization of the financialization of everyday life.     

Household finance management and the labour market: a case study in Hartlepool

This paper reports on the results of a survey carried out in Hartlepool towards the end of 1989. It considers the problems posed by data collection through survey methods to enquire into the management of household finances, and adopts a procedure which first examines treatment of the man's wage, and follows with additional questions about use of the woman's wage, access to personal spending money, and the location of final authority over spending. The data are based on a comparsion between four different groupings with reference to the man's employment status: Group A: couples in which the man has been unemployed for at least the last 12 months. Group B: couples in which the man is currently employed and has held the same job for at least the last twelve months. Group C: couples in which the man has been recently recruited to employment. Group D: a residual group covering any other status, notably early retirement, sickness, disability or student status. An age range of 20–55 was imposed. Marked contrasts were found between these groupings though further variation was introduced by employment for the woman. Broadly speaking there are two instances of heightened financial influence for women: low income prompts female management, whilst women's employment (and therefore higher income) increases joint management. It is in the traditional and declining situation of a sole male earner in which female authority or influence is at its lowest.     

Time orientations and emotion-rules in finance

This article explores how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena. I look at these firms and their actions with a particular focus on “temporality” and requisite “emotion-rules,” where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty. Firms impose specific emotion-rules, depending on national policies, official duties, and interpretations of each risk. In finance, caveat emptor (i.e., buyer or lender distrust) is an emotion-rule set in screening policies and data collection for credit risks and risks of fraud by personnel, and it gives rise to actual emotions. I argue that three time-orientations are significant in creating emotion-rules. If a past, present, or a long-term future is deployed to construct a future, that creates and frames an institution’s attempts to manage uncertainty. Looking exclusively at Anglo-American corporate finance policies and strategies (often deemed the international “one best way”), six modes of certainty constructions are presented. Each is assessed against the dispositions and emotional strategies required in highly-skilled careers, in specific organizational settings. The relative influence of individual perspectives, institutional rules and general typologies of social action is assessed and found to comprise one past view, three present views, and one future-oriented perspective towards the future. Implications are outlined for emotion-rules relevant to financial careers and office. This article was written before the full financial crisis unfolded, which the argument here substantially foreshadows.

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并购整合过程中的人力资源管理

以美国为代表的企业兼并收购活动走过了近百年的历程,如今已发展到第五个阶段,表现出许多鲜明的特征:并购规模越来越大,而且主要是同行业间的并购,是一种战略上的强强联合和优势互补。在中国加入WTO的经济形势下,为了使企业更具竞争力,兼并与收购和战略联盟在中国正以惊人的速度持续发展。行业重组不断发生,例如去年钢铁企业、航空业、电信业和金融服务业的合并等。可是据专家的调查研究,只有大约35 %的兼并收购能够达到预定目标。分析并购企业成败的原因,影响因素非常之多,但是人力资源整合始终起着举足轻重的作用,也是并购能否成功的关…     

Redundancy and patterns of household finance1

This paper examines the nature and implications of different patterns of income flow within households in the critical situation of redundancy for the male main earner. In a sample of forty households a number of different patterns of resource allocation were found, and may be divided into four general types: one based on female control, two on male control, and one on dual control. A normative tendency to attach priority to items of collective household expenditure was detected, together with a division of labour which left the woman largely responsible for domestic affairs. I argue that given these circumstances, the lower the household income, the greater the need for unitary control, and the greater the likelihood that this control will be exercised by the woman. The paper goes on to examine the implications of the different patterns of income flow for marital relations, outlining the way in which the renegotiation of personal and domestic needs will have implications for, and also be influenced by, the nature of the marital relationship, the degree of both spouses' involvement in extra-household networks, the characteristics of these networks, and the resources which they make available.     

Knowledge capture and the retirement of the director of finance: succession planning in the San Mateo County Human Services Agency

Concern over the impending retirement of several top-level managers led a county agency to engage in efforts aimed at more efficient succession management. Administrators developed plans to prevent the loss of invaluable knowledge and wisdom accompanying retirement of experienced agency leaders. The agency's Director of Finance (DoF) was one of the first key figures projected to retire, and a succession plan was implemented to transfer his knowledge for use after his departure. The knowledge transfer process involved three stages, including: (1) employing the DoF as teacher, having him develop curricula and conduct trainings; (2) engaging the DoF as mentor, allowing an existing staff member and the DoF's successor to shadow and be coached by the DoF; and (3) developing a knowledge management system that could be used after the DoF departed. This case study describes the knowledge transfer process and experiences shared by the DoF and this agency.     

Transforming finance for the future

Abstract

Significant changes in external market conditions have resulted in operations placing greater demands on the finance function. Traditional finance departments are increasingly expected to deliver more value and be more proactive in supporting the organization's overall business strategies. Unfortunately, many finance departments are not yet ready to meet such challenges. This article proposes a transformation process to reorganize present day finance functions to become a finance of the future. The proposed process applies tools such as best practices, outsourcing and technology to achieve a desired future outcome.     

Human resource management,employee engagement,and nonprofit hospital performance

Human resource management (HRM) has been shown to impact organizational performance, but more research is needed on particular human resource (HR) practices in nonprofits and their effect on performance. In this article, we explore one HRM practice argued to influence performance, employee engagement in decision‐making, examining whether involving staff at different levels of a nonprofit affects nonprofit organizational performance. Drawing on data from a 2011 study of nonprofit hospitals, we find employee engagement has a positive influence on managerial and stakeholder perceptions of organizational performance. Employee engagement in decision‐making is also related to objective nonprofit performance measures, although the effects are less consistent. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for nonprofit research and practice.     

Performing the limits of finance

Recent financial turmoil has put emphasis once again on the very meaning and reach of ‘finance’. In doing so, recent financial crises have also provoked questions about the very ‘ends’ of finance: Where are the borders of finance? Given the expansive reach of financial innovation over the past two decades, are there any serious limits to the kinds of practices that can be converted into financial objects? Does the culture of finance (expansive and all encompassing) encounter meaningful interruptions? This paper explores these questions by reviewing a cluster of public-art responses to the 2008 financial crisis mounted by artists critical of the expansive logic of financial abstraction. This paper pays particular attention to the work of Fergal McCarthy and Fred Forest, two public artists who have confronted finance and its rational culture with practices of gameplay, whimsy, and carnival. In doing so, these artists invoke a strategy designed to lay the all-encompassing claims of financial abstraction alongside its own impossibility; alongside performances which undermine the expansive claims of financial abstraction. These are strategies, I conclude, which can interrupt the technocratic discourses which dominate the contemporary cultures of finance; strategies which, in the words of one artist, evoke ‘plausible states of uncertainty’ about our faith in financial abstraction.     

'Strange money': risk, finance and socialized debt

This paper explores an essential but neglected aspect of recent discussions of the banking and financial system, namely money itself. Specifically, I take up a distinction drawn by Susan Strange which has never been fully elaborated: between a financial system that is global, and an international monetary system that remains largely territorial. I propose a sociological elaboration of this distinction by examining each category, 'finance' and 'money', in terms of its distinctive orientation to risk and debt. Money is distinguished by its high degree of liquidity and low degree of risk, corresponding to expectations that derive from its status as a 'claim upon society'- a form of socialized debt. But as Strange argued, these features of money are being undermined by the proliferation of sophisticated instruments of financial risk management -'strange money'- that, as monetary substitutes, both weaken states' capacity to manage money, and more broadly, contribute to 'overbanking'. The ultimate danger, according to Strange, is the 'death of money'. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the distinction for sociological arguments about the changing nature of money.     

Housing finance for the ageing Singapore population: The potential of creative housing finance schemes

A previous paper which relates to the above topic¹ briefly surveyed the current housing situation in Singapore to highlight the predicaments which beset the elderly. After a review of Home Equity Conversion Scheme (HECS) within the socioeconomic and cultural milieu of Singapore, it was concluded that the sale-leaseback scheme, if promulgated by the Singapore Housing and Development Board, could be the panacea for the housing-finance problem of the elderly.This paper continues the discussion by reviewing Creative Housing Finance Schemes (CHFS) in the light of the socio-economic and cultural parameters co-existing in Singapore. Whereas HECS seeks to resolve the housing-finance predicament of the elderly who stay put, CHFS seek to resolve the housing-finance problem for the elderly who move or want to move into a new house which is purpose-built for the elderly. The paper concludes that saleability of homes of the elderly is the main impediment to the successful implementation of both HECS and CHFS. The problem could, however, be resolved through government intervention.