Financial Management and Analysis is an introduction to the concepts, tools, and applications of finance. The purpose of this textbook is to communicate the fundamentals of financial management and financial analysis. This textbook is written in a way that will enable students who are just beginning their study of finance to understand financial decision-making and its role in the decision-maki…

If there was ever a time when higher education needed sustained scholarly reflection on finance, it is now. The reality of globalization for higher education suggests an increase in competition?competition for students, faculty, and resources. Member states of the European Union are currently making a speedy and concerted effort to harmonize their curricula and educational processes. This exerc…

The history of communications is a branch of the history of technology but, strictly speaking, it is in a category of its own. The goods produced by technology, whether a piece of machinery, a piece of clothing or a piece of furniture, are tangible: they perform some useful function. The goods produced by communications are messages. They are mostly useless but when they are useful they can be …

Since 1959 Ashridge has earned the reputation of being one of the world?s leading business schools. Through all our activities, from executive education and post-graduate qualification programmes to research and consulting, we combine leading-edge thinking with a strong practical focus. We believe that learning must be involving, challenging and above all real, so that it does make a significan…

And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the …

Although political communication can trace its roots to the earliest classical studies of Aristotle and Plato, modern political communication research is very much an interdisciplinary field of study, drawing on concepts from communication, political science, journalism, sociology, psychology, history, rhetoric, and other fields. In their seminal Handbook of Political Communication, Nimmo and S…

Completion of this Handbook would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated assistance of numerous people. Several years ago Howard Kaplan, Editor of the Kluwer/Plenum Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, asked Dudley Poston to edit a Handbook of Population. Poston then asked his long-time collaborator and fellow demographer, Michael Micklin, to join him as co-editor. Pos…

Much of contemporary public finance can be described as being either Wicksellian or Edgeworthian in character. In the former, fiscal phenomena arise through complex processes of exchange: in the latter, they arise through acts of choice by some maximizing agent. This chapter traces these alternative orientations in the history of thought as far back as the Cameralists, compares these writers wi…

Each discipline optimizes its task to the best of its ability. Each manufacturing discipline has its own objectives and criteria of optimization according to its function. For example: the designer main objective is meeting product specifications: the process planner?s main objective is that the items will meet drawing specifications: the production planner?s main objectives are meeting the due…

Since the horrific and tragic events of September 11th, nothing has been more discussed and scrutinised in the public arena than Islam. The world at large has been subjected to a wealth of analysis by 'experts' which has further fuelled people's curiosity about this religion. Book-sellers in Europe and the Middle East have reported an upsurge in interest in the Qur'an, which confirms what one B…