HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON THE MARKETS OF THE WORLD TODAY: CASE OF TESCO

OVER THE YEARS

STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER: COURSE NAME: DEPARTMENT: COURSE CODE: SUPERVISOR: DATE OF SUBMISSION:

Type your name here Enter your student number Graduate Diploma in Business Business GD 10 Type your supervisor s name here DD MMMM 20YY

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 3 OBJECTIVES AND AIMS ................................................................................................................... 5 THIS IS WHERE YOUR MULTIPLE QUESTIONS THAT WE WORKED ON WITH RAFI SHOULD GO. ................................. 5 LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 6 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS ................................................................................................ 7 OVERVIEW.......................................................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. POPULATION AND STUDY SAMPLE ............................................................ ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. SAMPLE SIZE AND SELECTION OF SAMPLE ............................................................................................... 7 COLLECTION OF DATA............................................................................ ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. DATA MANAGEMENT ............................................................................ ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. DATA ANALYSIS STRATEGIES ............................................................................................................... 7 ETHICS........................................................................................................................................... 7 TIMEFRAMES................................................................................................................................... 8 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE STUDY .............................................................................. 9 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 10 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................. 11 APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE ........................................................................................................... 11

INTRODUCTION The topic as stated above has been chosen in order to study the roots of financial management. In order to study the impact of a concept or a theory, it is very important for the researcher to thoroughly study the roots of the theory. Once this is done, it is possible for the researcher to analyze the change in the mindsets of the people establishing and using that theory. This will be my stance for the research of finance and management course. Financial management today is used by a number of investors and financial analysts. It is one of the core courses that are taught at undergraduate levels in business schools and has a number of applications in research, analysis and forecasting. Financial management has both theoretical and applicative underpinnings however, mostly in universities, the course is taught in more application form, working more on formulas and techniques rather than on interpretation. It is understood however, that the importance of the interpretations of the financial management analysis are way more than the formulas and the numerical results themselves. Even though all that is manually taught to the students for better understanding, business solutions and specialized software are now easily available to solve a given problem numerically. The computer program will even give the analyst or the researcher some recommended advices about a particular situation but it should be understood that even those proposals are well calculated but subjective and general opinions about the solution to the problem, fed into the computer by a human expert. And even though the use of specialized computer systems is indispensible, the systems are made and used by human and therefore, it is immensely important to study why the financial experts think in the way that they do. The proposed research will be seeking to answer the following questions: i) What is financial management and what are the core theories and assumptions of the field? ii) Who are the main founders, researchers and developers of the field and how has the course evolved over history. iii) What impact does financial management has on other theoretical and application fields?

iv)

What were the basic mindsets, ideas and problems that led to the creation and then development of financial management?

v)

Who are the main beneficiaries of the development of the course, how do they benefit and where does the subject lack?

OBJECTIVES AND AIMS This is where your multiple questions that we worked on with Rafi should go.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Shim and Siegel (2008) say that, Financial management is the process of planning decisions in order to maximize the owners wealth. Chandra (2008) notes that financial management emerged as a distinct field of study around the starting of the twentieth century and that the process of evolution of the subject in question can actually be divided into three wide phases. The first phase was the traditional one and lasted for about four decades in which financial management was mainly focusing upon the episodic events and the approach mainly descriptive and institutional. Moreover, the role of financial managers was restricted to being looked upon solely as that of investment banker and lenders. Brigham and Ehrhardt (2011) say that the way organizations and their finances are managed, plays a significant role in the creation or settling of the financial crisis of the world. Financial management relies heavily on allied disciplines such as economics and accounting and it is essentially an applied discipline which is approached from the perspective of the financial manager of a business enterprise (Correia et al, 2007). The goals of financial management or corporate finance are: i) ii) iii) iv) To maximize the wealth of the stockholder To maximize the profits of the organization To maximize the rewards of management To discipline the behaviour of the organization and manage them to achieve a preset goal v) Work in accordance to the social responsibility

Khan and Jain (2007) describe finance as the art and science of managing money and then financial management forms only one of the two areas of finance. The functions of financial management are to make informed decisions and to manage the equity, costs and debt of an organization (Puxty et al, 1988).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The research design chosen for this research will be employing both primary and secondary means of data collection and then again, will be both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The proposed research will study the evolution of financial management in theory from books and journals available online and then relate it to the findings of the organization chosen for this purpose. The population chosen are the markets in the United Kingdom and the sample chosen is the retail giant Tesco. In this the information will be gathered through history of the organization and interview with one of the managers of the organization. Sample has been selected on the basis of length of existence of the organization since it is to be related to the evolution of the field of study. Moreover, Tesco is a publicly listed company and underwent a major transformation in 1970s. What role did financial management have to play in it will then be studied in the proposed research. Primary data will be gathered in the form of interview from the manager of the organization and also in the shape of questionnaire from the general public. The questionnaire will be directed towards asking the importance of financial management in the world today and where do they think the field is lacking. Data Analysis strategies The quantitative data that is gathered will be analyzed with the help of graphical analysis (results of the questionnaire). For this, computer software will be used to avoid human calculation errors. Ethics The secondary portion of the data collection and analysis in not expected to hinder in the process of research conduction on a very large extent and that is because the information will already be publicly available and in the research project, it will be well referenced to in order to

avoid plagiarism. The only ethical issue which may form an obstacle is the maintenance of privacy of the name of the interviewer in order to avoid any social complication. Timeframes Date/Week February 28 March 4 (Week 1) March 7 11 (Week 2) March 14 18 (Week 3) March 21 25 (Week 4) Planned Action Research for topic Reading literature Writing and submitting proposal Developing questionnaires and contacting for interview March 28 April 1 (Week 5) April 4 8 (Week 6) April 11 15 (Week 7) April 18 22 (Week 8) April 25 29 (Week 9) Reading and writing literature review Getting the questionnaires filled Analysing the data Compiling the report and proof reading. Submit Final Research Report April 29th

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE STUDY

The study will help in analyzing why financial management is, the way it is today and what impacts does its current state have on the way business are financially managed today. The proposed paper however will be limited in the context of empirical study because it will be theoretically correlating the facts and not empirically.

References

Brigham, E. and Ehrhardt, M. (2011). Financial Management. 13th Ed. USA: Cengage Learning. Correia, et al. (2007). Financial Management. 6th Ed. South Africa: Juta and Co. Chandra, P. (2008). Financial Management. 7th Ed. India: Tata McGraw hills. Khan and Jain. (2007). Financial Management. 5th Ed. India: Tata McGraw hills Puxty et al. (1988). Financial Management. 1st Ed. Singapore. Colset Pte Ltd. Shim, J. and Siegel, J. (2008). Financial Management. 3rd Ed. China: Library of Congress Press.

APPENDICES Appendix 1: Questionnaire Rate on a scale of one to five i) How important do you think finances are in the life and operations of a business organization? ii) iii) iv) v) How important to do think the management of those finances is? How efficiently do you do Tesco is managing its finances? Are you an investor of Tesco? Have you ever invested in any financial instrument? Choose the closest. a. Never regularly vi) Do you think the course of financial management is right to be a core course in undergrad business studies? vii) Do you think financial management is equipped to solve and handle externally stimulated crisis? viii) Do you think faulty financial management strategies have had a role to play in the financial crisis that this world has been in? ix) x) Do you think the field of financial management requires more development? Do you think financial management is unethical to maximize shareholder s wealth? b. Once c. I invest every now and then d. I invest

xi)