HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON THE MARKETS
OF THE WORLD TODAY: CASE OF TESCO OVER THE YEARS
STUDENT NAME: Type your name here
STUDENT NUMBER: Enter your student number
COURSE NAME: Graduate Diploma in Business
DEPARTMENT: Business
COURSE CODE: GD 10
SUPERVISOR: Type your supervisor’s name here
DATE OF SUBMISSION: 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.7
POPULATION AND STUDY SAMPLE............................................................. ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.7
SAMPLE SIZE AND SELECTION OF SAMPLE ................................................................................................... 7
COLLECTION OF DATA............................................................................. ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.7
DATA MANAGEMENT ............................................................................. ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.7
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) To maximize the wealth of the stockholder
ii) To maximize the profits of the organization
iii) To maximize the rewards of management
iv) 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 Planned Action
February 28 – March 4 (Week 1) Research for topic
March 7 – 11 (Week 2) Reading literature
March 14 – 18 (Week 3) Writing and submitting proposal
March 21 – 25 (Week 4) Developing questionnaires and contacting for
interview
March 28 – April 1 (Week 5) Reading and writing literature review
April 4 – 8 (Week 6) Getting the questionnaires filled
April 11 – 15 (Week 7) Analysing the data
April 18 – 22 (Week 8) Compiling the report and proof reading.
April 25 – 29 (Week 9) 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) How important to do think the management of those finances is?
iii) How efficiently do you do Tesco is managing its finances?
iv) Are you an investor of Tesco?
v) Have you ever invested in any financial instrument? Choose the closest.
a. Never b. Once c. I invest every now and then d. I invest
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) Do you think the field of financial management requires more development?
x) Do you think financial management is unethical to maximize shareholder’s wealth?
xi)