NSBE - MA Dissertations
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- The Internationalisation Strategy of Iberian BanksPublication . Pimentel, Bernardo de Melo; Mata, JoséThis paper studies the internationalisation drivers of Iberian banks and the achieved performances of their foreign ventures. I address the roles of domestic market stagnation, higher growth potential in foreign countries and internationalisation of clients have on the performance of cross-border operations. I also study the impact of control level and age of a subsidiary on its performance. Using a sample of seven banks with over 40 subsidiaries in 27 countries I conclude these factors have a statistically significant impact on the performance of foreign subsidiaries.
- Fundraising process: The case of YDreamsPublication . Costa, Ana Brás da Silva; Pinho, Paulo Soares deAntónio Câmara spent that morning sitting in his chair, near his office window. While watching the rain, the CEO of YDreams was thinking about the last two years of the company and how fast it had grown. Unfortunately, less than he was expecting (Exhibit1). YDreams was a seven-year-old company in the high technological solutions market. The company, through the leadership of Câmara, was having a high projection in the media. He remember ed the several interviews he gave, stating that YDreams wasgoing to be listed in the stock market this year or the next. Deep inside, he knew that was difficult to happen. It is January 2007 and a year has passed since YDreams had received the venture capital funding from ES Tech Ventures and Herrick Partners. While watching the rain falling outside, Câmara realised how essential was the change the organisational structure. YDreams, once a laboratory, was now a candidate to NASDAQ and he was conscientious that his future as CEO was at risk. The company had to accomplish the objectives defined in the business plan. Câmara was anxious to know what changes the investors were going to demand. Will they change the culture? How they will change the management? Will YDreams be successful?
- Is help really helping? Poverty in Portugal and the effectiveness of the State interventionPublication . Melo, Ana Maria Saraiva Barbosa de; Reis, Ana BalcãoThe main objective of this paper is to look at the evolution of poverty in Portugal between 2000 and 2005 and assess the effectiveness of the Portuguese State’s intervention in Poverty alleviation. Moreover, we distinguished the population according to gender, location and household composition and analysed the policy impact in those particular groups. The results point to a general decrease in non-extreme poverty, though accompanied by increase in extreme poverty. Social policy has a positive, though not homogeneous impact in poverty alleviation and its effectiveness changes in the years analyzed.
- The Launch of Rep Design: Business Plan For R&P Import and Export LdaPublication . Gordhandas, Amit; Meisiek, StefanThis is the business plan for R&P Import and Export, particularly focusing on the marketing strategy to launch Rep Design, registered trademark, in the Portuguese retail fashion market. The mission of Rep Design as a project of R&P is to offer a quality private label with a fashionable design. We aim to offer high quality products with an affordable price to penetrate the Portuguese fashion market via a recognized retail chain. To do so we will be using R&P current resources namely the expertise in the fashion business, the motivation and the skills of the family behind the management team, the well built relation with suppliers, particularly Asian manufacturers, the outsourced Design Lab, the existing infrastructures and the operational coverage in distribution. Rep Design will benefit from the existing competitive advantage in cost and design vs. several incumbent competitors and will deliver fashion at a fraction of the price charged by most competitors. Consumers usually care who is standing behind the brand – a well-known manufacturer or retailer, whose store is being visited or an anonymous producer. Just like people all brands have individuality. Personality has always been a key issue in our society. Just like a chef who eliminates barriers between the customers and the kitchen, everything is in front of you and the food is honest seeming extremely tempting, Rep Design aims to build unique brand individuality bringing a face to its concept exteriorizing its identity via a recognized retail brand. “The middle aged mother buys Rep Design clothing because it has good quality while her daughter buys Rep clothing because it is cheap and trendy”. R&P will segment customers by consumption behaviour and maximize operations capable to respond to the urgent market needs, targeting the low/medium purchase power consumers, which care about fashion and are not loyal to exclusive brands that most value price, trend and quality in the apparel market. In terms of main weaknesses I may point out the low bargaining power with manufactures due to the high quantities required, the management team (as it is a family business it is hard to separate professionalism with familiarity), the need of dividing the company into different departments or fragments according to the busyness area, defining and building a Rep’s culture and the difficulty to employ and maintain staff. The threats are the fierce market competition and fashion evolution not performing as expected.
- Does a tougher competition policy reduce or promote investment?Publication . Costa, Afonso Planas Raposo de AlmeidaThe question of how interventions from the Competition Authority (CA) affect investment is not a straightforward one: a tougher Competition Policy might, by reducing the ability to exert market power, either stimulate firms to invest more to counter the restrictions on their actions, or make firms invest less because of the reduced ability to have a return on investment. In the two models put forward in this paper, one in which investment is own-cost-reducing and the other where investment is anti-competitive, the optimal level of investment is reduced with a tougher Competition Policy. Consequently, the price level in the first model can go either up or down, depending on the parameter values. Conversely, in the second model, the evolution of the price level will be definitely non-positive. Results for Total Welfare are ambiguous in the first model, whereas in the anti-competitive investment model welfare unambiguously increases due to a tougher Competition Policy.
- Will PPP for hospitals improve the health of the Portuguese?Publication . Távora, Leonor de Albuquerque Miranda de; Barros, Pedro PitaIn the last decade private provision of traditional public services has grown worldwide. Public private partnerships (PPPs) are one example of the increasing participation of the private sector within the public sphere. In the Health sector though, governments often limit the scope for private initiative. Besides political motivations and frequent misconceptions, this can be the result of the underlying complexities of the sector as well as unsuccessful past experiences. This work project explores the Portuguese PPP Programme for public hospitals. The overall aim is to qualitatively assess the probability of these arrangements to succeed, i.e., to achieve value for money. For this purpose, a particular project was selected: the future Loures Hospital. Firstly, we conducted a comparative analysis between PPPs’ optimal contract conditions and the actual project conditions. On a second stage, the main risks and incentives of the project were analysed. The comparative analysis showed that Loures tender documents seem to be well aligned with the optimal conditions defined by the literature. Nevertheless, the risk analysis suggested that one of the main risks remains on the public side: the contract management risk. A deeper analysis suggested that Loures documents took this risk into consideration but some improvements could be made.
- HR Integration: Critical factors to the accurate implementation of HR shared policies – the case of Wedo and PúblicoPublication . Lopes, Isabel Maria Cristóvão; Cunha, Miguel Pina eThis paper will focus on the implementation of HR shared policies within organizations, with the purpose to determine which aspects should be considered decisive to assure the whole process of executing an Integrated HR System. This topic of shared services has been facing a considerably rise of significance, at the same time as companies struggle to design strategic HRM structures in a way to achieve a competitive advantage. Therefore, it is pertinent to analyze the process of decentralization in the HR area, in an attempt to disclose the main factors influencing the effective implementation of HR common policies. The support for this paper consisted of a naturally occurring experience, in which two companies sharing a centralized HR knowledgebase were analyzed, and the interviews suggested that there are some particular aspects supporting the implementation of common policies in companies.
- IWP Strategy – SME competitivenessPublication . Conceição, Andreia Santos Aires da Silva; Dahab, Sónia; Gomes, PauloGuestCentric Systems is a provider of an online marketing and distribution platform for independent hotels, which includes website, booking engine, backend and resource centre integration. The focus of this work project is to improve GuestCentric‟s product positioning and competitiveness by increasing the online visibility of the independent hotels‟ websites. Without visibility, the traffic on their websites, and consequently online bookings, is limited. If the website does not originate the revenues during the free trial to justify the investment, hotels‟ satisfaction with the product and the likelihood of them becoming paying customers is compromised. Hence, addressing the lack of visibility issue is important both to Guestcentric‟s clients and to the company itself, since it influences the success of GuestCentric‟s product on the market. As the literature establishes, linking popularity is a key factor when it comes to online visibility thus this will be the method proposed to diminish the visibility problem. There are several linking possibilities but not all fit every type of hotel. It will be shown that some links, due to their inexpensiveness, can and should be applied to all lodging units. Others will depend on the hotel profile, for example their positioning advantage or property type. And, finally, some are just out of reach to the hotels GuestCentric is targeting because the price range these lodges are able to charge guests cannot support the cost. By helping the hotels setting a linking strategy compatible with their profile, GuestCentric is able to considerably and affordably improve its free trial participants‟ websites‟ visibility and, consequently, demonstrate that their product is a worthy investment. Finally, an Implementation proposition for an exchange of links strategy is done as this would be an inexpensive and easy to implement approach if backed up by an “Exchange of links Management program” and customer participation.
- The effective tax rate on low-income households in PortugalPublication . Timóteo, Joana Maria Borralho Marques; Reis, Ana BalcãoThis work is an analysis of the Portuguese Tax System, which objective is the calculation of the effective marginal and average tax rate on low income households and to understand how government transfers and the tax system affect their disposable income. We will observe that the highest effective marginal tax rates occur for very low income households due to transfers decrease, and for very small intervals of income. The tax system is overall progressive, since the effective average tax rate increases as gross income rises.
- A quantitative approach to evaluate car insurancePublication . Cardoso, Luiz Filipe Lopes; Matos, João Amaro deInsurance premium is a charge paid by an insurance holder to an insurer in order to exchange uncertainty for certainty. Unfortunately, the literature in this special topic does not present satisfactory results. Besides, there is not a standard model to determine car insurance premium and the present work attempts to nd a pattern with this objective. Two models were selected and the regression analysis of panel data together with the Tobit model can be easy applicable to determine car insurance premium instead of the Black-Scholes Model.