Richard Dobbins

Self‐development: the nine basic skills for business success

A self‐help guide to achieving success in business. Directed more towards the self‐employed, it is relevant to other managers in organizations. Divided into clear sections on creativity and dealing with change; importance of clear goal setting; developing winning business and marketing strategies; negotiating skills; leadership; financial skills; and time management.

Implement a winning marketing strategy

Asks which orders you would like to win and states that the answer lies in marketing and satisfying customers, with profit as a pleasant potential result. Suggests that companies should refocus their priorities, placing customers and improvements to customers’ lives at the forefront of any and all activity. Talks about specialization, competitive advantage, segmentation, customer characteristics, customer needs, product range, joint marketing, opportunity gaps, advertising and marketing. Concludes that successful business people are those who can identify the benefit that they sell which improves their customers’ lives.

Institutional Shareholders and Corporate Management

This monograph reports the growth in ownership of ordinary shares in UK registered and managed companies by institutional shareholders and assesses the implications for corporate management. Combined holdings of insurance companies, pension funds, investment trust companies, and unit trusts amounted to 45 per cent of quoted UK equities in 1974 and will approach 50 per cent by 1977. Despite exhortations from the Bank of England, the Press, academics and private shareholders, institutions have been reluctant to use their voting strength. French and German companies are familiar with managerial participation by financial institutions. In the United Kingdom the persistent increase in institutional shareholdings presents management with opportunities to mobilise institutional support for the board, particularly in takeover situations; to involve financial institutions in corporate planning and the development of industrial democracy; to use institutions as a source of funds; and to use the financial resources of institutions to maximise the market capitalisation of the firm.

The future pattern of U.K. share ownership

Abstract This article reports the present pattern of ordinary share ownership in the U.K. and forecasts the future pattern of share ownership towards the end of the present century. The authors forecast that institutional shareholders will own 50 per cent of U.K. registered and managed companies by 1977 and that they will own 68 per cent by 1990. Holdings by individuals, executors and trustees will fall from 47·4 per cent in 1970 to 34 per cent in 1977 and 14 per cent in 1990.

An Introduction to Financial Management

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

Creating more time

Lists a number of points on how to manage activities to create more time – setting goals, believing that you manage your time well, setting good time management as a goal, being honest with yourself, setting priorities, continuing self‐development, making lists, making plans, identifying common time wasters, organizing workspace, delegating, taking risks with time, reading, identifying and focusing on key result areas, eradicating procrastination, holding effective meetings, reducing interruptions, developing blocks of time for specific tasks, batching tasks, finishing one job before starting another, and memorising the slogans supplied at the end of the article.

Economic and Industrial Democracy

The Changing Pattern of Share Ownership. As indicated elsewhere in these pages, one of the most important economic developments of recent years has been the changing pattern of share ownership in UK quoted companies. Ownership of equities gives the holder the legal right to vote at company annual general meetings on such matters as the appointment and removal of directors. When a group of investors owns enough shares to control the board of directors then that group can clearly exert a powerful influence over managerial decision‐making. This is now the case in the United Kingdom with respect to a major group of investors. The combined equity holdings of institutional investors — pension funds, insurance companies, investment trust companies and unit trusts — amounted to 51 per cent of all UK quoted equities at the end of 1980. These financial institutions thus controlled more than half the voting power in British industrial and commercial enterprises, and they continue to acquire a further two per cent of all UK quoted equities each year. This gives considerable power to institutional portfolio managers. It could be suggested that this power, particularly in the case of pension funds which form the largest and fastest growing sector, should be vested in those who contribute the savings which finance the growth of institutional equity holdings, that is employees or their elected representatives.

Financial Objectives: The Traditional Approach

The objective traditionally attributed to firms is maximisation of profits. In more recent years this has been replaced with the financial objective of maximisation of shareholder wealth.