Citibank Budgeting Essay Example for Free

Citibank Budgeting Essay 1. Analysis of Budget Process at Citibank Direction and control of Citibank’s international branches are conducted via two formal management processes. Each year, top management sets sovereign risk limits for its independent branches based on proposals by country managers. Country managers may choose to operate with self-imposed limits below this upper guideline. Following, there is the budget setting process, where headquarters only provides administrative guidelines but not specific targets, with operating managers being responsible for budgets for the following year. Indonesia often set their targets above these long-term goals. Performance is measured and compared against the budget each month, and a new forecast, which will be reviewed by the division manager, is drawn up each quarter for the remainder of the year. This structure of bottom-up budgeting is appropriate for a decentralized firm like Citibank. This is evident from the freedom Mr Mistri has over Indonesia’s operations and the different business segments and divisions, as shown in Exhibit 2 3. Such a participative process is likely to increase management commitment to achieve the targets since country managers are responsible for influencing their own targets. More importantly, country managers know the local business environment and culture better than group managers, therefore their targets are likely to be more accurate and realistic. Furthermore, bottom-up budgeting is a form of action control while the frequent reviews of the budgets serves as preaction review. Both facilitate information sharing within the organisation, with long-term strategic goals of the firm being communicated downwards and local business potentials and risks conveyed upwards via the budgets and forecasts. They also encourage managers to think further ahead about what they want to achieve in the near future. However, Citibank’s budgeting process appears to have an imbalanced focus with most of the emphasis placed only on financial measures. Although these measures can be easily obtained and are inexpensive because they are by-products of the accounting system, it does not fully represent all aspects of the organization’s strategies and goals. Instead, the budget could be restructured to include other non-financial aspects such as customer satisfaction and employee morale to obtain a balance, which will be vital towards the long term success of Citibank. None of Citibank’s budget items extend beyond the next year; instead there is an emphasis on a fixed short horizon. This can result in managers developing a myopic focus instead of measuring the fulfilment of Citibank’s long-term goals or the local government’s societal expectations. Myopia is aggravated by the monthly performance reviews which reveals the focus on short term goals. Citibank should look at its budget with a longer horizon. Moreover, the budgeting process in Citibank appears to be tedious and too time-consuming. The requirement for operating managers to conduct discussions and forecast all the line items shown on the submission form seems to take up significant time and effort. Such a process could be costly for the firm in terms of opportunity costs related to unnecessary time and resources spent. The benefits of such a tedious budgeting process must be high enough to justify the related costs. Also, there seems to be no connection and a mismatch between the two management processes. It is only reasonable that these two processes should go hand in hand as higher returns may only be possible with a higher risk appetite. However, increase in profit goals is not matched by an increase in risk tolerance (sovereign risk limit). Moreover, sovereign risk limits is set yearly but not adjusted when budgets are revised each quarter. Citibank should consider allowing country/division managers to adjust risk limits to match any revisions in budgets during the year. Use of the Budget for Performance Evaluation of Managers Performance is monitored every month against budgets, and incentive compensation for managers were linked to budget-related performance. Incentive compensation could range up to approximately 70% of base salary although awards of 30-35% were more typical. Assignment of bonuses were based approximately 30% on corporate performance and 70% on individual performance, primarily performance related to forecast. This emphasizes results accountability as it involves rewarding the managers for generating good results that are aligned to the budgets. As such, it influences actions because it causes employees to be concerned about the consequences of the actions they take. However, the contradiction in this is that while these managers will not be constrained in what actions they can take to achieve their goals, they are also empowered to take whatever actions they believe will best produce these desired results. Hence, it is highly dependent on personnel controls with regards to the managers hired. Provided that budgets were adequately set with appropriately extent of goal difficulty, these budgets act as results controls and affects a manager’s motivation since the targets are linked to performance evaluations and compensation. Furthermore, it is beneficial that manager’s compensation is tied directly to both individual(70%) and corporate performance(30%), allowing a larger perspective to be considered. Differentiation of base earnings from extraordinary earnings for which managers are not held accountable for is in line with the controllability principle. This is vital because setting performance targets to attain for each measure allows the managers to assess their performance and also get rewarded, encouraging behaviors that lead to desired results. As such, this will promise manager rewards that provide the most powerful motivational effects in the most cost effective ways possible. However, performance evaluations based on budgeted information is backward looking (extrapolating past trends) while it is best that the evaluations be forward looking. It should be evaluated based on the future cash flow/profits that can be brought to the firm instead of historical performance to promote a higher performance in the future. Furthermore, as their compensation is tied to meeting targets, it might promote game-playing and politics. As for Citibank, their culture encourages aggressive mark-ups to budget with managers constantly setting challenging budgets. For Mr Mistri, he will feel the extra pressure since the aggressive targets can barely be met with the deteriorating conditions in Indonesia. In conclusion, the current budget and performance evaluation system, which is mainly bottom up with top down guidance, matches the decentralized structure of Citibank. Although there seems to be trade-offs and problems with Citibank’s current bottom up budgeting system, there is no perfect budget system to optimally serve all the different purposes of budgeting. What Citibank can do is to put in place measures to minimize some of these shortcomings. 2. Are managers at Citibank committed to achieving budget targets? Yes, managers are committed as a result of their freedom to set their own budgets subject to guidelines provided by top management. Mr Mistri can choose to operate with a self imposed sovereign risk limit which is lower than the one approved by the New York Headquarter if he thinks that the one set by the top management is too aggressive. The fact that he has control over this means that he will be less pressurised to set unrealistic goals or engage in budget slacks. These will garner higher commitment from managers since the budgets set are not restrictive and offer flexibility to managers according to the business conditions. The commitment to achieve targets is augmented as incentive compensation for managers is linked to budget-related performance. Thus they will work towards getting more incentives for themselves through surpassing the budgeted forecast. On the other hand, the amount of commitment may be limited by the constant revision of budgets each quarter. Managers may be less motivated to hit their budget target if they know that those targets can be revised lower in the next quarter if performance was unsatisfactory. In addition, the frequent changes may make managers unfocused and reduce their motivation to work towards the goals set. If so, are the budget targets too challenging? The targets may prove to be too challenging. This can be shown by the fact that although incentive compensation could range up to 70% of base salary, awards of 30-35% were more typical, implying that it may be difficult to surpass the budgeted levels. Furthermore, Mr Mistri felt that the increased profit goal by $500K to $1mil set by Mr Gibson is too much as the budget he submitted is already very aggressive, judging by the bleak short term outlook due to the decrease in oil prices. This is supported by the self-imposed sovereign risk limit that Mr Mistri is operating at in order to minimise his exposure which will reduce the likelihood of the firm achieving higher returns due to the lower risk. We also doubt the achievability of the budget set. Though the forecasts and budgets are set by the operating managers themselves, we have to take into consideration Citibank’s risk-taking culture. While challenging targets induce motivation, the aggressive year-on-year increase in targets might prove to be detrimental to the achievement of the firm’s strategic objectives. Firstly, this is especially so when targets are not adjusted in times of bad macroeconomic conditions. With the incentive compensation for managers linked to budget-related performance, it seems that managers might be motivated to set unrealistic targets and employ excessively risky methods to accomplish them. Such a system would eventually serve to promote short-term gains at the expense of long-term losses for the organisation. In addition, the practice of comparing actual performance to budgeted amount monthly is too short termed and may render managers to become myopic. This may encourage managers to engage in gamesmanship such as earnings management, manipulating data to receive additional bonuses especially towards the end of a quarter. Is there any evidence of budget gaming? Yes, there is evidence of budget gaming. The main reason Mr Mistri used to justify his less than ideal budget (as compared to Mr Gibson’s) is likely to be false and there are unhealthy motivations for him to engage in such behaviour. Mr Mistri justified his budget by claiming that the Indonesian economy had slipped into a recession when oil prices decreased significantly. This is supported by the fact that Citibank’s Indonesian operations growth paralleled that of the Indonesian economy. However, evidence in Exhibit 4 suggests otherwise, revealing both the net and inflation-adjusted GDP of Indonesia to be increasing steadily over time. Even in 1983, GDP increased 5%. Moreover, a fall in oil prices will not necessarily lead to a recession. As such, Mr Mistri’s concerns are unlikely to be true and a simple check by the group managers would have allowed this to be uncovered. Moreover, even though Indonesia’s economy is highly dependent on oil prices, a fall in oil prices is also likely to affect Citibank’s other operations in different regions. The group managers will probably have considered this effect when setting the $4mil profit goal for South East Asia. In our opinion, Mr Mistri is likely to be acting as a Sandbagger. By presenting less ambitious budgets, there will be higher likelihood of positive variances in actual performance. Given that compensation is tied to budget-related performance, such gaming behavior will probably increase Mr Mistri’s bonuses and salary. Another motive for budget gaming could be to cover up the ongoing high staff turnover problem with the bad economic conditions. Mr Mistri just lost his chief of staff and two senior officers, and is concerned with constraints to growth due to his lack of experienced staff. This could in turn affect his bonus and salary. Since managers are not accountable for extraordinary earnings or losses at Citibank, by blaming the external economy (recession) for a less aggressive budget rather than on internal problems, his bonuses will not be affected. Furthermore, Mr Minstri has the freedom to operate at a sovereign risk limit lower than the group’s since country managers are given substantial autonomy in deciding their country’s budget and risk limits. He is likely to be able to get away with a less than optimal budget if his group manager trusts him. This way, his budget gaming behavior will escape the suspicions of Mr Gibson and other group/division managers.

Why are computers important in todays world :: Computer Science Technology

In todays world computers are very useful because there is weather forcasting and many other things. People can forcast weather by this process by computers . Advertising is one of the most progressive field these days . Computer animation is the art of creating moving images by this use of computers . We can use use internation network (internet) to check mail, play games, find other's addresses , etc. Scientists also use computers for their experiments . There are some documents to type. For example MS Word , MS Exel , etc . We can do our school project also by using computers. There is one thing which is very conveinient for us it is that we can talk or chat with people who are in another country by using google talk , yahoo messenger , etc . It is not at all expensive . It is better than using a telephone or a mobile . We can also send voicemails through google talk , yahoo messenger , etc . We can play many games using a computer . For example pinball , soltaire , spider soltair e , etc . Believe it or not, but the age of computers is upon us. I believe Computers are not only here to stay, but in my opinion computers are the wave of the future. Only a device like the computer can change the way we work, live, and think. I see computers taking us places where no man has gone before. students can receive an education from their own home Taking classes online is an option that a growing number of students are taking advantage of. These classes are making a college education available for students who are not able to attend a traditional university or college. Computers are taking us places where a lot of us thought was not possible. Truly it is my belief and opinion, the computer is one of the most incredible inventions of this time period or any other.

Piaget and Vygotsky: compare and contrast Essay

Everyday life is characterized by conscious purpose. From reaching for food to designing an experiment, our actions are directed at goals. This purpose reveals itself partly in our conscious awareness and partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Cognition, as defined as â€Å"†¦ the activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired† (Shaffer et al., 2002), is the process involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving. Much past and present theory has emphasized the parallels between the articulated prepositional structure of language and the structure of an internal code or ‘language of thought’. In this paper I will discuss language and cognition and two famous theorists who were both influential in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the process of cognitive development: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Jean Piaget was known for his establishment of the four major perio ds of cognitive development. Lev Vygotsky was the complement to Piaget’s theory with his sociocultural perspective on cognitive development. Both were keenly interested in the relationship of thinking and language learning. Jean Jacques Piaget was born in Neuchà ¢tel, Switzerland on August 9, 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor in Medieval Literature. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was an intelligent woman but Jean found her a little bit  neurotic. When he was in his late youth he had a faith crisis. His mother encouraged him to attend church to only found it foolish. So he had decided to focus less on philosophy and more on psychology (Smith, L.). Piaget attended the University of Neuchà ¢tel. There he studied natural sciences. He then attended the University of Zà ¼rich were he gained an interest in psychoanalysis. In 1919, he went to Paris, France where he met Dr. Simon at the Binet Laboratory. While in Paris, Piaget planned and administered many reading tests to school children and became interested not in their correct answers, but in their incorrect answers. He wanted to explore the reasoning process that children have. By 1921 he began to publish his research findings. He developed a new way of questioning the children; it was a psychiatric method of question and response. It is called the methode clinique or the clinical method. The clinical method is a type of interview in which a participant’s response to each successive question (or problem) determines what the investigator will ask (Shaffer et al., 2002). Piaget was interested in learning the differences between a child’s acquisitions of knowledge compared to an adult’s. He formed the theory that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children’s logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults† (Smith, L.). By the time Piaget died in Geneva in 1980, he had written over 300 papers, book chapters and introductions as well as thirty boo ks on cognitive development. Piaget’s idea was that children had learned through action. He believed that children are born with and acquire schemas, or concepts for how to act and respond to the world. As children explore their world, they form and reform ideas in their minds. The more actively involved children are, the more knowledge is gained. McGee and Richgels (1996) note, â€Å"Because children construct their own knowledge, this knowledge does not come fully developed and is often quite different from that of an adult† (p.7). Accordingly, the Piagetian perspective of literacy acquisition emphasizes a child’s stages of development and reflects â€Å"concepts of reading and writing as the child has constructed them,† state McGee and Richgels (1996, p. 10). They add,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Children ‘s concepts of reading and writing are shaped more by what they accomplished in preceding developmental stages than by their simply imitating adults’ behavior or following adultsâ€⠄¢ directions† (p. 10). Piaget believed that children are born with the innate tendency to try to organize the way in which they think about their environment, that is, to make sense out of it. He believed that human beings organize the material about the environment in different ways as they mature. These mental changes are related to an interaction between age and environment. Piaget further believed that his theory was universal, that the stages of development he outlined would exist in all societies. He viewed the development of the child’s cognitive ability as a four-stage process. Children would move up through the stages in a fixed order. He assigned estimations of age for each of the four stages, but did not see the process as connected to specific ages. Piaget’s theory identifies four developmental stages and the processes by which children progress through them. The four stages are as follows: Sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years old)–The child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight (object permanence). Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)–The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. Concrete operations (ages 7-11)–As physical experience accumulates, the child starts to conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences. Abstract problem solving is also possible at this stage. For example, arithmetic equations can be solved with numbers, not just with objects. Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)–By this point, the child’s cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning (Shaffer et al., 2002). While Piaget did not conduct cross-cultural research, his research in Switzerland was comprehensive. As the text points out, Piaget’s original observations and hypotheses were based on his observations of his own three children. He then tested his theories by designing experiments for children to perform. These experiments were passed on to teachers being trained at  the institute. Over the years, Piaget and these teachers have conducted an estimated 20,000 of his various experiments. For example, if one child had been taken on trips around the world, spent much time in museums, and read many books, she might be prepared to move up to the next stage at an earlier age than a child who spent his time playing video games and watching TV all day (Driscoll, 1994). Piaget accounted for varying levels of preparedness by explaining that each child possessed a schema, and that a child could not move to the next stage until his or her schema was at a threshold level. Schemata were expanded through what Piaget termed as assimilation (adding to prior knowledge) and accommodation (changing prior knowledge to fit new information). In this manner, children adapt to situations in response to their need for equilibrium (solving dilemmas; mastering skills). A soccer player who wishes to be a scorer, but lacks aiming skills, may practice at shooting at the goal until she assimilates knowledge of which angle to shoot from and how hard to kick the ball. When she adjusts her tactic (via accommodation) and score a goal, she moves from disequilibrium to equilibrium. Physical maturation, activities and socializing with peers to learn from them are all factors that can or do promote growth in schema (Driscoll, 1994). Piaget believed that children who speak aloud in the presence of others will sometimes adapt their speech to take into consideration the hearer(s) but at other times would direct their remarks to no-one in particular and there would be no evidence that the child was attempting to take into account the knowledge or interests of a specific listener. Piaget called this egocentric speech – the inability of the child to separate their own perspective from those of other people. Piaget saw egocentric speech as being the reflection of thought processes of the young child, and he investigated this in detail. He saw egocentric speech as having no apparent function in the child’s behaviour, so it would have no reason to survive, eventually fading away as the child became more aware of the distinctions between themselves and others (Piaget, 1955). Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was born in the U.S.S.R. in 1896, the same year  Piaget was born. His active career as a psychologist was only around 10 years long. He graduated with a law degree at the Moscow University. After graduation, he started teaching at various institutions. Vygotsky’s first big research project was in 1925 with his Psychology of Art. A few years later, he pursued a career as a psychologist working with Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev. Together, they began the Vygotskian approach to psychology. Vygotsky had no formal training in psychology but it showed that he was fascinated by it. After his death of tuberculosis in 1934, his ideas were repudiated by the government; however, his ideas were kept alive by his students. While agreeing with Piaget that the child is an active learner, Vygotsky placed more emphasis on the child’s interaction with the social environment. Whereas Piaget visualizes the young child as a natural scientist, experimenting with the environment, Vygotsky sees the child as needing assistance at a critical point; he refers to the range of skills that a child can exercise with assistance but cannot perform independently as the zone of proximal development. With guidance or assistance from parents, adults, or even older children, the child is able to master a more difficult task or concept. In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky believed that the child requires more socialization for cognitive development. While recognizing that maturation is important in cognitive development, he placed less emphasis on it. Language and cognition emerge in development at about the same time and are intertwined. Children build new concepts by interacting with others who either provide feedback for their hypotheses or help them accomplish a task (McGee & Richgels, 1996). Vygotsky suggested that learning is a matter of internalizing the language and actions of others. According to McGee and Richgels (1996), â€Å"Vygotsky believed that children need to be able to talk about a new problem or a new concept in order to understand it and use it† (p. 8). As the child discusses a problem or task with an adult, the adult supplies language to assist the child in solving the problem; the child gradually internalizes the language until the task can be completed independently (McGee & Richgels, 1996). The instructional technique in which  the teacher models the desired learning strategy or task and then gradually shifts responsibility to the students is called scaffolding. Vygotsky perceived the process of cognitive development as less segmented and rigid than Piaget had. He believed that children learned from in two ways: from tools and from more capable peers and adults. Tools could be anything in the environment that children use to help them advance intellectually (e.g., the internet, cultural artifacts). He advocated that children be placed in learning contexts which were raised just slightly above their existing ability so that they would step up to reach the next level. For Vygotsky, learning was a social process from the beginning. Children learned only by interacting with adults, not with peers who were at there level of cognition. The adult provides the child with assisted learning and scaffolding until the zone of proximal development has been removed. An example of this might involve a mother teaching her child how to drink from a cup. The mother could model the action for the child; the mother could then hold the cup up to the childâ€℠¢s mouth; following that, the child could attempt to raise the cup to her own mouth; finally, the mother would help the child coordinate the activity until the child she has acquired the skill. A main area Piaget and Vygotsky are both concerned about is the relationship between language and thought. This is the concept in which they show great dissimilarity. As preschoolers go through their daily activities, they frequently talk out loudly to themselves as they play and explore the environment. Piaget called these utterances egocentric speech, a term expressing his belief that they reflect the preoperational child’s inability to imagine the perspectives of others (Piaget, 1955). Piaget believed that egocentric speech reflects an inability to take the perspective of others, and plays no useful role in development. Vygotsky believed that a child’s use of private speech – talking to himself/herself – is not an example of egocentrism but rather is pre-social conversation. Vygotsky placed a high value on private speech because it enables the child not only to practice talking but also to plan activities. Some modern investigators have suggested that private speech is a process of  planning out loud – for example, when you are going to a new place, you verbalize the instructions for getting there aloud to yourself. It is an important developmental phenomenon, which helps children to organise and regulate thinking. As the Western world has more time to assimilate Vygotsky’s ideas, we may discover other contributions that are important in the cognitive development of young children (Vygotsky, 1962). There are two cases of Piaget and Vygotsky’s differences that stand out the most in their world. First, Vygotsky was critical of Piaget’s assumption that developmental growth was independent of experience and based on a universal characteristic. Vygotsky asserted that development is complex and is effected by social and cultural contexts. Biological and cultural development are interrelated and do not develop in isolation. Vygotsky believed that intellectual development was continually evolving without an end point. Second, the other conflict between Vygotsky and Piaget was the latter’s explanation of development as the notion that concepts should not be taught until children are in the appropriate developmental stage. This conflicts with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) and developmental theories. Vygotsky noted that instruction that is oriented toward development is ineffective concerning the child’s overall development. Both Vygotsky and Piaget were exceptional men with theories that have helped shaped the world of psychology. Piaget believed the universal acquisition of knowledge occurs within a four stage process. The Vygotskian perspective of cognitive development emphasizes social interaction but places less emphasis on stages of behavior. Although both theories had conflicted with one another, it is true to believe that Vygotsky had built his educational theories on the strengths of Piaget’s. References: Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of learning for instruction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Evans, R. (1973). Jean Piaget: The Man and His Ideas. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Hall, Wayne and Drinnin, Beverly. Instructor’s Resources for Discovering Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers, 2000, p. 254. McGee, L.M., & Richgels, D.J. (1996). Literacy’s beginnings: Supporting young readers and writers (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Moll, Louis C. (1994). Vygotsky and Education: Instructional implications and applications of sociohistorical psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1955). The language and thought of the child. New York: Meridian Books. Shaffer, D. R., Wood, E., & Willoughby, T. (2002). Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence, First Canadian Edition. Toronto: Thomson/Nelson. Smith, L. (1997). Jean Piaget. In N. Sheehy, A. Chapman. W.Conroy (eds). Biographical Dictionary of Psychology. London: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The On A Dark Winter Night Essay - 972 Words

On a dark winter night, I rush out of my house in such a giddy way. I was frantically making my way to my car making sure I had everything ready. It was about to be three o clock in the morning. â€Å"Perfect i m right on schedule†, Jason said to himself. This day†¦ Today s the most wonderful day of the entire year , I have been waiting for this day for months to come. Planning every single little detail that you could possibly think about that could go wrong. I had it down and i was guaranteed that nothing could go wrong. I made my way around to the drivers side, turned my key the ignition roared with much might. It sounded more elighted for this day than i did for this day. I was off, I pulled up in the same spot i usually do across to the quicky mart; Waiting waiting†¦ a blue toyota pulled up next to the store. Id know that blue car from anywhere, There!... There she was. 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