Financial Report and Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Financial Report and Analysis - Research Paper Example In 2012, it was ranked as the 2nd largest firm in terms of number of employees around which are around 435,000 globally, the 4th biggest firm in terms of market capitalization, the 9th most profitable company and the 19th in the list of highest revenue generating business. It has 12 laboratories and the company has on its credit record for creating the most patents for the consecutive 20 years. Overall industry sales are increasing globally since 2013. In the current year 2013-2014 sales are expected to increase by 6.5% and in the next year growth are expected to reach 7.5%. The expected growth rate is higher than the growth rate in the last two years that are 5.5% in 2012 and 0.4% in 2011. The impact of these expectations will definitely have positive impacts on the company in terms of growth in sales revenue and high profits as well as healthy cash flows (Stephen, 2013). There is a continuous decline in the sales revenue since last two years. It has gone down by 2% in 2012 and 4.55% in 2013. This decline is in contrast with the industry expectations mentioned above. The chairman of the company in her report to shareholders mentioned the reason for the decline that there in an adverse movement in the currency exchanges because it is operating in more than 170 countries around the world. Especially, there is a sharp decline of 4.2% in the revenue from Global Technology Services and 1olost 19% decline in revenue from Systems and Technology (IBM, 2013). In total, the net profit has declined by $121 millions in 2013 representing fall of 0.73%, but there is a continuous improvement in the net profit ratio since 2011. It has increased from 12.48% to 15.89% in 2012 and 16.52% in 2013. This year to year improvement is due to the effective controls over administrative expense for instance in total they decreased by $51 millions in 2013 as compared to last year, whereas, cost of sales is reasonably consistent as indicated by consistency in the gross profit

OP-EDs position Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

OP-EDs position - Essay Example I agree with OP-ED’s position that the major factor that influences delinquency is poverty because social disorganization theory suggests that poverty is an important ecological characteristic that can decrease collective efficacy and informal social control.   Social disorganization theory supports that communities with high poverty rates tend to have high crime rates because poverty decreases informal social control that is important to raising children who can stay away from crimes and finish college.   Shelden shows the relationship between poverty and single-parent households where these households tend to have high delinquency rates because of low informal social control due to lack of good male role models (i.e. families without fathers) and poor supervision from single mothers who are both breadwinners and caregivers.   Weak informal social control can produce low collective efficacy that reduces the ability of families to prevent the spread of criminological cul ture in their neighborhoods.   Poverty can reinforce poor social cohesion which might affect the development and reinforcement of criminal behaviors. Aside from social disorganization theory, conflict theory argues that capitalism breeds crime through perpetuating poverty among the lower-classes of society.   This theory asserts that capitalism is an unjust economic system that produces poverty which creates crime.   Shelden provides statistics that blacks suffer from poverty the most, and if many blacks conduct crime, their poverty can be one of the strong predictors of their crimes.   Conflict theory argues that the poor might become criminals because they want to struggle against an oppressive system. Poverty can result to delinquency because colored youth from low-income families violate the norms and expectations of the upper class.   I am not saying that poverty rationalizes criminality, but it can impact delinquency if it contributes to decreases in informal social control and collective efficacy and if the youth feel the oppression that comes from their class and race/ethnicity and want to fight their oppression through engaging in delinquency.