The Intimate Economies of Bangkok or Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting

The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City

Author: Ara Wilson

Bangkok has been at the frontier of capitalism's drive into the global south for three decades. Rapid development has profoundly altered public and private life in Thailand. In her provocative study of contemporary commerce in Bangkok, Ara Wilson captures the intimate effects of the global economy in this vibrant city.
The Intimate Economies of Bangkok is a multifaceted portrait of the intertwining of identities, relationships, and economics during Bangkok's boom years. Using innovative case studies of women's and men's participation in a range of modern markets--department stores, go-go bars, a popular downtown mall, a telecommunications company, and the direct sales corporations Amway and Avon--Wilson chronicles the powerful expansion of capitalist exchange into further reaches of Thai society. She shows how global economies have interacted with local systems to create new kinds of lifestyles, ranging from "tomboys" to corporate tycoons to sex workers.
Combining feminist theory with classic anthropological understandings of exchange, this historically grounded ethnography maps the reverberations of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity at the hub of Bangkok's modern economy.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : intimate economies	1
1	From shophouse to department store	29
2	The economics of intimacy in the go-go bar	68
3	MBK : the retail revolution and the infrastructure of romance	102
4	The flexible citizens of IBC Cable TV	133
5	The Avon lady, the Amway plan, and the making of Thai entrepreneurs	163
	Conclusion : the intimacy of capitalism	189

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Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting

Author: Nils H Rasmussen

"The budget and financial reporting processes are well known sources of frustration for most CFOs. Seeking a quick fix to the problem, the common solution is to pour more money into new and better software. This leaves the root cause, the inefficient and dysfunctional underlying processes and routines, unaddressed. As this book shows, substantial and sustainable improvements are only achieved through an holistic approach to process improvement, technology, strategy, and people."
—Tom Henry Knudsen, Executive Vice President, Telenor Eiendom Fornebu AS, Proven methods for improving efficiency

Corporations face a high turnover among financial managers, rapid changes in technology, lack of time and process redesign skills, and ongoing ambiguity about primary objectives behind the budgeting and financial reporting processes. Amid this frenzy, it is the fundamental efficiency of these processes that dramatically impact overall business performance. Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting provides financial managers with a compelling blueprint for increasing efficiency and eliminating waste of time and energy. Four operational experts lay out an 80/20 plan-improving 800f processes in 200f the time it would take to improve 100%-and explain a Business Process Improvement (BPI) plan that incorporates:

• The emerging trends affecting financial managers today

• Step-by-step process implementation

• Interviews with industry leaders, consultants, and managers who have successfully instituted BPI plans

• Appraisals of the available software that can help or hinder the process

There is no substitute for improved efficiency. CFOs, controllers, budget managers, and financial analysts will significantly benefit from adding this authoritative guide to their professional libraries.