Kor-Man

Korea, Doing Business in the Republic of

The Republic of Korea (South Korea) from the early 1960s through the mid-1990s was among the fastest-developing economies in the industrialized world. By the 1990s South Korea's gross national product was well over $290 billion annually, with an annual growth rate consistently maintained for three decades at over 8 percent.

Labor Economics

Labor economics is the branch of economics that studies the nature and determinants of employment and compensation. Particular emphasis is placed on the role played by social institutions and different types of market structures that jointly determine the pattern and mobility or speed of adjustment in the labor market where human labor inputs are bought and sold.

Labor Law and Legislation

Attempting to strike a balance between assuring fair and humane treatment of workers and micromanaging business affairs, labor legislation is one of the often contentious battlegrounds over which the interests of employees and employers are negotiated. For more than a century a virtual state of war existed between labor and employers.

Labor Unions

A labor union is an organization of wage earners or salary workers established for the purpose of protecting their collective interests when dealing with employers. Though unions are prevalent in most industrialized countries, and in many less developed countries, union representation of workers has generally declined in most countries over the past 30 to 40 years.

Labor-Management Relations

The majority of key turning points in labor-management relations in the United States have been associated with periods of economic hardship. The Great Depression saw the establishment of comprehensive federal legislation designed to protect workers' right to organize.

Laissez Faire

The centuries-old doctrine known as laissez-faire is a government policy of economic (an(I social) nonintervention and is a cornerstone of capitalist economic philosophy.

Latin American Integration Association (LAIA)

The Latin American Integration Association (LAIA) was established as a result of the Montevideo Treaty of 1980. While succeeding the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA) of 1960, LAIA nonetheless strived to keep intact the economic integration process begun by LAFTA.

Layoffs

Layoffs refer to either temporary or permanent employment reductions. Prior to the 1980s, layoffs generally resulted from business cycle downswings, which primarily affected industries such as manufacturing and mining.

Leadership

A plethora of information on leaders and leadership can be found in libraries, bookstores, journals, and business magazines and periodicals. The body of this material is often intensely scholarly, such as the article "A Meta-analysis of the Relation between Personality Traits and Leadership Perceptions: An Application of Validity Generalization Procedures," written by R.

Leading Economic Indicators

A leading economic indicator is a statistic, such as housing starts, that is considered to signal the future direction of economic activity. Leading indicators tend to reach cyclical high and low points earlier than corresponding peaks and troughs in the overall economy, which makes them useful for predicting economic downturns or recoveries.

Leasing

A lease is a form of financing under which the owner of an asset (the lessor) temporarily transfers the right to use, and sometimes other ownership rights and obligations, of an asset to another party (the lessee). The lessor typically makes the lease for a specified time in return for a lump sum or periodic rental payments from the lessee.

Least Squares

The least squares criterion is a statistical approach used to provide the most accurate estimate of relationships between sets of variables in sample data. It is used to define regression lines and planes that yield estimates of a dependent variable, given values for an independent variable.

Letters of Credit

A letter of credit is a bank's written commitment ensuring that payment will be made to a seller of goods according to conditions specified by the buyer. A letter of credit allows the seller to draw on the issuing bank for payment.

Leverage

In physics, leverage denotes the use of a lever and a small amount of force to lift a heavy object. Likewise in business, leverage refers to the use of a relatively small investment or a small amount of debt to achieve greater profits.

Leveraged Buyout (LBO)

During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) became increasingly common and increased substantially in size. In a leveraged buyout, a company or division is purchased by a group of private investors, which frequently includes the management of the economic unit.

Leveraged Recapitalizations

During the latter half of the 1980s, leveraged recapitalizations (recaps) emerged as a popular response of U.S. companies to the increasingly competitive operating environment.

Liabilities

A liability is a debt assumed by a business entity as a result of its borrowing activities or other fiscal obligations (such as funding pension plans for its employees). Liabilities are paid off under either short-term or long-term arrangements.

Licensing Agreements

Businesses use licensing agreements to simultaneously protect and exploit intellectual property. Many well-known companies grant or receive licenses.

Licensing and Certification, Occupational

In the United States, occupational licensing and certification is largely a function of state government. There are literally hundreds of occupations and professions that are regulated in one form or another, but not every state regulates every occupation.

Loans

A loan is the purchase of the present use of money with the promise to repay the amount in the future according to a pre-arranged schedule and at a specified rate of interest. In banking and finance, loan contracts formally spell out the terms and obligations between the lender and borrower.

Lobbying

Lobbying refers to the activities of individuals, acting either for themselves or on behalf of others, that attempt to influence political decision makers. Lobbying as an activity is usually informal, that is, communication between lobbyists and political decision makers is seldom public.

Local Area Networks (LANs)

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which establishes network standards, defines a local area network (LAN) as a data communications system that enables a number of independent devices to communicate with each other in a limited geographic area. In other words, a LAN is a network of computers linked together via cable within a limited area.

Maastricht Treaty

The Maastricht Treaty, which is formally known as the Treaty on European Union, was signed in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on February 7, 1992. It represented a major step by its signatories towards European economic, political, and social—but especially monetary—integration.

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomics is a social science that studies an economy at the aggregate (or economy-wide) level. For the sake of simplicity, one can consider the discipline of macroeconomics as being composed of three interrelated components: the key attributes that characterize a macroeconomy; the key macroeconomic theories that explain how these attributes behave over time; and the key macroeconomic policy recommendations that emerge from the macroeconomic theories.

Mail-Order Business

A mail-order business is one that receives and fulfills orders for merchandise through the mail. One often hears the terms "mail order," "direct mail," and "direct marketing" used as if they were synonymous, when in fact they have different meanings.

Malaysia, Doing Business in

Malaysia is a major developing nation in Southeast Asia. It is comprised of two distinct regions: Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia.

Management

Business management can be defined as the acquisition, allocation, and utilization of resources through planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. Management involves the coordination of human, financial, material, and information resources in order to realize company goals and operate a business efficiently.

Management Audit

Simply defined, the management audit is a comprehensive and thorough examination of an organization or one of its components. The audit is implemented to identify problems or significant weaknesses in the organization or corporation, thus providing management with a tool to address and repair the problem area.