Cooperative Marketing - Also known as Cooperative Advertising. When two companies work together to promote and sell each others products. A manufacturer or distributor who supports, and often pays for, a retailers advertising.
Copyright - An exclusive legal right to make copies, publish, broadcast or sell a piece of work, such as a book, film, music, picture, etc.
Core Earnings - A company's revenue which is earned from its main operations or activities minus expenses, such as financing costs, asset sales, etc.
Corporate Advertising - Also called Institutional Advertising. Advertising that promotes a company's image, rather than marketing its products or services.
Corporate Governance - Corporate governance refers to the (ideally visible, transparent, published) policies and practices by which an organization is directed and managed at executive level, with particular focus on the executive board's accountabilities to shareholders and other stakeholders, especially concerning avoidance of risk, and the competence, ethics and propriety of the leadership, typically a chairman and board of directors. (See the main Corpoprate Governance article for extensive history, guidance, standards, etc.) The board's corporate governance accountabilities include obligations and responsibilities in relation to organizational aims and purposes, and embrace major considerations of constitution and structure, finance and administration, people and staff, remuneration and reward, environment, ethics and morality, law and regulatory matters, quality and problem-rectification, health and safety, social responsibility, technology, processes and decision-making, legacy/sustainability, etc., and any other fundamental aspects of executive leadership and management which in the context of the organization's activities and constitution might be regarded as significant at the highest organizational level. The concept of 'corporate governance' became prominent and highly important in the late 1900s after several corporate scandals were characterized by a serious lack of accountability and transparency in the behaviour (US spelling: behavior) of company directors and senior staff. In short 'corporate governance' refers to how a (typically but not necessarily) large organization is led and managed at the most senior level. By implication, where corporate governance is correctly established and operated there is a cascading effect of high quality entirely throughout the organization (such that problems rarely arise, and wherever they do they are rectified satisfactorily and measures taken to ensure no repeat). Where corporate governance is poorly established and operated then the organization is prone to major failures of various sorts. Where corporate scandals and disasters occur then usually these events are due ultimately to inadequate or improper corporate governance. The terms 'whistleblowing/whistleblower' refer to the actions/people (typically employees) who inform authorities/media about corporate wrong-doing, which is very commonly a symptom or result of inadequate or weak corporate governance. The term corporate governance is most usually used in relation to large organizations, typically big public companies, because such organizations offer potentially huge hidden freedoms for directors to act secretly, recklessly and negligently, in ways which can have vast damaging impacts on staff, customers, shareholders, society, the environment, etc. Despite this original purpose and meaning (for quoted/public companies), the concept of corporate governance and its principles are also applicable with appropriate adaptation to state agencies, military/social/other state services, and small companies too. The root meanings of the words actually support a broad interpretation: corporate refers to any group; governance refers to the leadership of a group or other entity. See the main Corporate Governance article containing history, codes, templates, etc..
Corporate Hospitality - Entertainment provided by companies in order to develop good relationships with its employees, customers, other businesses, etc.
Corporate Ladder - The order of rank, position, etc., in a company from junior to senior, which can be progressed or 'climbed' by employees.
Corporate Raider - A term used for an individual or company who purchases large numbers of shares in other companies, against their wishes, in order to gain a controlling interest in the other companies, or to resell the shares for a large profit.
Corporate Social Responsibility - CSR. An obligation of a company to adhere to legal guidelines in order to meet the needs of its employees, shareholders and customers, and also to be concerned about social and environmental issues.
Corporate Veil - A term which refers to the fact that a company's shareholders are not liable for the company's debts, and are immune from lawsuits concerning contracts, etc.
Corporation - A large company or a group of companies which is legally authorised to act as a single entity, separate from its owners, with its liabilities for damages, debts, etc., limited to its assets so that its shareholders and owners are protected from personal claims.
Corporation Tax - A tax which limited companies and other organisations, such as societies, clubs, associations, etc., pay on their profits after adjustments for certain allowances.
Correspondence Course - A study course using written correspondence, books, etc., which are sent to you by post from learning institutes.
Corruption - Lack of honesty or integrity. Illegal behaviour, such as bribery, by people in positions of authority, e.g. politicians.
Cost Accounting - Managerial accounting which calculates, records and controls the operating costs of producing goods or services.
Cost-centre - Part of a business or organisation such as a marketing department, or quality assurance department, which is a cost to operations and does not produce external customer revenues or profit through trading. See Profit-centre, which trades with external customers and is responsible for producing profit.
Cost Control - A management process which ensures that departments within a company or organisation do not exceed their budget.
Cost Cutting - Reducing an individual's, company's, etc, expenditure.
Cost Effective - Producing a product, offering a service, etc., in the most economical way to the benefit of the company and the customer.
Cost Leader - A company which has a competitive advantage by producing goods or offering services at a lower cost than its competitors.
Cost Of Living - The standard cost of basic necessities which people need to live, such as food, housing and clothes.
Cost Of Living Allowance - COLA. A salary supplement which a company pays to employees because of an increase in the cost of living.
Cost Of Sales - Also known as Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS). The cost of providing a service or manufacturing a product, including labour, materials and overheads.
Cost Overrun - The amount by which the actual cost of a project, etc., exceeds the original budget.
Cost Per Click - CPC. The amount of money an advertiser pays to a website publisher every time a visitor clicks on an advert displayed on the publisher's website which links to the advertisers website.
Cost To Serve - An accounting/business/strategy term and method of analysis which calculates the total costs of product/service provision for a particular customer, or potentially for a broader customer grouping. This method of profitability analysis shifts all indirect costs to be directcosts (directly attributable, as used, per customer), and thereby enables greater clarity in assessing strategy and priorities than relying merely on gross margin indicators.
Cottage Industry - A small business in which production of goods or services are based in the home rather than in a factory or on business premises.
Counterbid - To make a higher offer than someone else in a bid to buy something.
Counterclaim - In a court of law, a claim made against you (plaintiff) by the person (defendant) you are making a claim against.
Counterpart - A person or position which has a corresponding function in a different organization, country, etc. The corresponding function naturally is also a counterpart. Also a copy of a legal document.
Countersign - To add a second signature, where required, to a document or cheque, in order to make it valid.
Countervailing Duty - An additional tax imposed on certain imported goods which have been produced very cheaply in their country of origin, in order to bring the price of the goods up to the true market price to protect the importing country's producers.
Courier - A person who carries and delivers messages, documents, packages, etc., often between companies. A person employed by a travel company as a tourist guide.
Courseware - Computer software designed to be used in teaching or for self-learning.
Covenant - A written promise, sometimes part of a contract, to perform, or not to perform, a particular action.
Cover Charge - A fixed fee charged by a nightclub or a restaurant with live entertainment, which covers, or part covers, the cost of musicians, DJs, etc.
Cowboy - A dishonest, often unqualified, business person, especially one who overcharges for bad quality work. Not to be confused with the cowboy of top-shelf publications.
CPI - Cost-Per-Impression (cost per view) - an advertising method/term, commonly used in online advertising, by which advertising costs are based on the number of times an advert is displayed or viewed.
Crapola - Items of little importance or poor quality. Rubbish.
Crawling Peg - A system of frequently adjusting a country's exchange rate by marginal amounts, because of inflation, etc.
Creative Director - A person who usually works in the advertising or entertainment industry and is responsible for planning and managing the creative aspects of an advertising or promotional campaign.
Credit - An arrangement in which an item for sale is received by the purchaser and paid for at a later date. A loan. The positive balance in a bank account. An amount entered in a company's accounts which has been paid by a debtor.
Credit Analysis - The process of analysing a company's financial records and assessing its ability to repay a loan, etc.
Credit Crunch - Also known as Credit Squeeze. This usually precedes a recession. A situation in which loans for businesses and individuals are difficult to obtain, when a government is trying to control inflation, because of the fear of bankruptcy and unemployment. The term 'Credit Crunch' also became a specific informal name for the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent prolonged recession, which affected western economies particularly, mainly because of their highly leveraged and indebted nature, and the convoluted inter-dependent chains of credit arrangements between banks, some of which failed completely resulting in their effective nationalization or absorption into larger competitors.
Credit History - A record of an individual's or company's debt repayment, used by lenders to asses a borrowers ability to repay a loan, mortgage, etc.
Credit Rating Agency - this is fascinating and significant... a credit rating agency is a company which analyses and issues an official recognized assessment of the quality of a debt or debtor, including corporate, institutional or state debt or debt/credit products (specifically the reliability of repayment/recoverability), such as bonds and tradable securities (debts, equities, mortgages, and derivative complex financial credit contracts), and significantly also of organizations, bodies, and entire countries, by virtue of their credit-worthiness (ability to repay their debts). Ratings are visible, published and officially/internationally recognized, especially for countries. Ratings strongly influence interest rates applied to rated organizations, i.e., poor ratings mean that the low-rated organizations/bodies/nations are charged higher rates of interest by lenders, due to the higher perceived level of risk, and the overall market's response to the rating/risk. Conversely, positively-rated organizations/countries enjoy the lowest possible interest rates when borrowing. The same principle applies to debt products, mindful that many debt products are sold from one lender to another, commonly entailing seriously vast sums of money. Ratings are typically expressed on a scale of AAA ('triple A') as the top/best, which equates to the most reliable and secure debt/debtor, down through AA, A, BBB, BB, etc., to CCC with the lowest being C, although there are variations, including lower case letters, numbers, and + and - symbols. This is a highly significant, pivotal, and controversial area of corporate/global finance, economic management, extending to life and society, because:
· The sums of money involved/affected by these ratings are extremely big (multi-billions) so there is a lot at stake, for corporations, countries, bankers, brokers, and for societies too.
· While there are hundreds of small credit rating agencies, historically the market is dominated by just three of them, namely Standard and Poor; Moody's, and Fitch ('The Big Three'), which between them control (at 2013) c.95% of the global market (in ratings and related services, significantly at the highest levels of national and corporate debt/credit).
· The credit rating industry is inherently and worryingly liable to major conflict of interest because agencies provide important and high-value advisory services to the same organizations whose products the agencies assess, along with rating the client organizations themselves. There is also huge potential for conflict of interest and corruption on a vast scale because credit ratings affect interest rates and transactions entailing monumental sums of money, and so there is unlimited temptation and opportunity for incestuous deals between the rate-fixers and those who trade in credit and debt, and financial investments and speculation generally.
Sadly, as with much else that happens in the financial sector across the globe, combinations of conflict of interest, extreme 'product' complexity, corporate and personal incentive and greed, together with a lack of sufficient regulation and transparency, tend to produce very big outcomes, trends and economical effects that can be arbitrary, distorted, extremely polarized, so that a few powerful people/organizations/entities achieve massive gains and advantages, while others, especially those in weak positions, suffer massive disadvantages. It is an interesting point of note that despite enormous reliance on credit ratings agencies at the level of global corporations and national governments, credit rating agencies can make large misjudgments, as when for example very positive ratings were given to highly toxic derivative mortgages/debts products whose collapse and virtual irrecoverable value led mainly or substantially to the 2008 global financial disintegration and following recesssion. As at 2103 at least one of the 'big three' credit agencies is subject to legal action by the US authorities in this connection. Along with banking and accountancy the credit ratings sector is likely to undergo major changes during the first quarter of the 21st century.
Creditor - A person, business, etc., to whom money is owned.
Credit Rationing - When a bank or money lender limits the amount of funds available to borrowers, or interest rates are very high.
Credit Rating - Information (based on interpretation by an official credit rating agency or similar financial services data provider) of a person's or company's or other entity's financial history and circumstances, which assesses and indicates their ability to repay debts, loans, etc. Lenders use this information when making a decision regarding a loan approval, and in larger cases will adjust levels of interest and other financial credit terms according to the perceived risk of the loan situation and client, which may be an individual or a whole country or international federation.
Credit Repair - The process of helping to improve a person or company's credit rating, sometimes by disputing or correcting credit history discrepancies.
Credit Union - A financial institution, similar to a bank, whose members create the funds from which they can obtain loans at low rates of interest.
Crib - Plagiarism. To copy someone else's written work and pass it off as your own.
Crisis Management - Actions taken by a company to deal with an unexpected event which threatens to harm the organisation, such as a loss of a major customer, bad publicity, etc.
Criterion - A principal or standard by which other things or people may be compared, or a decision may be based.
Critical Mass - The minimum amount of customers, resources, etc., needed to maintain or start a business, venture, etc. The point at which change occurs e.g., when a company is able to continue in business and make a profit without any outside help.
Cronyism - In business and politics, showing favouritism to friends and associates by giving them jobs or appointments with no regard to their qualifications or abilities.
Crowdfunding - A method of funding and underpinning a project or business venture which became increasingly popular and visible in the 21st century, whereby users or other interested people are involved as investors at project inception, and therefore agree and commit to support a development of one sort or another. A good example of crowdfunding is the raising capital and support from a local community for the construction of nearby wind turbines, which generally otherwise encounter local hostility instead of support. The concept of crowdfunding provides a clear illustration of the benefit of involving people as stakeholders, rather than positioning people as 'reluctant customers' or obstacles to be confronted and overcome. See 'Crowdsourcing', which like 'Crowdfunding' embodies similar progressive, open, inclusive, non-authoritarian management philosophy.
Cross Guarantee - Also known as Inter Company Guarantee. A guarantee by a group of companies to be responsible for the debts, etc., of another company in the group if it fails to repay them. The group also use the guarantee to raise capital or take out multiple loans.
Cross Merchandising - Also known as Add-On Sales. In retailing, the practice of putting related products together on display in order to encourage customers to purchase several items.
Crowdsourcing - Term first coined by Jeff Howe in 2006 in Wired magazine. Crowdsourcing refers to an organisation, group or individual delegating a task to a large number of people via the internet, thereby using the general public or a community of followers, users, experts, etc., to do research, make suggestions, solve a problem, etc., usually without being paid. Their reward is mainly a sense of ownership and real involvement, which is proven to be a very powerful and meaningful force for motivation. (See the theories of Herzberg and McGregor, or at a glance the diagram illustrating XY-Theory.) Crowdsourced projects can be very big indeed. Wikipedia is effectively built and maintained using crowdsourcing. The term is a 'semi-portmanteau' in that it combines the words crowd and outsourcing. See also Crowd funding.
Crown Jewel - The most valuable and profitable asset of a company or business.
C-Suite - The Chief Officers or most senior executives in a business or organisation.
Cube Farm - An open office which is divided into cubicles.
Culpability - Blame or liability for harm or damage to others, from Latin culpa meaning fault.
Currency Bloc - A group of countries that use the same currency, for example the Euro.
Current Account - A bank account which can be used to make deposits, withdrawals, cash cheques, pay bill, etc.
Current Assets - Also called Liquid Assets. A company's cash or assets which can be converted into cash usually within one year, including shares, inventory, etc.
Current Liability - In business, a liability or debt which must be paid within one year from the time of the initial transaction.
Current Ratio - A financial ratio which gives an indication of whether or not a company can pay its short-term debts.
Customer - An individual, company, etc., who purchases goods and/or services from other individuals, companies, stores, etc.
Customer Loyalty - Describes when a customer prefers to buy a particular brand or type of product, who prefers a particular shop, or who stays with the same company, such as a bank, insurance company, phone company, etc.
Customer Relations - The relationship a company has with its customers and the way it deals with them. The department in a company which is responsible for dealing with its customers, for example complaints, etc.
Customs Duty - A tax which must be paid on imported, and sometimes exported, goods, to raise a country's revenue and to protect domestic industries from cheaper foreign competition.
Customs Union - A group of nations which have agreed to promote free trade, for example, not to charge tax on goods which they trade with one another, and to set taxes for nations which are not members of the group.
Cutover - Also known as 'Going Live'. The point in time a company or organisation, etc., replaces an old program or system with a new one.
Cut-Throat - Ruthless and intense competition. An unprincipled, ruthless person.
Cyber Monday - In recent times, the busiest online shopping day of the year, in the USA typically the Monday after Thanksgiving Day (the fourth Thursday of November); in the UK typically the first Monday in December.
Cyberspace - Term credited to author William Gibson in 1984 which describes the imaginary place where e-mails, web pages, etc., go to while they are being sent between computers.
Cybersquatting - The illegal activity of buying and registering a domain name which is a well-known brand or someone's name, with the intent of selling it to its rightful owner in order to make a profit.
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