The General Model of Working Capital Management

This book integrates Working Capital Management, Trade Credit, and Supply-Chain Finance in a comprehensive framework, illustrated by dozens of case studies, including a leading case which explains how improved working capital practices have led to over U$1 billion in savings for a large company. The General Model of Working Capital Management consolidates the aspects of these subjects spread across different disciplines, such as finance, accounting, operations, marketing, and more. It includes enough material to make the book accessible to a broad audience, from introductory undergraduate courses to business executives. Offering managerial lessons to optimize companies’ cash flow, case studies run the whole gamut, from the small business owner who cried in an executive class when realizing how bad working capital management almost destroyed his business to the significance of Amazon's and Tesco's negative cash conversion cycle for their expansion. Formal models include the relationship between market power and value extraction through changes in payment terms for consumers and suppliers, in-kind finance, and trade credit with asymmetric competing retailers. The book also explores how just-in-time strategies developed under capital constraints to limit working capital investments; they are more than the search for production efficiency. Finally, the chapter about the greening of supply chains describes how companies that can extract resources from their supply chain or act as trade credit lenders have a crucial role in mitigating climate change.