How to protect your money in the face of rising inflation

Abstract

It is essential to acknowledge that, on a general level, there is a close relationship between devaluation, interest rates, and inflation. These three elements are positively correlated and bring uncertainty to day-to-day investment, financing, and working capital management decisions.

Evidently, the increase in inflation entails a loss in purchasing power and an environment in which the best strategy for employees is to protect their current jobs and, if possible, pay off debts early and avoid acquiring new loans not intended for leveraging equity. Generally, it is recommended that these new loans be issued at fixed rates since variable rates usually are inflation-dependent.

It is advisable, if feasible, to increase income and reduce the so-called "ant expenses." It is crucial to emphasize unnecessary spending. These are times for careful consumption and savings decisions under a dynamic that seeks significant household spending on what could be called "pent-up consumption" in excessive purchases following the economic reopening after the pandemic crisis.

Strategies such as the VAT-free day encourage household consumption of often "unnecessary" products.

That is why the "what to buy" question is essential during times of rising inflation. We cannot fall into the trap of consumption because we may think that the alleged "discounts" will prevent us from buying the most expensive items; however, this dynamic is the one that increases inflation and, therefore, interest rates.

                                                                                                                                         Editorial Note

This 72nd issue of Cuadernos de Administración corresponds to the January-April 2022 period. The ten papers published in this 72nd issue come from the journal’s new strategy of keeping an open call for papers meeting the highest scientific and language standards. For this issue, authors from several countries and regions of Colombia submitted their manuscripts to our editorial process. The journal thanks our reviewers, who supported us with their experience and knowledge through the evaluation of each paper.

The nine papers published show the high quality of several Administration-related aspects. The first one, called “Tacit knowledge about internal marketing in health care institutions,” seeks to conduct an analysis that explores internal marketing actions in health care institutions based on the experiences of the external client (patients’ relatives). In this work, affinity is identified in dimensions such as treating the employee as a customer and recognizing tasks as products, satisfied employees, service-oriented attitudes, perceived service quality, and satisfied customers under Berry’s Model.
The paper “Impact of Open Innovation in Peruvian food firms” aims to assess how open innovation entry and absorptive capacity favor the development of technological innovations in Peruvian food firms. A representative sample of 111 Peruvian companies was the primary input to determine the research findings. In the article “Intellectual capital and dynamic capabilities in knowledge management: the role of knowledge intensity,” the relationship between Intellectual Capital (IC) and Dynamic Capabilities in Knowledge Management (KMDC) is accounted for, as well as the role of Knowledge Intensity (IK). In this work, contingency tables, corrected standardized residuals test, Mann-Whitney test, and variance-based structural equation modeling are used on a sample of 135 Colombian organizations. The results attest to a positive relationship between KI and KMDC, and significant differences were found between companies with high and low KI, suggesting a KI mediating effect.

The paper “Worker experiences of workplace bullying in companies from Antioquia between 2006 and 2019” characte­rizes workplace bullying experiences and identifies the participants’ coping strategies and the consequences of bullying, as well as the HR Office’s possible involvement in the experiences of workplace bullying. The results show how the victims of harassment go through most of its phases, the main form of harassment being mobbing, with severe physical and psychological consequences. The paper “Work-family reconciliation, its effect on organizational commitment and job satisfaction” analyzes the work-family reconciliation variable and how it affects commitment to the organization and job satisfaction in city officials. A two-approach study has been carried out: the first is divided by gender (male-female), the second by the length of service (less than ten years and above or equal to 10 years) to analyze whether there are differences between these groups. The results show that work-family reconciliation positively affects job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

The work proposed by Monsalve-Castro et al. (2022) called “High-performance practices: do employees and HR managers think alike?” is purposed with establishing whether there is a difference in the use of high-performance practices as conceived by human resources managers in charge of their implementation and how employees perceive these practices. The results show differences in employee perception and management implementation of some practices such as compensation and training. The paper “Sustainability Marketing Strategy of Sustainability Reporting Companies in Mexico” identifies the sustainability marketing (SM) strategies of sustainability reporting companies in Mexico. A sample of 47 companies from various sectors listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV) and companies published in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) database were employed.

The paper “Contributions to the technological characterization of medical cannabis production” identifies and analyzes the main aspects of the use and development of technologies in the medical cannabis industry, emphasizing the plant’s specific horticulture. Technology watch identifies research and technological development trends in improving growing conditions, crop-related products, and genetic improvement.

Finally, the last two literature review papers consider relevant issues on corporate sustainability and finance and organizational longevity. The article “Corporate Sustainability and Finance” determines the importance of corporate sustainability, the issues underpinning it, emphasizing its relationship with financial performance. Therein, a documentary review was carried out to elaborate on corporate sustainability, Sustainability Standards, Socially responsible funds, Sustainability Reports, and Corporate sustainability and financial performance. An interesting finding is that empirical research reports a positive relationship between Corporate Sustainability and Financial Performance, thus showing the imperative need for companies to achieve financial sustainability.

The release of the 72nd issue of Cuadernos de Administración by the Universidad del Valle’s Faculty of Administration Sciences consolidates us as a prestigious journal in the scientific dissemination of knowledge across various areas. The journal would like to thank each author of these ten papers and the peer reviewers who supported our editorial process, always bearing in mind that the content of each article is the responsibility of its authors.