A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree in Master of Commerce (50% course work) / A growing number of institutional investors that are adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) philosophy are playing a crucial role in influencing listed companies to adopt and address CSR issues. CSR is defined as “…a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations…” (European Commission, 2010). CSR is now widely accepted as a way of doing business in the contemporary environment. It is evident in companies that are spending large sums of money, time and effort on satisfying various stakeholders’ requirements for responsible behaviour. Despite the growing pressure on companies to become socially responsible, the direct benefits of CSR contribution to firm performance remain questionable. From existing literature the relationship between CSR and firm performance have pointed to mixed results (Gladysek & Chipeta, 2012; Aggarwal, 2013). This study examines the relationship between CSR performance and firm performance using the CSRHub sustainability indexes as proxy for CSR performance. The firm performance measures of firm value (Tobin’s Q) and financial accounting performance (return on assets) were used. Annual data of firms from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from year 2009 to 2012 was analysed using the Multiple Regression Analysis techniques. The study revealed that significant and positive relationship exists between CSR/environmental performance and firm value of listed South African companies. The study concluded that there is no significant relationship between firm performance and the other components of CSR such as community relations, employment relations, and governance. The relatively small sample size of the listed companies, some missing values on the sample data and the shorter time period on the study are the main limitations acknowledged in this report. In the overall, the study provides important insights for understanding the contribution of CSR and its disaggregated components to firm performance.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’appréhender les relations entre le roi et les nobles à la fin des guerres de Religion. La période des guerres civiles est marquée par un affaiblissement de l’autorité monarchique. Pour rétablir l’ordre dans le royaume, le roi doit compter sur les nobles dont la vocation est de porter les armes. Or, beaucoup de ces seigneurs ne le reconnaissent pas comme roi légitime. Par la guerre, les négociations et une savante politique de légitimation, Henri IV parvient à les rallier progressivement à son autorité. Cette thèse vise à comprendre ce processus de réconciliation, sur quelles bases il repose et comment les nobles contribuent à la redéfinition du pouvoir après ces périodes de troubles. Car si la paix est rétablie dans le royaume à partir de 1598 avec la paix de Vervins et l’édit de Nantes, les contestations nobiliaires ne sont pas totalement éteintes et éclatent à plusieurs reprises jusqu’en 1629. Les modalités de la révolte sont donc au cœur de cette thèse, c’est-à-dire la façon dont les nobles expriment leur mécontentement et justifient leurs oppositions au souverain. La cour est un cadre privilégié pour observer les dynamiques de pouvoir qui se jouent entre le souverain et les nobles, hommes et femmes. Le choix d’une période comprise 1589 et 1629 permet de suivre l’évolution de ces rapports à l’autorité monarchique et de mesurer le poids de l’honneur, moteur de l’action nobiliaire, mais aussi de la défense de la foi dans les prises de position nobiliaires. Cette longue période permet d’appréhender en quoi les contestations nobiliaires contribuent à la construction monarchique dans une période marquée par des conflits religieux. / The aim of this thesis is to understand the relationships between the King and the nobles at the end of the Wars of Religion. This period is marked by a weakening of the royal authority and the division of nobility between factions with different religious faiths. In order to restore order in the kingdom, the King must rely upon nobles whose vocation is to bear arms. However, many nobles don’t recognize him like as a legitimate sovereign. Through war, negotiations and a wise policy of legitimation, Henri IV achieves his goal of rallying them behind his authority. This thesis aims to understand this reconciliation process, on what basis it is founded and how nobles contribute to redefine royal power. Even though peace has been restored since 1598 with the Peace of Vervins and the Edict of Nantes, protests of nobility are not shut and flared several times until 1629. The modalities of the revolt are at the heart of this thesis, that is, the way nobles express their discontent and justify their oppositions against the sovereign. The court provides an ideal environment for the observation of the power dynamics between the King and nobles, men and women. The choice of the period from 1589 up to 1629 allows one to follow the evolution of the relations with the monarchical authority and evaluate the weight of honor, driving force of nobility action as well as the defense of faith in the nobles’ positions. This extensive period allows to apprehend how nobility protests contribute to the building of the monarchy during a period marked by religious conflicts.

Contribui na atribuição de valor ao exercício profissional e acadêmico da Ciência da Comunicação, enquanto elemento constitutivo do caráter institucional de organizações de grande porte com fins lucrativos. Objetivo: Buscar mais informações sobre a estrutura organizacional, os métodos de mensuração do retorno dos investimentos e a avaliação destes processos pelos profissionais da área e pelos seus controladores, na Petrobras S. A., na Basf S. A. e na Bayer S. A. Divisão Cropscience. Método: Estudo de casos com relato da estrutura organizacional, das metodologias adotadas e entrevistas semi-estruturadas dos principais envolvidos nos processos de patrocínios culturais, comunicação corporativa e comunicação interna, respectivamente. Resultados: Constata-se a aceleração na adoção destas metodologias, o interesse crescente sobre o planejamento e controle dos investimentos na área, bem como o início de um processo de sua inclusão na apropriação contábil gerencial e nos relatórios de desempenho econômico e de evolução patrimonial destas organizações. / A contribution to allocate value to professional and academic work in Communication Science, as part of large companies´ corporate nature. Objective: Finding more information on organizational structure, methods of measuring the return on investments and evaluation of these processes by professionals of communication and their controllers, at Petrobras S.A., Basf S.A. and Bayer S.A. - Cropscience Division. Method: Case studies with organizational structure, report of the methodologies adopted in cultural sponsorship, corporate communication and internal communication areas and their professionals´ points of view collected in semi-structured interviews. Results: It is verified an acceleration in the adoption of these methodologies, a growing interest on planning and controlling investments in the Communication area, as well as and a starting process which includes results on investment in ownership accounting management and in reports on economical development and equity performance of these organizations.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T18:40:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Edalmo Pacifico de Araujo Junior.pdf: 361525 bytes, checksum: f110a22dd5963c68d4d1dc654a3120b6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-05-17 / Return in Hospital Organizations: a Critical Approach to the Investment Decisions Based on a Case Study. This study has the objective of showing how effective hospital institutions have been in their investment decisions, based on operational results (ROI). It intends to specifically investigate if Private Hospitals inserted in competitive markets which care exclusively for private patients are more effective in allocating investments than Private Hospitals which care for patients coming from the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) and are not inserted in a competitive environment. The methodology used was a multicased one, characterized as a qualitative and exploratory research of descriptive type. It involved two distinct groups: one formed by two private hospitals in the city of São Paulo inserted in a competitive market; and the other formed by two private hospitals which care for patients from SUS not submitted to competitive markets. The data were collected with the use of managerial reports and a questionnaire composed of 15 questions. The intention is to identify the correlation of investments made by the hospitals and their economical results, as well as their production amount. It was verified that the hospitals which work with SUS and are not inserted in a competitive market are effective in generating economical return due to the investments used; however, this fact does not occur in private hospitals which receive private patients and are inserted in the market. It was observed that hospitals which work with SUS are effective in using investments, in relation to the dislocating of less profitable to more profitable services, and that they generate more health to the population, opposite to the hospitals not related to SUS, which did not present a relation between investments and service offer at all / Retorno em organizações Hospitalares: abordagem crítica das decisões de investimentos com base em estudo de caso. Este estudo tem como objetivo mostrar como as Instituições Hospitalares têm sido eficazes nas suas decisões de investimento, tendo como base o resultado operacional (ROI). Procura investigar, de maneira mais específica, se os Hospitais Privados inseridos em mercados competitivos, que atendem pacientes particulares, exclusivamente, são mais eficazes na alocação de investimentos do que os Hospitais Privados, com atendimento de pacientes provenientes do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) e que não estão inseridos em ambiente de concorrência. O método empregado foi do tipo multicaso que se caracteriza como pesquisa na modalidade qualitativa e exploratória de caráter descritivo. Realizou-se com a distinção de dois grupos: um formado por dois Hospitais da cidade de São Paulo, privados e expostos à concorrência, e outro composto por dois Hospitais, privados, que atendem o SUS e não estão inseridos em mercado competitivo. Os dados foram coletados através de relatórios gerenciais e por meio de um questionário composto de 15 questões. Pretende-se identificar a correlação entre os investimentos realizados pelos hospitais e os resultados econômicos dos mesmos, assim como o volume de produção. Verificou-se que os Hospitais que prestam serviço ao SUS e não estão inseridos no mercado competitivo são eficazes na geração de retorno econômico em função dos investimentos empregados, fato este que não ocorre nos Hospitais Privados que atendem pacientes particulares e estão inseridos no mercado. Observou-se que os Hospitais que atendem o SUS são eficazes na utilização dos investimentos, no que se refere ao deslocamento dos serviços menos rentáveis para os serviços mais rentáveis, e com evidência de geração de mais saúde à população, diferentemente, dos Hospitais Não SUS que não apresentaram, em nenhum aspecto, relação entre investimentos e volume de serviços

As funds dwindle and costs rise university advancement staff have been given higher fundraising goals to meet the needs. In addition, university advancement staff have received pressure to review and lower the costs of fundraising to become more efficient (Drezner, 2011). To enable university advancement staff to attain goals, advocate for resources, or enhance processes, university advancement staff are challenged to measure their effectiveness. However, the process of measuring university fundraising success is unclear as there are many variables to consider and several ways to determine success. For this study the Delphi Technique (Hsu & Sanford, 2007) was used with 3 rounds of questionnaires. Seventeen experts of fundraising analytics were asked to identify both quantifiable and nonquantifiable variables that should be included in a comprehensive model to determine success in university fundraising. Findings include quantifiable measures such as return on investment, growth in giving reports, new and recaptured donors, and fundraiser performance and activity metrics. In addition, findings include nonquantifiable measures such as institutional and environmental forces were identified by the participants as critical components to comprise in a comprehensive model. Further findings include a variety of other metrics, both quantifiable and nonquantifiable, that were identified by the participants as critical components to comprise in a comprehensive evaluation model.

Over the recent years, the software industry has faced a steady increase in the number of exposed and exploited software vulnerabilities. With more software and devices being connected to the internet every day, the need for proactive security measures has never been more important. One promising new technology for making software more secure is fuzz testing. This automated testing technique is based around generating a large number of test cases with the intention of revealing dangerous bugs and vulnerabilities. In this thesis work, a new direction within grey-box fuzz testing is evaluated against previous work. The presented approach uses sampled probability data in order to guide the fuzz testing towards program states that are expected to be easy to reach and beneficial for the discovery of software vulnerabilities. Evaluation of the design shows that the suggested approach provides no obvious advantage over existing solutions, but also indicates that the performance advantage could be dependent on the structure of the system under test. However, analysis of the design itself highlights several design decisions that could benefit from more extensive research. While the design proposed in this thesis work is insufficient for replacing current state of the art fuzz testing software, it provides a solid foundation for future research within the field. With the many insights gained from the design and implementation work, this thesis work aims to both inspire others and showcase the challenges of creating a probability-based approach to grey-box fuzz testing.

François-Denis Tronchet, jurisconsulte, participa, aux premières places, à l'application du droit, mais aussi à son écriture, à un moment de l'histoire de France où les juristes refusèrent d'être les interprètes du passé pour devenir les agents du devenir historique. Il prit part à tous les grands événements de la Révolution : les Etats généraux, le Serment du Jeu de Paume, la nuit du 4-août, l'élaboration de la Constitution de 1791, la fuite du roi arrêtée à Varennes, le procès du roi ; il siégea, sous le Directoire, au Conseil des Anciens ; enfin, il fut le premier président du Tribunal de cassation sous le Consulat, avant de présider la commission chargée de l'élaboration du Code civil. La pensée de cet avocat au Parlement de Paris fut décisive dans le passage de l'ancien droit au nouveau. Elle s'y exprime dans ses consultations, qui constituent la principale source de cette étude. Conservées aujourd'hui à la bibliothèque de la Cour de cassation, elles constituent une source exceptionnelle, rarement exploitée. Pourtant, des documents furent une source d'inspiration méconnue du Code civil. Il s'agit donc d'une configuration tout-à-fait remarquable, où l'historien dispose tout à la fois d'un travail juridique, les consultations, et du résultat qu'elles ont contribué à inspirer, le Code civil, qui régit toujours notre présent. En outre, on trouve, entre la source (les consultations) et sa résultante (le Code), des témoignages précis de l'action politique de Tronchet, notamment dans les archives parlementaires. Comment un juriste aussi érudit, aussi imprégné de tradition que François-Denis Tronchet a-t-il pu participer de façon aussi décisive à la Révolution, devenant, au moment de la rédaction du Code civil, l'artisan d'un droit absolument nouveau ? L'art de la consultation, par la liberté que donne l'interprétation, lui avait donné la capacité d'envelopper son avis personnel, parfois très créatif, des formes apparemment objectives de l'autorité de l'avocat consultant. Il s'était ainsi préparé à la grande réorganisation des normes de 1789. En outre, la participation à des réseaux d'opposition proches du jansénisme ; l'influence, dans les milieux parlementaires, du culte de la république romaine et d'une philosophie stoïcienne, transmise par l'intermédiaire de Cicéron, qui soulignait la centralité politique de la justice et de la loi naturelle ; tous ces facteurs expliquent ses prises de position favorables à la Révolution, mais aussi le rôle qu'il joua dans la défense du roi. Pour conclure, il voyait la Révolution comme une régénération, une transformation du présent par un retour authentique aux principes passés. Tronchet, comme les antiques jurisconsultes, a cherché à fixer la Révolution à des principes déterminés de toute éternité. / François-Denis Tronchet, a Jurisconsult, played a crucial role in the interpretation of Law, but also in its writing, during the French Revolution. During this period of French history, some jurists refused to be only interpreters of the Past, and began to be true actors of History. François-Denis Tronchet took part in nearly all important events of the French Revolution : the Estates-General, the Tennis Court Oath, the Fourth of August and the abolition of feudal privileges, the writing of the Constitution of 1791, the flight of Louis XVI stopped at Varennes, the King's trial. He was a Member of Parliament (of the Conseil des Anciens) during the Directoire ; lastly, he was the president of the Tribunal de cassation during the Consulate and he presided the commission in charge of the redaction of the civil code. His thought was decisive in the transformation of French Law during the French Revolution. It is conveyed in its consultations, which are the main historical source of this dissertation. Today stored at the library of the Cour de cassation, they constitute an extraordinarysource, rarely used. However, these documents inspired the French civil code. Here, historians have a hand, at the same time, a lawyer's work, the consultations, and the result they partly inspired, the civil Code, that still inspires our present. Besides, between the source (the consultations) and its result (the Code) we have some documents about the political life of Tronchet (mainly parliamentary records). How is it so, that such a learned jurist, so influenced by ancient juridical traditions, played such a crucial role in the French revolution, becoming, during the redaction process of the Civil code, the architect of an absolutely new Law ? During the Ancien regime, the art of consultation gave him, by way of the intellectual freedom of interpretation, the ability of giving his own opinion, sometimes very creative, under the guise of apparently objective, and authoritative, form of the consultation. Therefore, he was intellectually prepared to the reorganization of Law brought about by the French Revolution. Besides, other factors explain his participation in the French Revolution. His belonging to opposition networks, close to Jansenism, during the Ancien Regime accounts for his itinerary. The influence, in parliamentary circles, of the celebration of the Roman Republic as well as the influence of stoic philosophy, conveyed through Cicero's writingd, which underlined the major importance of justice and natural Law, also partly account for his adhesion to the Revolution. These intellectual influences also explain his defence of Louis XVI during his trial. To conclude, he viewed the Revolution as a process of regeneration, a transformation of time present by a resurrection of the true principles of ancient Law.

The body motion of patients, during magnetic resonance (MR) imaging causes significant artifacts in the reconstructed image. Artifacts are manifested as a motion induced blur and ghost repetitions of the moving structures. which obscure vital anatomical and pathological detail. The techniques that have been proposed for suppressing motion artifacts fall into two major categories. Real-time techniques attempt to prevent the motion from corrupting the data by restricting the data acquisition times or motion of the patients, whereas the post-processing techniques use the information embedded in the corrupted data to restore the image. Most methods currently in widespread use belong to the real-time techniques, however with the advent of fast computing platforms and sophisticated signal processing algorithms, the emergence of post-processing techniques is clearly evident. The post-processing techniques usually demand an appropriate model of the motion. The restoration of the image requires that the motion parameters be determined in order to invert the data degradation process. Methods for the correction of translational motion have been studied extensively in the past. The subject of this thesis encompasses the rotational motion model and the effect of rotational motion on the collected MR data in the spatial frequency space (k-space), which is in general, more complicated than the translational model. Rotational motion artifacts are notably prevalent in MR images of head, brain and limbs. Post-processing techniques for the correction of rotational motion artifacts often involve interpolation and re-gridding of the acquired data in the k-space. These methods create significant data overlap and void regions. Therefore, in the past, proposed corrective techniques have been limited to suppression of artifacts caused by small angle rotations. This thesis presents a method of managing overlap regions, using weighted averaging of redundant data, in order to correct for large angle rotations. An iterative estimation technique for filling the data void regions has also been developed by the use of iterated application of projection operators onto constraint sets. These constraint sets are derived from the k-space data generated by the MR imager, and available a priori knowledge. It is shown that the iterative algorithm diverges at times from the required image, due to inconsistency among the constraint sets. It is also shown that this can be overcome by using soft. constraint sets and fuzzy projections. One of the constraints applied in the iterative algorithm is the finite support of the imaged object, marked by the outer boundary of the region of interest (ROI). However, object boundary extraction directly from the motion affected MR image can be difficult, specially if the motion function of the object is unknown. This thesis presents a new ROI extraction scheme based on entropy minimization in the image background. The object rotation function is usually unknown or unable to be measured with sufficient accuracy. The motion estimation algorithm proposed in this thesis is based on maximizing the similarity among the k-space data subjected to angular overlap. This method is different to the typically applied parameter estimation technique based on minimization of pixel energy outside the ROI, and has higher efficiency and ability to estimate rotational motion parameters in the midst of concurrent translational motion. The algorithms for ROI extraction, rotation estimation and data correction have been tested with both phantom images and spin echo MR images producing encouraging results.

Community radio in Thailand is an alternative to public, commercial and state radio with unique characteristics in that listeners can participate at all levels. Community radio varies considerably in its definitions as well as serving several purposes depending on its role in the nation's media system. However, its fundamental philosophy is similar in that radio is used to serve the needs and the interests of the community. Access and participation in small-scale media may not only empower the voiceless, but also maintain local identity and cultures. The reformation of the Thai broadcasting media system by Section 40 of the 1997 constitution and the 2000 Broadcasting Act has increased the chance for some communities to use radio to fulfill their community development needs. The aims of this thesis are: to explore Thai community radio in the broader context of community radio internationally; to examine Thai broadcasting policies on community radio; to explore the development of Thai community radio in relation to the wider liberalisation of the media between 1998 and 2002; and to analyse similarities and differences in station management, programming and audience reception in the four different models of community radio that developed in a range of different provincial Thai community radio stations. A comparative case study using qualitative research methods was used to examine the four case studies, namely at Petchaburi (PRD, 1998) Nakhon Si Thammarat (MCOT, 1998), Roi Et (INN, 2000), and Kanchanaburi (people's radio, 200 I). The contribution of this thesis lies in its exploration of different models of Thai community radio so as to illustrate different interpretations by several stakeholders of community radio discourse, as well as reflecting the constraints on community broadcasting caused by the political economy of the broadcasting system and regulatory inconsistencies. It concludes that community radio has not yet contributed to a more empowered media because of several constraints. Thai community radio did not pursue real participatory communication to empower its listeners. It merely widened the public space for local communities to have more choices for information community-based programs with phone-in formats that provided twoway communication. Thai community radio has not created a wider liberalisation of the media, however, its development facilitated media democratisation through promoting the media reform process, and increasing the awareness of citizens' rights among ordinary people. Station manager and middle-class activists played important roles in putting forth local issues for public discussion. Increasing numbers of local people became alert to their rights to communicate as promised by the 1997 constitution, but unfortunately media reform lacked government support. The Thaksin government had an ambivalent attitude and contradictory policies towards community radio.

<p><strong>Bakgrund:</strong> Prestationsmätning och utvärdering är ett ämne som varit under stor debatt desenaste årtiondena. Relevance Lost debatten som startades av Johnson och Kaplan i slutet av1980‐talet, där den redovisningsbaserade informationen kritiserades som styrmedel, fickmycket stort genomslag i den amerikanska litteraturen. Nya teorier har under de senasteårtiondena växt fram som en lösning på de problem som kan uppstå när utvärdering skerbaserat på enbart finansiella mått. Framförallt de redovisningsbaserade lönsamhetsmåtten haren tendens att leda till beteendeproblem, något som fått samlingsnamnet ROI‐beteende.Överensstämmer den amerikanska litteraturen med svensk praxis? Relativt lite forskning harskett inom området och vi finner det därmed av intresse att undersöka användningen i svenskatillverkande företag och presentera en mer nyanserad bild av användningen.</p><p><strong>Syfte:</strong> Syftet med studien är att kartlägga och beskriva vilka prestationsmått som används avföretag och vilka eventuella mät‐ och beteendeproblem som upplevs vid tillämpning avredovisningsbaserade lönsamhetsmått. Vidare syftar uppsatsen till att förklara hur företagväljer att agera för att undvika alternativt begränsa problemen med lönsamhetsmått.</p><p><strong>Metod:</strong> Studien baseras på en surveyundersökning i form av en webenkät. Enkäten skickadestill alla tillverkande företag i Sverige med mer än 200 anställda. För att kvalitetssäkra enkätengenomfördes en förstudie på två tillverkande företag i populationen innan distribution skedde.</p><p><strong>Resultat: </strong>Studien visar att svenska tillverkande företag alltid använder en kombination avlönsamhetsmått, resultatmått och icke finansiella mått vid utvärdering. De rekommendationersom presenteras i den amerikanska styrningslitteraturen är i linje med hur svenska företagutvärderar och styr sina verksamheter. Mät‐ och beteende problem upplevs av denanledningen inte i stor utsträckning av företagen i studien. Relevance Lost kritiken och ROIbeteendetkan därför sägas ha mycket liten relevans i en svensk kontext.</p>