Cette thèse analyse les critères de la performance publique, en étudiant le NPM qui a fait émerger la performance à travers la réforme budgétaire de l'Etat. Les conceptualisations de la performance publique ainsi que les modes d'opérationnalisations mobilisés dans la littérature sont largement controversés. Nous admettons que les contradictions structurantes liées à la performance publique, constatées de manière récurrente, sont majoritairement inhérentes au construit lui-même et à la façon dont il a été appréhendé. Cette thèse s'intéresse à la définition de la performance publique, ses critères, ses modes d'opérationnalisation dans le cadre de la réforme budgétaire de l'Etat, et privilégie l'expérience française LOLF comme un terrain d'étude. Elle vise de valider la nécessité de l'Etat de concentrer de manière équi-proportionnelle ses actions sur l'efficacité, l'efficience et l'effectivité pour atteindre l'équilibre budgétaire. / This thesis analyzes the criteria of the public performance, by studying the NPM, which has given rise to performance through budgetary reform of the state. Conceptualizations of public performance and the methods to operationalize mobilized in the literature are largely controversial. We recognize that the structural contradictions related to public performance, found repeatedly, are largely inherent in the building itself and how he was apprehended. This is due largely to a lack of a significant theoretical foundation that can provide an appropriate framework of analysis to identify the notion of performance as part of the state budget.This thesis is interested in defining the criteria for public performance in the budgetary reform of the state and its operational modes and privilege the French experience “LOLF” as a field study. It aims to validate the need for the state to concentrate so equi-proportionate shares of the effectiveness, efficiency and effectiveness to achieve a balanced budget.

De nyheter som når oss i Sverige från Mexiko handlar allt som oftast om den organiserade brottslighetens verksamhet och hur befolkningen i främst Mexikos norra delar, utsätts för denna. Sedan förre presidenten Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) manade till krig mot knarket har dödssiffrorna bara stigit och fortsätter att göra så. Men förutom tusentals döda får situationen även konsekvenser på demokratin, då medborgerliga och mänskliga rättigheter begränsas. Ett ofta utsatt mål i konflikterna har varit landets journalister som pressas från flera håll, av bl.a. korrupta tjänstemän och kriminella grupper. Denna studie undersöker hur pressfriheten och demokratin i Mexiko påverkas av det utsatta läge landets journalister befinner sig i två konfliktdrabbade delstater. Vidare analyseras vad som kan sägas om demokratins kvalitet utifrån nyhetsrapporteringen i områdena. Detta görs genom att analysera primära källor i form av tidningsartiklar från två lokaltidningar, en från respektive delstat. Dessa har sedan jämförts med en rikstäckande och huvudstadsbaserad dagstidning, för att se eventuella skillnader mellan lokala och rikstäckande tidningar. Undersökningen visar att rapporteringen i de båda delstaterna i vissa aspekter är begränsad, vilket kan vara tecken på att demokratin i de aktuella områdena är bristande.

I detta kandidatarbete diskuterar vi ansvar hos utvecklare samt användare när det gäller spridningen av media och filtrering på sociala medier. Med sociala mediers ökade popularitet växer utvecklarnas och användarens ansvarstagande. Många användare uppmanas indirekt till att sprida falsk media för en större publicitet. Vi utgår från Donna Haraway’s begrepp situerad kunskap för att utforska hur media samspelar med användare. Vi använder oss även utav Lucy Suchmans begrepp accountability för att diskutera hur vi som webbutvecklare bär ansvar för hur vår plattform används och hur användare är accountable för källkritik och den spridning de utför. Vår gestaltning undersöker hur utvecklare och användare inom sociala medier kan fördjupa sin förståelse för olika typer av källor på sociala medier. Gestaltningen är utformad som ett socialt medium och ska ge användarna en tankeställare om filterbubblan. För att utveckla vidare på gestaltningen har vi gjort användartester. Resultatet och diskussionen av användartesterna visar hur bra användare förstår det budskap om filterbubblan och filtrering som sker på sociala medier.

Local Content is an oil sector governance and sustainability policy that aims at check-mating the dominance of the foreign oil companies in host countries, and encouraging the participation of the local oil firms in the petroleum value-chain. It is a burgeoning concept applied in the upstream petroleum contracts in the developing petro states. This study was conducted to examine the local content accounting, accountability and governance of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and the five major International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria (Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Total and Agip). The soft and hard accountability of the two principal actors were determined. The work drew on the Chatham House Guidelines for Good Governance in Emerging Oil and Gas Producers (2013) to derive its conceptual and analytical models. The study used the convergent parallel design and a combination of the three accounting paradigms to draw its conclusions. Thematic analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics including the post hoc Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests with Bonferroni Corrected Alpha, and the logistic regression tests were used. The study also applied the mechanistic content analysis methodology on fifty sustainability reports of the selected IOCs in line with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) sustainability reporting guidelines. Disclosure index and paired-samples t-test were used to determine the existence and trends in the IOCs’ local content disclosure practices before and after the enactment of the Nigeria’s local content law. The study found the local content policy to be an accountabilitybased sustainability driver in the Nigerian petroleum sector. Although the NCDMB’s performance was favourable to a large extent, the study found that corruption, fronting, and non-disclosure of the beneficial ownership of some oil firms remained the major challenges of local content in Nigeria. An expectation gap between the Board and the stakeholders on the financial accountability was established. The study found moderate and consistent local content disclosure indices of the periods before and after the Nigeria’s local content law, but higher volumetric disclosure in the period after the law, signifying likely impact of the local content law on the IOC’s voluntary disclosure. It was recommended that the Board should tighten up its regulatory responsibilities and avoid questionable practices. It was also suggested that the Nigerian local content rules should incorporate more incentives such as unringfencing and crossfencing of upstream costs to encourage more investment. The study also suggested that the accounting standard-setting bodies should issue dedicated accounting standards or expand the existing IFRS 8 and IAS 21 to comprehensively address the preparation and presentation of local content information in the annual financial statements.

Si la prison fait beaucoup parler d’elle, ses caractéristiques sont trop souvent connues par les données négatives qu’elle reflète. Révélées par de multiples facteurs dont le surpeuplement pénitentiaire, les violences carcérales ou encore la santé fragile des détenus (etc.), les problématiques de la prison remettent en question sa capacité à remplir ses missions de garde et d’accompagnement de la personne détenue. Dans ces conditions, la notion de réinsertion de l’individu incarcéré pourrait être largement compromise. Le sujet de cette thèse est loin d’être anodin : c’est précisément de ces difficultés que semble se nourrir le débat pénitentiaire. Ce sont, en effet, autant d’éléments qui font barrage à l’efficacité de notre réponse pénitentiaire mais qui donnent raison aux préconisations et impératifs européens d’humanisation des prisons. Encouragé par le droit supranational du Conseil de l’Europe, notre droit tiraillé entre deux perceptions sécuritaire et humaniste, se tourne vers d’autres solutions pour satisfaire à la qualité opérante de la politique pénale. Il faut donc faire le constat de l’avancée majeure de la probation, laquelle concurrence la sanction strictement pénitentiaire. Indéniablement, et parce que la peine de prison demeure, toutefois, la peine la plus élevée sur l’échelle de gravité des peines, des réflexions efficaces sont devenues indispensables pour guérir les maux du droit pénitentiaire. Cette thèse permet alors d’analyser la signification, en matière pénitentiaire, du terme « réforme » et souscrit ainsi à la réflexion d’une nouvelle structure émancipatrice du droit de l’exécution de la peine singulière que représente la peine privative de liberté. / If prisons have been under discussion, they all too often find themselves in the public eye as a result of their negative image. Revealed through multiple factors such as overcrowding, violence and poor inmate health, the inherent problems of the prison system cast doubt on its capacity to fulfill its mission of both detention and prisoner support. Under such conditions, rehabilitation of the person incarcerated has little chance of success. The subject of this thesis is therefore by no means insignificant: such difficulties are precisely what appear to feed the prison debate. These are all elements which hamper efforts to find an effective prison solution but which justify European recommendations and imperatives on prison humanization. Encouraged by Council of Europe supranational law and torn between security and humanitarian issues, our domestic law has had to seek alternative solutions to satisfy the functional requirements of penal policy. The major advance provided by probation should be noted here, as opposed to strictly custodial sentencing. Undeniably, however, as prison remains the highest sanction on the sentencing scale, effective reflection is now essential if we are to remedy the wrongs of a scattered and ephemeral prison law. This thesis is therefore designed to analyze the meaning, in penitentiary matters, of the term “reform” and thus reflect on a new emancipatory approach to enforcement law with regard to the singular difficulty of the custodial sentence.

Nous assistons à la démocratisation des services ducloud et de plus en plus d’utilisateurs (individuels ouentreprises) utilisent ces services dans la vie de tous lesjours. Dans ces scénarios, les données personnellestransitent généralement entre plusieurs entités.L’utilisateur final se doit d’être informé de la collecte, dutraitement et de la rétention de ses donnéespersonnelles, mais il doit aussi pouvoir tenir pourresponsable le fournisseur de service en cas d’atteinte àsa vie privée. La responsabilisation (ou accountability)désigne le fait qu’un système ou une personne estresponsable de ses actes et de leurs conséquences.Dans cette thèse nous présentons un framework deresponsabilisation AccLab qui permet de prendre enconsidération la responsabilisation dès la phase deconception d’un système jusqu’à son implémentation.Afin de réconcilier le monde juridique et le mondeinformatique, nous avons développé un langage dédiénommé AAL permettant d’écrire des obligations et despolitiques de responsabilisation. Ce langage est basé surune logique formelle FOTL ce qui permet de vérifier lacohérence des politiques de responsabilisation ainsi quela compatibilité entre deux politiques. Les politiques sontensuite traduites en une logique temporelle distribuéeque nous avons nommée FO-DTL 3, cette dernière estassociée à une technique de monitorage basée sur laréécriture de formules. Enfin nous avons développé unoutil monitorage appelé AccMon qui fournit des moyensde surveiller les politiques de responsabilisation dans lecontexte d’un système réel. Les politiques sont fondéessur la logique FO-DTL 3 et le framework peut agir enmode centralisée ou distribuée et fonctionne à la fois enligne et hors ligne. / Nowadays we are witnessing the democratization ofcloud services. As a result, more and more end-users(individuals and businesses) are using these services intheir daily life. In such scenarios, personal data isgenerally flowed between several entities. End-usersneed to be aware of the management, processing,storage and retention of personal data, and to havenecessary means to hold service providers accountablefor the use of their data. In this thesis we present anaccountability framework called AccountabilityLaboratory (AccLab) that allows to consideraccountability from design time to implementation time ofa system. In order to reconcile the legal world and thecomputer science world, we developed a language calledAbstract Accountability Language (AAL) that allows towrite obligations and accountability policies. Thislanguage is based on a formal logic called First OrderLinear Temporal Logic (FOTL) which allows to check thecoherence of the accountability policies and thecompliance between two policies. These policies aretranslated into a temporal logic called FO-DTL 3, which isassociated with a monitoring technique based on formularewriting. Finally, we developed a monitoring tool calledAccountability Monitoring (AccMon) which providesmeans to monitor accountability policies in the context ofa real system. These policies are based on FO-DTL 3logic and the framework can act in both centralized anddistributed modes and can run into on-line and off-linemodes.

Introduction and background: There has been a growing trend over the last few decades that auditors will assure corporate sustainability reports. The audit profession has a long history and experience of reviewing the corporate financial reports. Sustainability reports, on the other hand, is a relatively new and dynamic area of auditing where the auditor lacks experience and clear standards designed to review such a report. The lack of experience can adversely affect the auditor’s professional legitimacy. Purpose: The aim of the study is to highlight the difficulties auditors may face while reviewing and certifying sustainability reports. Method: This essay is a literature study. The literature study consists of ten scientific articles. Conclusions: The study shows that international standards are difficult to apply and does not give the auditors fully support throughout the auditing process. Furthermore, auditors do not have enough knowledge and capacity to carry out a reliable audit of sustainability reports on their own. The study concludes that major auditing companies maintain legitimacy through their trademark. Finally, detailed and reliable statements by auditors are critical to meet stakeholders expectations. Concluding discussion: Auditors possess mostley limited knowledge and experience of auditing sustainability reports which creates problems within the auditing process. The study discusses what form these problems take and how they can be problematic for the auditor's credibility and legitimacy. / Inledning och bakgrund: Under de senaste decennierna har det skett en växande trend att revisorer ska bestyrka informationen i företags hållbarhetsrapporter. Revisionsbranschen har lång erfarenhet bakom sig av granskning av företagens finansiella rapporter dock är hållbarhetsrelaterade frågor relativt nytt. Ett område som än idag är under utveckling och där revisorn inte har samma kunskap och tydliga standarder utformade för hur sådan rapport ska granskas. Bristen på erfarenhet kan komma att påverka revisorernas trovärdighet och professionella legitimitet negativt. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att belysa svårigheter revisorer står inför vid granskning och bestyrkande av hållbarhetsrapporter. Metod: Uppsatsen bygger på en litteraturstudie som består av tio stycken vetenskapliga artiklar. Konklusioner: Revisorer har otillräckligt stöd och har svårt att använda sig utav de idag tillgängliga internationella standarderna. Det har även visat sig att revisorer inte har tillräckligt med kunskap och kompetens för att på egen hand kunna fullfölja en granskning av hållbarhetsrapporter. Större revisionsbyråer upprätthåller legitimitet utifrån sitt inarbetade varumärke men ett mer detaljerat uttalande av revisorerna i hållbarhetsrapporten ses som den viktigaste aspekten för att få tillit från intressenterna. Avslutande diskussion: Revisorer har oftast begränsad kunskap och erfarenhet av att revidera informationen i hållbarhetsrapporten vilket gör att det kan uppstå problem i granskningsprocessen som i sin tur kan äventyra deras legitimitet. Vilka dessa problem är och hur de kan vara problematiska för revisorns trovärdighet samt legitimitet diskuteras i studien.

Institutions are fundamentally sets of rules in a society that help create stability. Organizations are groups of people who may share the same goal. Changes in organizations and institutions will have large effects on the performance of economies. This thesis explores empirical aspects concerning two elements of institutional and organizational design: economic regulations and independent regulatory authorities (IRAs). Essay 1 studies the impact of the 2004 EU merger policy reform on how mergers are reviewed by the European Commission. The EU policy appears to have softened after the reform for unilateral mergers and this may suggest an improvement of merger policy efficiency. Essay 2 compares the merger enforcements in the EU and the US. Our approach is to decompose the differences into policy effects and casemix effects. The EU policy has significantly changed after its 2004 reform. Overall, the results show a convergence between the two policies for dominance mergers after the EU policy reform. Essay 3 constructs an independence index for 109 European IRAs in six different sectors: competition, energy, financial markets, pharmaceuticals, food safety, and telecom. Factor analysis suggests that the heads of the agencies are mostly constrained by four factors: collegial bodies, the judicial system, politics and scope of tasks, and resources. Essay 4 explores a correlation between independence of regulatory authorities and corruption. We find that the authorities in corrupt countries to a large extent rely on collegial bodies but are less tightly controlled by the judicial system, compared with those in “clean” countries. Essay 5 studies the impact of regulation on broadband diffusion speed. The results imply that a strict local loop unbundling policy appears to slow the diffusion speed of fixed broadband. In contrast, a procompetition policy that aims to promote entry has a significant positive impact on the diffusion speed of mobile broadband.

Jordens klimat blir allt varmare. Fortsatta utsläpp innebär fortsatt stigande temperatur. I takt med att vårt klimat blir allt varmare, får även miljöfrågorna alltmer uppmärksamhet i vårt samhälle. Vi har blivit medvetna om vilka konsekvenser vårt agerande har och fokusen ligger på hur vi skall stoppa denna utveckling och vända trenden mot ett mer hållbart samhälle. De största frågorna handlar om att ta vara på restprodukter och att återanvända dessa och på så vis spara naturens resurser. En viktig del i detta arbete är återvinning och hållbar utveckling. Hållbar marknadsföring verkar som kommunikation utav hållbar utveckling. I dagens samhälle där vi lever och konsumerar mer än någonsin, är det viktigt att kunna kommunicera ut olika alternativ. Denna studie undersöker hur hållbar marknadsföring kan använda olika visuella medel för att kommunicera ut en mer hållbar framtid.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Marjorie R. Hancock / No Child Left Behind legislation has required public schools to increase efforts to measure and track student performance through school, district, state and nation-wide assessments. Researchers argue that it is essential for all students, including special education students, to be included in accountability assessments in order to help measure and track educational progress and compare the performance of schools, districts and states in terms of achieving educational goals. One method for including more special needs students in accountability assessments is to use accommodations during testing. Assistive technology is an accommodation that is approved for use on accountability assessments in many states and has the potential to significantly impact the performance of special education students. The primary purpose of this research was to gather and analyze data from special service providers (staff of a special education cooperative) and educators and administrators (employees of the school districts the cooperative serves) on the subject of using assistive technology as an accommodation on Colorado State Assessment Project (CSAP) testing. The researcher conducted a survey to measure the attitudes and knowledge of educators and special service providers on this subject. The survey was a five point Likert scale comprised of ten items designed to measure "attitudes" and ten items designed to measure "knowledge". Data was analyzed using backward regression analysis to compare scores between groups and consider the impact that years of work experience had on survey scores. The researcher used responses from survey data to select ten survey respondents to participate in in-depth interviews. Interview data was analyzed using pentadic analysis, a method of rhetorical analysis designed by Kenneth Burke (1945). Survey results indicated that the knowledge and attitudes scores between the two groups were similar, however regression analysis identified a significant increase the attitude scores of employees of the special education cooperative as they gained work experience. Scores of district employees did not increase on either scale as participants gained work experience. Analysis of interview data provided rich description of participants’ knowledge and attitudes concerning the use of assistive technology as an accommodation and enabled the researcher to identify significant similarities and differences between groups of employees and the state standards intended to guide their decision making on this subject. Results of this research suggest a need for improving education on the subject of assistive technology, related state regulations and improving resources to foster the use of assistive technology as an accommodation on accountability assessments.