This research contributes to gaps in the international relations and international law literature on compliance by engaging practitioners with multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) expertise to answer two questions: 1) what factors are associated with MEA noncompliance; and 2) is there a relationship between the design of MEA provisions and compliance with those provisions. Practitioners overwhelmingly associate MEA noncompliance with insufficient domestic interagency consultation early in the lifecycle of a multilateral environmental agreement, particularly during its negotiation. The interagency consultative process is the mechanism by which a state identifies the nature of its relevant domestic environmental challenges and the availability of its institutional, financial, and technical resources to address them. Absent a robust process, state delegated representatives engage in negotiating obligations on behalf of their states without a full understanding of the domestic context. Consequently, they may inadvertently negotiate obligations that are impractical or otherwise inconsistent with domestic realities. Under these circumstances, a state may subsequently set itself on a trajectory of noncompliance when ratifying the agreement. Three noncompliance cases under the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal are consistent with this finding. The design of treaty provisions might serve to mitigate some factors associated with MEA noncompliance. Practitioners observe a relationship between the design of treaty provisions and compliance with those provisions. When presented with two different legal design options, practitioners overwhelmingly expressed a preference for obligations of outcome over obligations of action. Preserving state flexibility to determine how to implement obligations may mitigate noncompliance associated with insufficient domestic consultation early in the lifecycle of an MEA, but more research is necessary to draw the conclusion that one legal design produces better compliance results over another. / Doctor of Philosophy / States actively negotiate multilateral environmental agreements (MEA) to address transboundary environmental challenges. When states fail to comply with their obligations under these agreements, the international community's collective environmental goals are compromised. This research contributes to the literature on compliance by exploring two questions: 1) what factors are associated with MEA noncompliance; and 2) is there a relationship between the design of MEA provisions and compliance with those provisions. MEA noncompliance is overwhelmingly associated with states' poor preparation to engage in the negotiation and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. Poor preparation is the result of insufficient domestic interagency consultation, which is the process by which a state identifies the nature of its relevant domestic environmental challenges and its ability to address them. The design of MEA provisions might serve to mitigate some factors associated with noncompliance, particularly if that design gives states the flexibility to later determine how or which domestic measures to take in order to meet the relevant outcome contained in their MEA obligations. However, more research is needed to draw the conclusion that one legal design is better than another.

In today's worlds of industry and academia, teamwork is becoming more and more prevalent and is becoming more and more desirable when addressing certain tasks. Intensified and growing competition in the global marketplace is forcing businesses to produce better products, thereby, requiring the input and expertise of various people with diverse backgrounds. Organizations have adopted a team approach in response to the technological advances that contribute to the complexity of many tasks in the workplace making it difficult for employees to work independently (Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas, Cannon-Bowers, 2000). The purpose of this research is to investigate the communication patterns of disciplinarily heterogeneous student design teams at the university level. A quasi-experimental design, specifically a non-equivalent control group design was used for this study. This study has two research questions: 1) what is the process that leads to convergence of a team-based mental model among disciplinarily heterogeneous team members? and 2) what are the factors associated with convergence that lead to effective disciplinarily heterogeneous teams? The results will allow the formation of guidelines that will assist such students in improving their effectiveness by allowing the convergence of the team members onto the same mental model(s). It must be noted that data collection for the experimental teams continued after the tragic events that occurred at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. The results for this study were variable. Through examination of the fluctuation of the reliability scores across the three times it was administered, as well as the Pearson-Product Moment comparison, the Group Behavior Inventory is not the best instrument to use in an academic setting for student teams. The disciplinarily homogeneous teams disagreed more and the disciplinarily heterogeneous teams agreed more in terms of body language, while disciplinarily heterogeneous disagreed more through verbal utterances of sighs and pauses; however none of these differences were statistically significant. Certain agreement and disagreement indicators were significantly negatively correlated. Therefore, the corroboration of the Group Behavior Inventory constructs can only be applied to a specific disagreement indicator. / Master of Science

The prevalence of the Internet, client/server applications, Java, e-commerce, and electronic communications offers tremendous opportunities for business, education and communication, while simultaneously presenting big challenges to network security. In general, the web was designed with little concern for security. Thus, the issue of security is important in the design of network-based applications. The software architecture proposed in this thesis allows for the secure and efficient running of a team-based decision support system, specifically TEAMDEC. Based on the system's requirements and architecture, three types of possible attacks to the system are identified and a security solution is proposed that allows for user authentication, secure communication, and script access control. The implementation of these features will reduce security risk and allow effective use of the valuable system information data. / Master of Science

Yes / The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, sets ambitious goals for diminishing greenhouse gas emissions and restricting the rise in global temperature to achieve a less carbon-intensive and climate-resilient global economy. The Paris Agreement marked a defining moment in the worldwide response to global warming and has significantly affected the financial sector. Given this background, this research explores the effects of carbon risk on the cost of debt (CoD) in 1428 listed firms across seven economies from 2011 to 2020. The paper also reflects the post-Paris Agreement’s involvement and the ESG factors’ moderating effect in the empirical models. The study finds a significant impact of carbon risk on CoD following the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Notably, companies with higher carbon risk face higher borrowing rates. However, the effect of ESG on moderating the relationship between carbon risk and CoD is found to be insignificant. Further analyses confirm this finding, as individual pillars of ESG (governance and social aspects) also show insignificant moderating effects.

57 Abstract Agreements to Work Outside the Scope of Employment The present thesis deals with the topic of agreements to work outside the scope of employment, an institute of the Czech Labour Law which constitutes, along with the employment agreement, one of the basic labour law relations. The aim of the thesis was to present and describe the institute of the agreements to work outside the scope of employment in order to determine their place within the Czech labour law and whether they are still a useful form of employment. The thesis is divided into seven parts. The first part deals with the general theme of labour law relations, with the relation of labour law to civil law as well as with the public law limitations of contractual freedom in labour law relations. The second part of the thesis concerns the history of the agreements to work outside the scope of employment and the changes the institute went through since its introduction to the Czechoslovak and later Czech law. This part further focuses on the compliance of the agreements to work outside the scope of employment with the European labour law. The third part of the thesis serves to approach the contents of the institutes of dependent work and employment agreement, in order to better distinguish and compare the agreements to work outside the...

The Agreements on Work Performed Outside of Employment The aim of my thesis was to summarize the current and former legislation of legal relations established by the Agreements on Work Performed Outside of Employment. I focused my work on private law legislation, especially on the area of labour law and also on the public law legislation, such as social security law and tax law. By using the analytical method of research of the above mentioned, I concluded to what extent is such institute still needed and what possible changes shall the legislator consider to reflect the best the current needs of the society. To examine the legal situation, it was necessary to summarize the relationship between civil and labour law and also to define certain terms closely related to the institute of Agreements on Work Performed Outside of Employment in the first and second part of my thesis. Such terms include especially the notion of dependent labour and dependent activity as well as the notion of employment itself. The next part of my work discusses the history of legislation of both types of the Agreements on Work Performed Outside of Employment. The fourth part of the thesis deals with the analysis of the up to date legislation governing this institute. Finally the work also refers to application problems that...

The thesis is concerned with comparison of different aspects of a transfer of a control over assets of a joint stock company based on an Agreement on Sale of Enterprise and Share Purchase Agreement. First, an enterprise and shares are defined and then the thesis is concerned with obligatory aspects of an Agreement on Sale of Enterprise and of Share Purchase Agreement. Afterwards, the thesis compare both legal regulations from pint of view of transfer of rights and obligations to the purchaser of the enterprise/shares, from the point of view of liability for defects, from the corporate point of view (consent of the general meeting of the respective joint stock company) and finally comparison from the point of view of competition law (necessary consent of the Anti-monopoly Office or at the European level necessary consent of the Commission).

The agreements on work performed outside of employment This diploma thesis deals with the topic of the agreements on work performed outside of employment, an institute of the Czech Labour Law which constitutes, besides the employment agreement, one of the basic labour law relations. The aim of this work is to summarize the previous and current legislation. The next aim of this work is to present this institute and to define its necessity and purpose within the Czech labour law. The work is divided into seven chapters. At the beginning of this diploma thesis I generally describe labour law then I also focused on the position of labour law in the system of law and its relation with the civil law. In the next chapter I deal with the elements of labour law relations and I also deal with the concept of dependent work as it is one of the basic terms of the Czech labour law and the explanation of this term is necessary for definition of the institute of the agreements on work performed outside of employment. The third chapter deals with the agreements on work performed outside of employment. I focused here on the history of the origin and the development of the legal regulation of agreements on work performed outside of employment and on the changes the institute went through since its introduction to the...

No presente trabalho se analisa a atividade de transmissão de energia elétrica em sua perspectiva econômica e jurídica, no contexto do modelo regulatório do setor de energia elétrica no Brasil, caracterizado atualmente pela sua desverticalização. A abordagem pretendida parte da configuração dos princípios que orientam a regulação do setor elétrico e, que posteriormente, se vislumbram na configuração das obrigações do contrato de concessão do serviçoo público de transmissão; o que permite avaliar o nível de consistência e maturidade do modelo regulatório. Para tanto, se estudaram as resoluções normativas onde se consagram os critérios que norteiam a regulação econômica, à que se atrela o contrato de concessão, o que por sua vez permite a preservação do equilíbrio econômico financeiro, assim como, a defesa dos interesses dos consumidores finais, mediante os incentivos à eficiência na gestão das concessionárias. Tendo como referência, o desenvolvimento da relação entre as empresas de transmissão e o órgão regulador, no caso a Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL), no exercício das suas competências regulatórias e como defensor do interesse público, implícito no serviço público de energia elétrica. O que leva a concluir o grau de eficiência das decisões adotadas pelo órgão regulador, nas suas competências de gestão do controle e fiscalização, concretizados nos processos de revisões tarifárias. / Through this paper we analyze the economical and legal perspective of the electric energy transmission activity in the context of the Brazilian regulation for the electric energy industry, currently characterized by deverticalization. The aimed approach begins at the principle setting that leads the electric industry regulations and posteriorly is seen within the obligation setting of the transmission public utility concession agreement; what makes possible to evaluate the level of consistency and maturity of this type of regulation. For that, we have studied the norms that apply the criteria guiding the economical regulation, being the concession agreement intrinsically related to that, what in turn allows to maintain the financial and economical balance, as well as final consumer interest, based on the incentives for the efficiency of the grantee management. We have used as reference the development of the relationship between the transmission companies and the regulating Brazilian Agency of Electric Energy (ANEEL) in the exercise of its regulatory capacity and as a protector of the public interest implied in the public utility of electric energy. Our conclusion is the level of efficiency of the decisions adopted by the regulatory agency in order to manage control and inspection, materialized in the tariff revision process.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:21:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Herbert Morgenstern Kugler.pdf: 1499656 bytes, checksum: 92371be83b313650dc655aced3f95792 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-24 / The partners of a limited liability company s negotiate the company s features when they enter into the articles of association, which must observe the limits provided by applicable legislation. However, the articles of association are not the only and exclusive means the partners have for regulating their rights and obligations insofar as they may enter into other contracts, complementary and accessory to the articles of association. Among these complementary agreements, we accent the quotaholders agreement. The quotaholders agreement is the contract entered into by partners of a limited liability company to discipline their rights and obligations, taking into consideration, in varying degrees, the corporate relationship derived from the company. The present study aimed at analyzing the legal regime applicable to the quotaholders agreement, in view of the doctrine that divides agreements in three spheres (existence, validity and effectiveness) and, also, pursuant to applicable legislation, especially regarding the application of Law 6,404/76 to limited liability companies. We conclude that the quotaholders agreement (i) exists when partners of a limited liability company enter into an agreement, in parallel to the articles of association, in order to discipline their rights and obligations; (ii) is valid when it does not violate applicable legislation or the articles of association, nor is used to harm third parties; and (iii) effects, always, the contracting parties and, provided that certain requisites are observed (filing with the company s headquarters and register before the Public Commercial Board), third parties, including the company / A escolha das características de uma sociedade limitada é realizada pelos sócios quando da sua contratação, formalizada por meio do contrato social, pautado pelos limites impostos pelo ordenamento jurídico. Entretanto, o contrato social não esgota todas as possibilidades dos sócios pactuarem acerca dos seus direitos e obrigações, vez que os sócios podem realizar outros negócios jurídicos, de caráter complementar e acessório ao contrato social, dentre os quais se destaca o acordo de sócios. O acordo de sócios consiste no pacto firmado por pessoas titulares de direitos de sócio de uma sociedade limitada, o qual tem por fim disciplinar direitos e obrigações entre suas partes, visando, em menor ou maior grau, a relação societária derivada da sociedade limitada. O presente trabalho buscou analisar qual o regime jurídico do acordo de sócios, levando em conta a divisão do negócio jurídico em três planos (existência, validade e eficácia), bem como as características da sociedade limitada e a legislação aplicável ao caso, em especial a aplicabilidade das disposições da Lei 6.404/76 à sociedade limitada. Concluímos, assim, que, o acordo de sócios (i) passa a existir quando titulares de direitos de sócios de uma sociedade limitada firmam um acordo onde disciplinam, à margem do contrato social, o exercício de direitos e deveres dos sócios; (ii) será válido quando não descumprir qualquer preceito legal ou do contrato social, tampouco for utilizado para prejudicar terceiros; e (iii) será eficaz, sempre, perante as partes signatárias e, desde que preenchimentos certos requisitos (arquivamento na sede da sociedade e registro Junta Comercial), perante terceiros, inclusive a sociedade