South Africa has in the recent past seen employees embarking in strike action, even in sectors designated as essential services. The impact adversely affected inter alia economic growth, investor confidence, international credit ratings and the high rate of unemployment. The Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 from its inception on 11 November 1996, and as amended, in 2002 and in 2015, has brought about some minor changes to the model aimed at regulating essential services, maintenance services and minimum services agreements. This research is aimed at investigating; whether essential services, maintenance services and minimum services agreements are designed to unjustifiably limit the right to strike or not. The Constitution1 and the Labour Relations Act, 19952 encourages parties in employment relationship to engage in collective bargaining. Mechanisms such as a no duty to bargain envisaged within the current LRA regulatory framework, appears to be undermining the significance of ensuring that parties engaged within services designated as essential and maintenance services exercise their fundamental right to strike and to bargain collectively. The Essential Services Committee when dispensing with its statutory functions may be unjustifiably limiting the right to strike for employees engaged in essential and maintenance services. Some employers may be to some degree reluctant to trigger maintenance services provisions as the LRA appears to be adopting a voluntarism principle when regulating collective bargaining, as the Act is encouraging employers to deal with the provision of maintenance services within collective agreements. An introduction of a judiciable enforceable duty to bargain collectively in services designated as essential and maintenance services may compel employers to conclude minimum services agreements. The extremely low number of services designated as maintenance services is a worrying reality and the solution is urgently required.

Includes bibliographic references. / This research develops a pro-poor prenuptial agreement as an innovative land tenure tool to secure rights in urban subsidized housing. The model tested is confined to prenuptial agreements under the Marriage Act, but is relevant to other cohabitation or marital agreements that could be used to secure social tenure arising from intimate relationships. The model aims at securing the tenure of the entire household, in particular the more vulnerable members of the household. The research focuses on urban State -subsidized housing, with an emphasis on the Western Cape, South Africa. This housing is transferred to beneficiaries by registration of individual or co-ownership at the Deeds Registry, with the title deeds public documents. While prenuptial agreements are not usually regarded as a land tenure tool, the fact that they are also public documents registered at the Deeds Office makes them pertinent. A limited dataset of recent academic writing is analysed to identify the social context of household conflict and tenure insecurity, and existing legal template clauses assessed. The prenuptial template design is predicated on current tenure approaches that regard informal practices as equally relevant for the poor's tenure security as the formal law. The template uses various strategies to manage tenure insecurity arising from the death of an owner, disputes, or threatened eviction of dependents. It also aims to ensure that diverse normative beliefs are respected, particularly African normative systems. A personal servitude is used to secure housing tenure as a real right burdening the land, making this a very secure right. In addition the template includes a succession agreement and dispute resolution mechanisms. The template model is tested on clients simulated by re-storying the facts of two seminal Constitutional Court cases and a recent case study of another researcher. Focus groups are held with housing beneficiaries and interviews with housing officials, as a preliminary test of the private and public reception of such agreements. The need for legal aid is discussed. The research makes clear that cohabitation and marital agreements can be used to secure overlapping land rights that the ownership paradigm does not currently protect.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [8-12] (1st group)).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Lausanne. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-378) and index.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D) - [Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies], Swinburne University of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. A thesis submitted to [Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies], Swinburne University of Technology for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. "March 2009". Bibliography: p. 136-141.

This thesis investigates the changing boundaries of the firm. Drawing on a study of the aircraft engine industry, it explores the managerial choices faced by firms in the development of complex products. The thesis builds on the literature on the resourcebased view of the firm, and studies on inter-firm division of labour. It integrates comparative quantitative analysis and case study methods. The thesis shows that despite the increasing use of collaborative agreements, aircraft engine manufacturers maintain a broad and deep set of in-house technological capabilities. Collaborative agreements are used to complement in-house technological capabilities and as a means to maintain systems integration capabilities. The thesis also shows that the aircraft engine industry is characterised by (a) increasing product modularization, often entailing a greater division of labour across firms at the product level, and (b) active co-ordination by engine manufacturers at the technological level. These two phenomena demonstrate that the technological boundaries of the firm differ fundamentally from the boundaries of the firm as defined by make-buy decisions. Outsourcing of components does not necessarily entail outsourcing technologies. These findings challenge current managerial prescriptions that suggest that firms should focus on a few technological capabilities. They also challenge the literature that argues that modularity should inform product design as well as firms' technology bases. The thesis proposes a framework to analyse the boundaries of firms developing complex products. Focusing on their role as systems integrators, it identifies two key dimensions of systems integration: synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic systems integration refers to the range of in-house technological capabilities of engine manufacturers required to set the concept design, decompose it, co-ordinate the network of suppliers, and re-compose the engine within a given product architecture. Diachronic systems integration refers to engine manufacturers' capabilities to envisage different paths of product architectures to meet evolving customer and regulatory requirements.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.