No description available.

The dissertation at hand presents the findings that have emerged from the research intervention in a case study, Gpi Group, conducted with a general objective to propose an approach that would assist an organisation in developing tailored indicators for social impact measurement. Three studies administered within the framework of this interventionist research pursue the aim: i) to explore conditions informing the substantive-symbolic adoption of sustainability agenda; ii) to reveal factors that hinder calculative practices from ensuring accountability of technology companies in the healthcare system; and iii) given the restricted direct stakeholder engagement, to design an approach or methodological tool for the impact measurement indicators. The research has been conducted in the interventionist research tradition, whereby the researcher collaborates with organisational members to solve real-world problems and contribute to scientific knowledge. In this work, the identified problem pertains to the limitations of conventional indicators in measuring implications arising from the Gpi Group’s operations that are borne by final beneficiaries. The company offers a wide range of technological solutions and health booking services for the healthcare sector. However, despite the considerable importance of final beneficiaries, namely medical professionals and patients, they remain underrepresented in materiality, which has motivated this research. The first chapter outlines emerging nuances, power dynamics, and internal tensions when the organisation decides to commit to the sustainability agenda and formalise corresponding standards. By triangulating data from corporate documents, interviews, and survey, and further interpreting them through the lens of Bourdieu’s field theory, it has been revealed that substantive-symbolic adoption of sustainability standards depends on the power dynamics that enable a shared meaning of sustainability and accordingly shape individuals’ habitus. The second chapter explores whether existing calculative practices for impact can ensure the accountability of technology companies operating in the healthcare sector. By identifying commonly used indicators from extant scientific research and non-academic reports and further critically scrutinising them with organisational members of the case study, a limited practical validity of calculative practices is revealed for technology companies. Pragmatic constructivism applied to the interview analysis points to the topoi mismatch and insufficient addressing of a practical validity condition across all dimensions of the actor’s reality construction, which led to the abstract and theoretical indicators. The third chapter describes in detail the indicator-building approach for social impact measurement and the process of integrating derived indicators into Gpi Group’s materiality assessment. Materiality, which is a highly contested concept in the literature, has been examined from a pragmatic stance in this chapter. The application of this approach to the organisational setting, where it is prohibited to involve final beneficiaries by virtue of regulations and ethical concerns, has enabled deriving 21 indicators composing four major materiality topics.

In 2008, the European Commission proposed a regulation for a new European private company, called the Societas Privata Europeaea. This proposal did not get unanimous approval and was therefore withdrawn after five years of attempt to find a compromise. In 2014, the European Commission proposed a directive on single-member private limited liability companies, called the Societas Unius Personae. The aims of the new proposal have a few similarities as the European private company, as will be mentioned in the introduction. However, the proposed directive introduces a few changes, which the European Commission hopes will make this proposal successful. The purpose with this thesis is mainly to examine whether there is a need of a new European company form on the market today. The conclusion is taken by examining who would benefit the most with this company form. This thesis contains an explanation of the proposed directive, a comparison between this new company form and the corresponding Swedish company, as well as opinions on this directive. In the end there is a discussion regarding this subject and lastly my conclusions. The result has shown that there are still great amount of uncertainties that are in need of further discussion in order for this proposal to eventually pass unanimous consent. My conclusions are that there is not an urgent need of a new European company form on the market right now. However, it is a work in progress, and I believe a European company form like this one is a good way towards the aim of uniting the Member States of the European Union.

Thesis (Ph.D.) in History--University of Maine, 2004. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-263).

The Duty of Loyalty of a Director of a Company and the Duty of Loyalty of a Member of a Company in Their Mutual Comparison Abstract According to the valid legislation, both the member of a company and the director of a company are subject to the duty of loyalty. The duty of loyalty has different content in relation to these persons and affects them with different intensity. The aim of this thesis is to compare selected aspects of the duty of loyalty of the member of company and the director of company. The first part presents initial doctrinal and judicial evolution of the duty of loyalty of the member of company and the director of company in the legal order of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, the essence (creative elements) of the duty of loyalty of mentioned persons is discussed. In this context, legal doctrine concludes that the essence of loyalty of the member of company and the director lies, amongst other matters, in contract. However, each of these persons has a different obligation, which is associated with different rights and duties of the relevant members of company's bodies. The aim of the first part is to develop the issue, which I consider crucial for understanding arguments and conclusions presented in the thesis. In the second part, I try to identify the interest which the member of company...

DIPLOMOVÉ PRÁCE english: This thesis defines the term of a ready-made company. It describes the purchase of a ready-made company, its process and particular phases. The thesis also deals with other areas and specifics of this segment of market economy. It compares the situation in the Czech Republic to other countries, especially to EU member states. It includes also trends and anticipated future development of market with ready-made companies. Finally, the thesis evaluates the position of ready-made companies in market economy

The purpose of my thesis is to analyze process of formation and incorporation of business company. It is a procedure composed of several phases, which results in the establishment of a new company, a legal person different from its members, separate legal entity. My thesis also deals with the invalidity of business company. My thesis focuses on formation and incorporation of business company under Czech legislation. It concerns with unlimited liability company, limited partnership company, limited liability company and joint-stock company. It does not concern with Societas Europaea and European Economic Interest Grouping. The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one is introductory and it concerns with companies in general. The chapter presents individual types of companies under the Czech legislation and it describes their characteristics. Chapter Two, Three and Four describes the process of formation and incorporation of business company, each of them dealing with different phase. Chapter Two deals with the formation of business company. It is a phase, during which a memorandum of association is concluded. This chapter describes obligatory content of this memorandum and also presents who is entitled to be a founder of business company. Last part of this chapter describes the process of...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Manitoba, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

A private company lacks a direct observable market value and several situations may require a practitioner to compute the value of a private company. Since most of the valuation methods in use are based on data derived from the public stock markets certain adjustments may be appropriate when valuing a private company. Marketability and liquidity is said to be one of the more observable differences between a public and a private company. This implies that the shares in a private company have a lack of marketability and liquidity in comparison to the shares in a public company, which practitioners may have to adjust for. Several quantitative studies are conducted on the subject in order reassure price differences between public and private companies, namely a private company discount (PCD). Furthermore, several quantitative studies strive to establish a general and standardized cost for lack of marketability (liquidity) expressed as the illiquidity discount or the discount for lack of marketability (DLOM). These studies have different perceptions and use different hypothesis to identify illiquidity, which in turn will lead to a large span of different discounts. Essentially, earlier research examines assets marketability and liquidity with the assumption of them being equal in all other aspects. Professional practitioners constantly seek guidance in these studies to justify their estimated and applied illiquidity discount/DLOM when performing a valuation on a privately held company. Furthermore, we have also observed survey-studies adopting a more qualitative method in order to appreciate the level of discounts applied in a valuation by professional practitioners. Consequently, this sea of studies provides the practitioner with a discount that ranges from 5% to 60% to take a stand on. The impossibility to determine the most adequate theory contributes to the inconsistency of how this issue is handled in reality by market participants and courts. In our study we first provide the reader with a rigorous literature study, which describes earlier research on the subject of illiquidity discount/DLOM. We conclude that research has gone one step too far when conducting all of these quantitative studies. This is why we conduct our own empirical data through semi-structured in-depth interviews with professional valuation experts on the Swedish market. This makes our approach a retake on the issue in order to generate suggestions to further studies. What we find is that all of the independent consultants, primarily, does not apply a discount when valuing a majority interest due to the paradigm on the Swedish market. In contrast, the private equity fund manager, which only acquires majority interest, can use this type of discounts in their dependent valuation of majority interests. However, when valuing a minority interest the independent valuation consultants use quantitative empirical studies to derive a starting point of the discount. The level of the discount is then estimated upon the purpose of the valuation and firm-specific variables, which all of the participant’s states to be the most important ones when estimating a illiquidity discount/DLOM. Based on these results we argue that one should be very careful when taking guidelines from quantitative empirical studies. Our interpretation is that the level of illiquidity/DLOM applicable depends on the level of attractiveness, which in turn has a bearing on all firm-specific variables. When it comes to applying the appropriate discount all of the participants argue in favor for a discount-on-value and not as some research suggest; a risk premium added to the discount rate. We also generate adequate suggestions to further studies based on these interviews. Since courts and in particular the Swedish tax-court is inconsistent when approving or rejecting illiquidity discounts/DLOM we suggest legal actions on the issue. Furthermore we suggest a survey-like study in order to catch consensus take on how to estimate the level of discount. In fact, this can be done every year in a similar way as PwC’s market risk premium study is conducted.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Edith Cowan University, 2008. / Submitted to the Faculty of Computing, Health and Science. Includes bibliographical references.