Despite the global and local response to the HIV epidemic, the disclosure of HIV status in the workplace is still a problem globally and in South Africa, due to the stigma attached to the disease. However, often, by “going public” about their HIV status, HIV infected people give a face to the disease. This however has not been the case in the workplace due to fear of discrimination and stigma (Lutaaya, 1999; Van der Borght, van ,Janseens, der Loeff, Kajemba, Rijckborst, Lange&de Wet, 2009:676). It has been discovered that HIV and AIDS are not only medical problems but a psycho-social issue as well. Adding to the problem of HIV status disclosure in South Africa prior to 2010, HIV and AIDS were met with denial and a lack of political will to take action and thus adding to the reluctance in HIV status disclosure. The goal of the study was to explore the experiences of HIV positive employees in the transport sector after they have disclosed their HIV status in the workplace. A qualitative phenomenological approach was appropriate for this study using in-depth interviews. And as such one question that was put forward to all participants was: How would you describe your daily living with HIV after you have disclosed your HIV status in the workplace? Fifteen participants from Organisation Alpha formed a sample for this study. Some conclusions based on the findings were that: Participants’ experiences varied from one participant to the other. There were participants who experienced support in the workplace while others experienced isolation and rejection. One issue that stood out was the experience of stigma in the workplace. The experiences felt by the participants were mostly attributed to lack of HIV knowledge in the workplace which needs to be addressed by the application of various strategies and action programmes. The study was concluded with relevant recommendations to the transport sector. Copyright / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

When children are sexually abused it usually takes place in concealment. This means that unless the child reveals the abuse, it will remain hidden. This study commences with an examination of the reasons as to why a child may delay the disclosure of sexual abuse. The result of research indicates that there are certain recognisable reasons, which are frequently encountered, as to why a child may either delay telling anyone about his or her experience or as to why s/he may never tell anyone. Traditional assumptions of what are considered normal reactions to sexual abuse are tested. The discussion then moves on to considering the approach of the South African courts in regard to evaluating the manner and timing of a child’s revelations, as well as to considering the impact which a delay may have on the acceptance of that child’s evidence. Intrinsic to this analysis is the progress made in our courts, and by the legislature, in recognising factors that influence a child to either blurt out the information immediately or conceal it for a period of time. Thereafter, the testimony of 97 child victims of sexual abuse is analysed with a view to determining whether these children fit the profiles raised in research on the subject and described in some of the case law. The rate of attrition in cases of sexual offences against children is considered as well as the role that cross-examination plays in either enhancing or reducing a child’s ability to accurately describe an acceptable motivation for the delay in disclosure. The study concludes with a discussion of how well child victims are served in a legal environment designed to provide a forum for eliciting the truth from a child witness. The use of intermediaries and the impact of cross-examination is discussed as well as the ability of judicial officers to adjudicate in matters requiring highly specialized knowledge and experience.

Advertising expenditure is one of the most important budget items supporting marketing activities for most companies, and may be treated as an intangible asset. Through the impact on demand and costs, advertising activities affect the firm’s pricing and output decisions as well as the firm’s market value (Tannous, 1997; Chauvin & Hirschey, 1994). Despite the significant economic importance of advertising expenditure, not much attention has been given to the value relevance of advertising expenditure and the impact of advertising expenditure disclosure on firms’ market value. Most of the empirical studies for value relevance of advertising expenditure have been conducted using data from the US and UK Academic research on the value relevance of advertising expenditure in Canada is nonexistent. The accounting standard applied in Canada is different from that used in prior US and UK studies. . Canada adopts Canadian GAAP before 2011, and switches to IFRS from 2011onwards. Both regimes do not require firms in Canada to disclose advertising expenditure. However, most US studies use data before 1994 to analyze value relevance of advertising expenditure. Before 1994, disclosing advertising expenditure is mandatory for US firms under US GAAP. The UK evidence uses data before 2005, during which period UK firms still adopt UK GAAP. Although UK. GAAP does not require companies to disclose advertising expenditure, unlike IFRS, different accounting standards can lead to different financial data reporting and different results. In addition, studies on the impact of voluntary disclosure of advertising expenditure on market value are nonexistent. Furthermore, Canada has a more stable financial system than that of the US and UK In this context, the objective of this thesis is to initiate research on the important dimension of advertising expenditure among Canadian firms. The findings of this thesis will enhance understanding of the relationship between advertising expenditure and market value, and companies’ decisions to voluntarily disclose advertising expenditure on their market value.

Självexponering (self-disclosure) är en process där man delar med sigav sina tankar, känslor och berättar saker om sig själv till en annanperson av egen vilja. Syftet med studien var att undersöka vadungdomar berättar och inte berättar till sina föräldrar och undersökavilka strategier de använder. Ungdomar i årskurs åtta i en stadbelägen i Mellansverige blev intervjuade i grupp. Totalt 53respondenter ställde upp på intervjuerna, varav 26 var flickor och 27pojkar. En tematisk analys genomfördes och materialet struktureradesin i fem olika teman: positiva upplevelser, negativa upplevelser, närarelationer, fritidsaktiviteter och filtreringsstrategier. Ungdomar valdeoftast att strategiskt dölja information då de kände att föräldrarnakunde bli upprörda, vilket var något de ville undvika. Undanhållandetav information kunde även kopplas till rädsla och ängslan över attbehöva ha djupa samtal med föräldrarna. Utlämnandet av informationberodde på hur bra relationen var mellan förälder och barn. / Self-disclosure is a process of sharing your thoughts, feelings andsharing information about yourself to another person. The purpose ofthis study was to examine what adolescents disclose and what theydon't disclose to their parents as well as how they withholdinformation from their parents. A total of 53 adolescents consisting of26 females and 27 males in the 8th grade participated in groupinterviewsin this study. In a thematic analysis of interviews, it wasfound five different themes: positive experiences, negativeexperiences, close relationships, leisure activities and strategies forwithholding information. The results showed that adolescents chose towithhold information from their parents when they felt that theirparents could get upset. Adolescents feared the consequences andwanted to avoid conversations with their parents where they had toexplain themselves. Disclosure of information depended often on howstrong the relationship was between parent and child.

Previous studies on postsecondary graduation rates indicated that college students with disabilities have lower graduation rates than students without disabilities. As many college students do not disclose their disability to their institution upon enrollment, the effect of the timing of disability disclosure on graduation rates warranted examination. This study was a quantitative study of 14,401 undergraduate students at one large research university in the years 2002, 2003, and 2004, of which 423 had disabilities. Quantitative methods were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of the effect of disability, disability disclosure, disability-type and gender on graduation rates. A chi-square analysis revealed that students with disabilities had significantly lower six-year graduation rates than their peers. In addition, students with disabilities who disclosed their disability after their first year of enrollment had significantly lower six-year graduation rates than students with disabilities who disclosed within the first year of enrollment. Results of a multiple regression analysis showed that disability disclosure, disability-type, and gender accounted for 38% of the variance in the length of time to graduation. Finally, for every year that a student delayed disclosing a disability, the length of time to graduation increased by almost half a year. The implications of the study were discussed and recommendations for future research were made. / Ph. D.

Social capital is critical to the entities' disciplinary environment and the ability to produce high quality financial reports. Although prior literature on for-profit setting indicates that social capital impacts both governance (Ferris, et al., 2017) and financial reporting quality (Jha & Chen, 2015; Jha, 2019), this area has received less attention in non-profit literature. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the impact of the social capital of a non-profit organization's (NPO) headquarter area (also known as community social capital) on the NPO governance and disclosure quality (i.e., the quality of Form 990). The study hypothesizes and finds that the community social capital of an NPO headquarter area has a positive impact on its governance. The positive relationship suggests that NPO social capital and governance play a complementary role, where managers in high social capital face strong disciplinary environment and enjoy strong social connections and professional reputations and thus have fewer incentives to resist the adoption of sound governance practices. Similarly, the study also hypothesizes and finds that the community social capital of an NPO headquarter area has a positive impact on its disclosure quality. This finding suggests that community social capital disciplines NPO self-interested managers' behavior to manipulate financial numbers in Form 990 disclosures. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (PhD)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Magister Public Health - MPH / Despite the known benefits of adolescents knowing their HIV status, parents and caregivers (PCG) often delay the disclosure of their children’s HIV status to them due to the fear of stigma and discrimination, the belief that the child thinks they will die, and the lack of disclosure skills. This delay can affect the children’s adherence to treatment, physical health, mental health and can enable unknowing transmission. The Mini Flipster Disclosure Method (MFDM) was developed to assist healthcare workers (HCWs) in supporting the disclosure of an adolescent’s HIV status by their parent or caregiver. This involves a process of educating the child or adolescent about HIV and how it can be successfully managed before informing them that they have HIV. The current study described the experiences of HIV-positive adolescents of the MFDM and those of their caregivers and HCWs in Mpumalanga.

Whistleblowing in labour relations in the context of the European regulation Abstract Whistleblowing has been a topic of discussion by professionals and the general public for many years. In October 2019, a European Directive on the protection of whistleblowers was adopted, which gave the Czech legislator a clear deadline for the adoption of legislation. At present, some whistleblowers are provided with partial and ineffective protection, and several unsuccessful legislative proposals have appeared in the past as well. There is a new proposal currently in the stage after being sent to the inter-ministerial comment procedure. This piece briefly introduces the concept of whistleblowing, the purpose and implications of this institute in the light of the international and European documents and case law. Within the theoretical basis of individual elements of whistleblower protection, a new Directive on whistleblower protection is further discussed in detail. Due to the minimalist regulation in several EU Member States, the Directive represents a very progressive regulation. The work also provides a detailed analysis of the Irish Protected Disclosures Act and some of its application problems. The Irish act provides protection to a wide range of people who report essentially any violation or misconduct. The act...

This dissertation studies topics in the areas of information in financial markets. In the first chapter, Should Information be Sold Separately? Evidence from MiFID II, we examine whether selling information separately improves its production. We use a recent regulation in Europe (MiFID II) that unbundles research from transactions to investigate this question. We show that unbundling causes fewer research analysts to cover a firm. This decrease does not come from small- or mid-cap firms but is concentrated in large firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the reduction in the coverage quantity is accompanied by an increase in the coverage quality. Further analyses suggest that the enhancement of analyst competition could drive the results: inaccurate analysts drop out (extensive margin) and analysts who stay produce better-quality research (intensive margin). Our findings suggest that selling information separately improves information quality at the cost of reducing information quantity. The second chapter, Going Public or Staying Private: The Cost of Mandated Transparency, focuses on how transparency requirements in public markets affect firms' decisions to go public or stay private. Public markets are transparent institutions, where disclosure is mandatory, and order flows observable. We show that transparency can lead to insufficient information acquisition and inefficient investment. Transparency of order flows in public markets discourages information acquisition. Insufficient information acquisition then exacerbates the cost of imperfect disclosure. When the short-term disclosable signal diverges from the long-run value of a project, entrepreneurs prefer opaque private markets where investors can bargain over the costs of acquiring information. Our model links a firm's preference for public markets to the quality of disclosure metrics. Imperfect communication between investors and entrepreneurs caused by market transparency is a mechanism by which mandatory disclosure may destroy value, leading firms to remain private. In the third chapter, Active and Passive Funds: An Equilibrium Analysis, we provide a benchmark model to analyze investors' equilibrium choices and the welfare consequences of active and passive investing. Active investing is costly, but it brings two benefits: investors can better hedge by freely trading each asset in the portfolio and can acquire information about the possible state of the world. Information acquisition decisions are strategic substitutes. Investors will become active until the net value of being active shrinks to zero. We show that when the cost of acquiring information is low, equilibrium features the coexistence of informed active investors and passive investors. When the cost of acquiring information rises, informed active, uninformed active and passive investors could coexist. Finally, if the cost of being uninformed active is sufficiently low, passive investing is dominated by active investing. The benchmark model allows future research to explore whether the market equilibrium induces the optimal level of information acquisition and active investment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explore the influence that corporate carbon disclosure has on investor decision-­‐making and associated attitudes. The researcher conducted semi-­‐structured interviews with individual investors and institutional investors and fund managers operating in the South African environment in order to gain appropriate insights about their attitudes towards the place of carbon disclosure in the investment analyses. Additionally, semi-­‐structured interviews were held with three prominent petroleum companies operating in the oil and gas industry in South Africa. The results of the research were categorised into four themes that emerged upon analysis of the research findings, namely: the evolution of commercial thinking in terms of carbon emissions and carbon disclosure; the relevance of disclosing carbon emissions and disclosure practices; the association of risk, sustainability and liquidity and investor time horizons; and the emerging market of socially-­‐responsible investors. The researcher found that there is a positive impact on investor attitudes with regard to their investment decision-­‐making as a result of the carbon disclosure of companies. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted