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Background: The rights of children to freedom of expression and receiving information are underpinned by Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989), which was ratified by the Malaysian government in 1995. There has been increasing shifts toward recognising the importance of children’s rights with many initiatives to realise and uphold the rights of children in Malaysia. However, no previous studies of children’s participation have been conducted in Malaysia. The aim of this study was to explore children’s participation in decisions regarding their nursing care from the perspective of the children, their parents, and nurses in an oncological ward in Malaysia. Methods: This was a focused ethnographic study. Participant observation was carried out with 61 participants (21 children, 21 parents, and 19 nurses) in the paediatric oncology-haematological ward, Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 participants (6 children, 7 parents, and 8 nurses). The existing documents pertinent to the research focus were examined to validate the participant observations and interview findings. Data were analysed using Roper and Shapira’s (2000) focused ethnographic data analysis techniques. Findings: There were different degrees of the participation of children in decisions among children diagnosed with leukaemia, including: being physically present, being informed, being consulted where children can express their wishes and opinions during the provision of nursing care, and being able to make their own decisions in relation to their nursing care. The degrees to which children participated in decisions fluctuated throughout the course of their hospitalization; moving from lesser degrees of participation (passive participant) to greater involvement (active participant) and vice-versa. The extent to which children participated in decisions were significantly influenced by the children’s preferences for participation. The preferences of children also fluctuated over the course of their illness and treatment. There were several factors contributing to children’s participation in decisions including; i) interpersonal relations in the child-parent-nurse interactions; ii) experiences of the child (veteran or novice); iii) attitude of nurses; iv) parental role; and v) the ward policy. Conclusion: The children want to be involved and really appreciate participation in communication and decisions but their opportunities for participation are somewhat limited. This study calls for a flexible model to assess children’s preferences for participation and different forms of participation for children in relation to decision-making in paediatric oncology.

Attractiveness can provide an individual with advantages that less attractive people may not be granted. These advantages can be seen in everyday life through the perception that attractive individuals are more intelligent, friendly, and employees. Many researchers have found that attractiveness can have an influence on who gets the job and who does not. Past research on the influence of attractiveness on hiring practices has been conducted from an explicit attitude perspective. Explicit attitudes are evaluations that are thought out and conform to social norms, while implicit attitudes are unconscious evaluations before the influence of social norm. Implicit and explicit attitudes are considered two different constructs and accessed for different reasons. It was hypothesized that hiring agents would consider attractive applicants better suited when using an implicit attitude. Additionally there would be differences between male and female hiring agents. Results indicate that hiring agents associated attractive applicants with good job attributes when using an implicit attitude. However, there was no difference between male and female hiring agents, as both associated attractive applicants with good job attributes equally. The results also demonstrated that not all implicit and explicit attitudes diverge as previous research has indicated. The study also found a number of applicant attributes that contribute to the influence of whether to interview and hire attractive and unattractive applicants.

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The field of Operations & Supply Chain Management (O&SCM) deals with large and complex structures. Evidence from practice suggests that management still runs in silos and decisions are often focused on specific functions as the totality of the problem and the impact on the broader organisation is not always understood. To manage such structures, managers have been investing in information technology to improve data availability and quality. Finally, good data is available with potential to enable holistic decision-making (DM). The field of analytics answers the need to transform data into information to support DM processes. Visual analytics rely specifically on visual representations to support DM processes. As visual analytics is still at its infancy, the aim is to identify what types of visual analytics has been used in empirical research, to support what decisions and its impact in O&SCM context. Evidence based literature review, also known as systematic literature review (SLR) method is used to review 41 papers. The most common type of visual analytics identified is modelling, mapping and visual interfaces between data and managers. These most often support Plan and Make type decisions. Vast majority of applications are identified as positive, enabling better understanding of the problem, greater management involvement in the process and better communication. Future research is needed to define the term “visual analytics” as the field is still at its infancy. Development and empirical testing is required of whether the identified visual tools are an enabler for holistic decisions in the O&SCM context.

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

I investigate how the presence of outsiders in the senior management team is related to the financing decision of Chinese listed family firms. For a sample of listed family firms from 2008 to 2017, I find that family firms with more outsiders in their senior management team (including the CEO, vice general manager, CFO, secretary of the board of directors, and other persons specified in the articles of Association) have higher leverage and take on more debt. Further, from the aspect of different financing choices, my empirical analysis shows that family firms with a higher proportion of outsiders take on fewer bank loans but issue more bonds. I use the proportion of outsiders in the firm's senior management team to measure the presence of outsiders in family firms. Besides, for the robustness test, I also use two dummy variables to measure the presence of outsiders in family firms. One indicates whether the family members fully exit from the senior executive team (including board chair, CEO, and CFO), and the other indicates whether the family members fully exit from the senior management team (including CEO, vice general manager, CFO, secretary of the board of directors, and other persons specified in the articles of Association). The results are consistent. To deal with the potential endogeneity issues, I use the outsiders’ full control of the senior executive team of the family firms as an exogenous shock to conduct PSM-DID analysis, and the results still hold. To conduct a heterogeneity analysis, I investigate factors that could moderate the relation between the presence of outsiders and financing policy in family firms from the perspective of family firms’ expropriation risks. The results show that the positive relationship between the presence of outsiders and the issue of bonds are both more pronounced for family firms with a higher amount of related party transactions, and for family firms with higher other receivables. My study shows that the presence of outsiders in family firms has a significant impact on firms’ financing decisions. In specific, the presence of outsiders leads to significantly higher leverage in family firms, fewer bank loans, and a larger amount of bond issuance. Considering the superiority of bonds to bank loans in the issuance procedure, amount, maturity, and cost, the positive impact of the presence of outsiders on bond issuance indicates that outsiders help to alleviate family firms’ financing constraints and improve financing structure. In addition, the strengthening role of expropriation risks in the positive relation of the presence of outsiders and bonds issuance also provides some implication that the introduction of outsiders in family firms helps to improve family firms’ governance structure, alleviate the concerns of creditors, and thus reduce agency conflicts between family shareholders and creditors. / Business Administration/Finance

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Chapter 1 novelly examines the nature of the interaction between private donors and not-for-profit organisations (NPOs) when NPOs can invest endowment funds in a two-asset risky portfolio and donors can contribute to both the endowment fund and the annual campaign. I study a three-stage non-cooperative game with two types of economic agents: a cohort of heterogeneous donors and one representative NPO. In equilibrium, donors always contribute to the endowment fund; however, they may not contribute to the annual campaign. The proportion of the NPO's endowment fund invested in the risky asset is a discontinuous function of the endowment; donors contribute less to an aggressive NPO and more to a cautious one. When the NPO can solicit donors to contribute only once, this increases the expected level of the contribution in equilibrium, but this may not generate higher expected utility for donors. Chapter 2 presents a dynamic model of charitable giving. At each period, donors contribute to an NPO's endowment; the NPO provides a charitable good and invests in the  financial market. Investments are made in a risky asset and a risk-free asset. I introduce two types of shocks to account for uncertainty: donors' income shock and  financial market fluctuations. I show that the optimal share of disposable endowment invested in risky asset is constant. Donors' strategy, whether to contribute or free-ride on the NPO's investments, depends on donors' shadow prices. Donors contribute when NPO's endowment is relatively low. Large contribution levels encourage the NPO to participate in the capital market at the expense of providing charitable good. I show that the NPO prefers an environment with a lower rate of return on risk-free assets. NPO's risk exposure to the  financial market affects both NPO's and donors' decisions. However, risk exposures on donors' side do not impact parties' decisions. Regulation analysis suggests that portfolio ceiling and provision floor are achievable. Chapter 3 links two data sources: the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) data over the period of 1987-2014 and the U.S. presidential elections data. I develop a dynamic model to examine how the national-level political incumbent shapes the NPOs' risky investment portfolio selection, adjusting for a set of NPOs' intrinsic characteristics and real interest rate. I  find that right-leaning Republicans act as a rein on NPOs' risky investments, i.e., a Republican administration is associated with a reduction in NPOs' holdings of corporation stocks and a 16.28% reduction in equity share relative to a Democratic administration. It is attributed to the impact of the Republican administration by more facilitating NPOs' accessibility to borrowing than having a Democratic president. I argue that NPOs behave as backward-looking investors or are reluctant to change their portfolio due to the significant portfolio adjustment cost, using past performance as an indicator to make their current risky investment decisions. Heckman two-step estimation indicates that NPOs' investment is an endogenous sample selection instead of a random choice. I show that NPOs have a less extensive equity share with more severe agency costs; foundation size plays a different role when NPOs decide whether to invest in risky assets compared with investing NPOs. Moreover, for investing NPOs, the equity share is expected to decrease by 12.0% if there is a 1% increase in the real interest rate; NPOs are more inclined to invest in risky assets when the real interest rate increases, in the sense of riding with the rational bubble.