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This study investigates the implementation of non-financial corporate governance principles at the eNdondakusuka municipality. The study draws largely on the reports of the King Commission of 1994 and 2002 because there is very little written about non financial corporate governance principles in South Africa. Specifically, the study looks at safety, health, ethics and issues related to human resources management. Information on financial corporate governance principles is readily available and hence subject to easier monitoring and analysis than that on non-financial corporate governance principles. In this study a questionnaire was used to solicit for information from employees about the extent to which non-financial corporate governance principles are implemented within the municipality. The thrust of the study was to get an in-depth understanding of the issues and their application to the daily functioning of the municipality. Out of the one hundred questionnaires that were distributed 64 were completed and returned. The key findings of the study suggest that municipal workers are neutral towards non financial matters of corporate governance at the municipality (in terms of mean scores are relative to the mid-point score of three (3) on the five (5) point scale utilized in the study). However, two principal areas emerge from the analysis. One is a negative point of view, the effectiveness of the HIV/AIDS plan is regarded with disfavor by the municipal workers and second point of view which is positive, where the municipal effort to address environmental issues is regarded in a favorable light by municipal workers in the study. In sum, one can conclude that the municipality has not been able to effectively implement non-finance corporate governance principles with particular reference to safety and health issues. The perceptions of employees on ethics at the workplace, just like those for safety and health are neutral. Though an above neutral point is recorded for transparency by management the common belief is that information on organizational performance is not readily available. Added to this is the lack of an effective system for reporting unethical behaviour. Though less than ten percent responses were recorded for these aspects, poor discipline and lack of role clarity were identified as the major obstacles to ethical behaviour in the organization. The key issues for human resource development relate to performance management and training. The responses suggest that if employees are to be effective, more training needs to be conducted. Though respective Sectors of Education and Training Authority (SETAs') offer an opportunity for further staff development, the benefits of such initiatives have not been felt by the employees. Furthermore, the association between performance appraisals and training is yet to be seen. Overall, this study confirms that there is neither a complete lack of non-financial corporate governance principles nor is the implementation of the same clear and beneficial to all employees. Seemingly, employees across the board do have a hazy picture about the application of these principles in the municipality but apparently do not have adequate information to take a definite stance and hence the majority gave neutral responses. In conclusion the study recommends that with regard to the health and safety working environment the employer needs to intensify its HN/AIDS programmes which are contained in the HIV/AIDS policy of the Municipality. In this effort it should conduct more workshops that encourage voluntary testing which will assist the organization to plan ahead with regard to future human capital needs resulting from HIV/AIDS pandemic. There was recognition of a certain concern for the safety of its employees,however, not as fully recommended by Occupational Health and Safety Act, No. 181 of 1993. It is therefore recommended that the municipality applies the requirements of this Act to ensure the safety of its employees. It was further recommended that a hot-line facility to report any unethical behavior be implemented and that the employer take what has been reported seriously so that employees and the community could have confidence in the system. The employer was also encourage to improve consultation with the stakeholders so that its policies and strategies are not considered to have been taken unilaterally, in other words, the employer should promote democracy in the workplace. The employer was further adviced to implement a performance management system that would link with training and development of human resource capital. In fact chapter 6 of the Municipal System Act, No. 32 of 2000 suggests that municipalities should have organizational and individual performance management systems so that they can measure their performance at organizational as well as individual level to enhance service delivery. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu Natal, 2005.

Det är en spännande tid vi lever i där samverkan antas vara strategin för att lösa problem med klimathot, hälsopolitik och hållbar samhällsutveckling. I samverkansplattformen Samhällskontraktet samarbetar Västerås stad, Eskilstuna kommun och Mälardalens högskola för att bidra till en regional utveckling.  Den här fallstudien har fokuserat på styrgruppen för Hållbar samhällsutveckling i Samhällskontraktet utifrån teoribildning om nätverksstyrning. Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att bidra till en ökad kännedom och förståelse för hur aktörer samverkar kring komplexa samhällsproblem. Resultaten från fallstudien visar på - i linje med teoribildningen kring nätverksstyrning – om politikens förändrade roll. Konkret innebär detta att det är inom ramen för samverkan som policyproblem prioriteras och avgränsas. Till följd av detta försvåras ansvarutkrävande enligt den traditionella parlamentariska styrningskedjan. Den samverkan som sker mellan aktörerna i Samhällskontraktet har inslag av förhandlingar mellan tjänstemän och forskare, vilket bidrar till ett personberoende. Studien bekräftar den forskning som tidigare gjorts gällande nätverksstyrning om att den inte gör det möjligt att kräva ansvar av politiker då beslutskedjan bryts horisontellt. Frågan om vem som ska hållas ansvariga för de beslut som i slutändan rör medborgarna står därmed fortfarande utan svar.

The business corporation is an important engine for the creation of wealth and it plays a vital role in promoting economic development and social progress in both domestic and international economies. Hence companies must operate within a governance framework that keeps them focused on their objectives and accountable for their actions. There is the need to establish adequate and credible governance arrangements. The degree of observance to the basic principles of good corporate governance is an important factor for investment decisions. / Traditional corporate doctrine has taken the separation of ownership from control as the core problem of corporate governance. On this view, the principal function of corporate law is to devise strategies and mechanisms to ensure that corporate decision-making is based only on shareholders' interests. However, corporate managers are subject to influence from many other sources. Thus, the study of corporate governance must take account of all factors that affect managerial decision-making. / In this thesis, I examine the influence that debt financing brings to bear on corporate governance and examine whether debt-holders should be beneficiaries of corporate fiduciary duties. I conclude that any such duty should be narrowly cast.

This thesis examines the relationship between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) origin and performance consequences in a New Zealand (NZ) setting. The NZ setting is unique because previous research on this topic is from the United States (US) and in one instance the United Kingdom (UK); and the NZ setting is intriguing because it has four important institutional differences: NZ directors hire outsiders much more frequently than their US and UK counterparts; NZ has no discernible trend in the frequency of outsider appointments over time, whereas the US has a marked upward trend; average CEO tenure in NZ is much shorter than that observed in the US or globally; and CEO succession occurs in relatively small firms. These four differences suggest that the NZ CEO market has some unique dynamics and perhaps unique performance consequences. This thesis fills a gap in our knowledge of executive and director practice in NZ and contributes to the CEO origin debate by analysing a new setting. Using a hand collected sample of 162 CEO appointments from NZ firms between 1991 and 2008, I find some significant performance differences between insider and outsider CEOs. Outsiders elicit a higher abnormal return around the appointment announcement: the 1-day and the 3-day differentials are approximately 1.2% and 1.7% respectively. In contrast, insiders create more shareholder wealth during their first three years in charge: insiders increase the appointing firm’s market-to-book ratio by approximately 27 percentage points more than outsiders. I also discover that insiders are around 37 percentage points more likely to last at least three years in the job. The main difference between these findings and those from the US and UK is that insiders easily outperform outsiders in the medium term. Also, I document an intuitive finding for grey insiders: grey insiders by definition possess a blend of insider and outsider attributes and perform between insiders and outsiders on all three performance measures. These findings are robust to various controls and subsamples, and there is also some evidence that the market-to-book finding is robust to selection bias.

This dissertation focuses on two central capital market transactions, takeovers and initial public offerings (IPOs), from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. After an introductory chapter, the first two chapters analyse how minority shareholders are affected by a change in take-over regulation (introduction of the mandatory bid rule) in Germany in 1995. The last chapter focuses on the pricing and timing of going-public transactions. Chapter 2 focuses on the absolute wealth effect of the mandatory bid rule and formalises the trade-off minority shareholders of corporate raiders face with respect to the adoption of a mandatory tender offer after a shift in control. Under plausible assumptions about the distribution of security and control benefits, minority shareholders of acquirers profit from the adoption of the mandatory bid rule. A subsequent empirical study supports this hypothesis by measuring the stock price effects after the acceptance of the German Takeover Code. Chapter 3 uses a dataset of German dual-class shares during 1988-1997 to study how the change of corporate governance rules affects the price differential between voting and non-voting stock. First, the chapter discusses how mechanisms to separate control from cash-flow rights relate to the value of control. Second, the chapter analyses how minority voting and non-voting shareholders participate in transfers of corporate control under the alternative regulatory structures pre- and post- 1995. By providing an analysis of sequential going-public decisions. Chapter 4 outlines conditions under which the likelihood of a second IPO increases after a first firm has gone public ('hot issue markets'). Two effects can trigger the rise of hot issue markets in a setting with asymmetric and costly information about both firm quality and industry prospects: risk-induced selling pressure and informational free-riding on the industry news conveyed by a first IPO. Finally, the model offers an explanation for the empirical finding that hot issue markets exhibit a higher degree of underpricing than cold issue markets.

This dissertation states that the behavior of banks and investors varies according to the rules of the game and demonstrates that the level of institutional development may have an important role on the effectiveness of monetary policies. The level of institutional development is measured by the quality of contract enforcement, the level of corruption, the extent of political stability, the level of government's transparency and accountability and the quality of the implemented policies and regulations. This research presents a framework to explain how the traditional channels of monetary policy transmission are altered by the level of institutional development, allowing the construction of three hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that institutional development matters for the effects of monetary policies on output. The second hypothesis is that contractionary policies have more adverse effects on output in countries with low institutional development than in countries with high institutional development. The third hypothesis is that expansionary policies are more effective in terms of output promotion in countries with high institutional development than in countries with low institutional development. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that research has established a relationship between the level of institutional development and the asymmetric effects of monetary policies on output. Two country examples are presented: the case of Nigeria illustrates the third hypothesis and the case of Brazil illustrates the second hypothesis. Several econometric models and six institutional development indicators are used to evaluate the three hypotheses. This dissertation provides strong empirical support for the hypotheses 1 and 2, sustaining the argument that the asymmetric effects of monetary policies on output may have deep institutional causes. Rule of law and government effectiveness are the indicators that matter most for the effectiveness of monetary policies. Particular consideration should be given to the rule of law indicator because of its clear connection with the theoretical arguments and country examples, suggesting that fundamental institutional improvements should be focused on the efficiency of the judiciary system and the quality of law enforcement.

The intent of this research is to inform companies that the internal audit function has greater utility than just corporate governance. The internal audit function represents a resource to the business that can be used in a number of ways to help it survive, compete and establish new growth opportunities in the marketplace for the firm. The proposed project will demonstrate through an interpretive process study using case study research how the internal audit function can be a strategic business partner by highlighting its contribution ability in a dynamic, ever-changing, regulatory laden environment. This paper uses Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to explain the organizational transformation of the internal audit function from a professional bureaucracy to an adhocracy as an unintended consequence of corporate governance legislation over time. The study contributes to the literature by explaining the evolutionary change in the internal audit function from scorekeeper-and-watchdog to business-partner-and-change agent. This study analyzes how senior management benefits from utilizing the internal auditors’ experience as an organizational tool to address threats and opportunities.

Governance is a response to a recognition that traditional forms of decision-making have become inadequate to address complex societal and health problems generated by significant social and global changes (Chhotray & Stoker, 2009). The contributions of scientific and technical knowledge towards solving these complex problems have also been recognized as insufficient (Jasanoff, 2007). Community-based research (CBR) is an approach to research which is designed to make use of the knowledge of community and university members and their participation and collaboration ―in all phases of the research process, with a shared goal of producing knowledge that will be translated into action or positive change for the community‖ (Lantz, Israel, Schulz & Reyes, 2006, p. 239). However, although the contributions of lay knowledge have been acknowledged, how governance or collaborative decision-making is arranged in the context of community-based research is not well described in the literature. In order to address this knowledge gap, a study was undertaken in which in-depth interviews were conducted with community and university members of Canadian CBR collaborations to determine their governing experiences. Results are reported in a thesis by research papers. The first paper focuses on describing the governance structures that CBR collaborations used. In the second paper, the nature and content of problems which occurred in governing CBR collaborations, point to the importance of theory for conceptualizing and solving governance problems. To develop a theory of participation in governance of community-based research, the third paper uses Arnstein‘s theory of participation to propose a grounded theoretical basis for implementing participation in governance of CBR collaborations (Arnstein, 1969). Governance is a means of organizing, shaping and steering a course of decision-making. Governance is a critical component in the organization of knowledge production. Study and theory of governance in community-based research may help in improving understanding and implementation of a critical population health practice.

SOA governance not only ensures that the concepts and principles for service orientation and its distributed architecture are managed appropriately and delivered on the stated business goals for services but also controls the evolution of these service-oriented systems. Evolving services must be able to manage their own actions based on high level global business goals and low level local rules. One way to specify such goals is in the form of policies. Policies are operating rules to orchestrate and maintain order, security, and consistency throughout the service lifecycle. In this ubiquitous world of SOA, there are diverse kinds of policies that can be leveraged for governing services. However, these policies are not often documented properly which then leads to redundancy in policy creation and development. To characterize these policies, the thesis first introduces a taxonomy that classifies policies applicable towards the field of SOA governance. This document then identifies the characteristics of policies that are most influential as the organizational maturity evolves. The intended outcome of this thesis is to present the readers with an overall idea of governance policies and their classification as the enterprise system progresses, from being service oriented to virtualized and eventually to a cloud oriented system. In this thesis, policies that govern service oriented systems are categorized on the basis of their empirically observable behavior and their applicability to phases of the service lifecycle. This document also recommends policies and their classification, based on enforcement style in the virtualization layer and execution phase in the cloud layer. With this classification, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of existing policies facilitating policy based governance and evolution in distributed service oriented environments. / Graduate