LL.M. (Labour Law) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Management in Public Policy Johannesburg 2015 / When the newly elected democratic government came into office after the 1994 elections, it introduced reforms in the implementation of government procurement policy. The post-1994 dispensation fundamentally changed the old approach to the management of financial resources of the state. Government passed new legislation and adopted progressive policies relating to government procurement. The two major pieces of legislation, namely, the Constitution and the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) infused the public policy concept of good governance within the realm of public sector procurement. The government procurement system was required to comply with the five principles of good governance, which are: (1) fairness, (2) equity, (3) transparency, (4) competitiveness and (5) cost effectiveness. These five principles have a universal applicability, as they are practised internationally. Their genesis is related to the period when new public management practices were attracting the attention of both developed and developing countries. However, the reforms in the implementation of the public procurement policy faced various challenges and imperfections. Given this, the primary aim of this research study is to examine whether the implementation of government procurement policy over the last 20 years has promoted the five constitutional principles that inform the concept of public procurement, as well as evaluate the implications of non-compliance as reflected in the Public Protector and Auditor General’s reports. The policy review applies a qualitative research methodology that analyses the data from official and unofficial documents, including case studies from selected Public Protector reports as well as selected court cases. Reports from the Auditor General and various newspaper articles are also used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of the revised government procurement policy in the post-1994 era. iii | P a g e The results reveal a disjuncture in theory and practice in how public procurement policy is implemented to achieve the objective of good governance. In the main, government officials from affected departments fail to adhere to the requirements of applying a procurement system that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective. The results show that the cause of this state of affairs is a lack of understanding of what constitutes a procurement system that complies with the requirements of Section 217(1) of the Constitution. Secondly, the perceived overemphasis on socio-economic objectives over commercial considerations contributes to poor policy implementation. Lastly, the diminishing role of public participation in the processes of awarding tenders has negatively affected the public trust and confidence in public procurement. It is hoped that the recommendations contained in this research report will assist National Treasury in its continued efforts to transform and modernise the public sector procurement.

"The purpose of this paper is to compare by states features of inheritance and estate taxes, and to attempt to forecast their probable future trend"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "January, 1953." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Edward D. Trembly, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-57).

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of Portuguese

by Lum Ka-Yee. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / Chapter / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- REFORM OF LEGAL SYSTEM --- p.5 / Stages of legal reform --- p.6 / Legal framework --- p.9 / Features of legal system --- p.12 / Chapter III. --- ROLES OF LEGAL INSTITUTION --- p.16 / Institutionalization of economic reform --- p.16 / Protection of property rights of foreign investors --- p.17 / Reduction of transaction costs --- p.19 / Catalyst of changes within the legal organization --- p.23 / Catalyst of informal institutional changes --- p.24 / Chapter IV. --- PROBLEMS OF LEGAL SYSTEM --- p.26 / Incomplete legal framework --- p.26 / Lack of transparency in approval --- p.27 / Lack of consistency --- p.29 / Enforceability of law and contracts --- p.30 / Chapter V. --- CONCLUSION --- p.32 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.34

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Financial markets, where companies are characterized by a separation of ownership from control and interactions are opaque to a large majority of uninformed investors provide a fertile ground for executives to conduct practices that push the ethical boundaries of accepted and expected behavior. Furthermore, some practices such as tunneling of funds in business groups and backdating of executive's stock option grants exhibit remarkable proliferation among many disparate actors, ones who will argue for the merits of these practices even after they are exposed. In this dissertation I examine the antecedents of widely practiced financial frauds, processes that lead to what I call "legitimized unethicality"- unethical behavior that gains credence among perpetrators while remaining clearly illegal to outsiders. In chapter 1 I look at skewed investments of mutual funds in affiliated companies when these go public, highlighting how shared ownership over financial and non financial companies can lead mutual funds to transfer funds from savers who's portfolios they manage to the business group to which they belong. In chapter 2 I examine the diffusion pattern of stock option backdating among executives in the United States, where co-location (both spatial and temporal) creates clusters of bad behavior among clients of audit firms. I isolate a key "agent of diffusion" that gives credence to the practice of stock option backdating- the local office of the companies' auditor and show, using multiple methods, that this geographical concentration of backdating is the result of heterogeneous acceptance of backdating among local auditors and is dependent on the level of competition among the local offices of these auditors. In the third chapter I turn to look at the social characteristics that promote adoption of stock option backdating and show that this practice is adopted by those executives who experience a gap between their realized compensation and the expected compensation level when comparing to their peers. Backdating is therefore one form of catching up to perceived "fair" levels of compensation. Together these papers demonstrate that some unethical practices can gain legitimacy by perpetrators, and spread widely among them, while remaining clearly unethical to outsiders until exposed.

This interdisciplinary thesis combines economics and law disciplines in examining the current fiscal regime applicable to upstream petroleum activities in the UK with an overarching objective of developing a policy framework for a new fiscal regime that is not only stable enough to avoid future alterations but also sufficiently fair to balance the unaligned imperatives of the investors and the government. Since the initial days of hydrocarbon exploitation in the UK Continental Shelf the fiscal regime was subject to numerous changes in reaction to the dynamics of the time. Most of these changes were brought about in order to incentivise the investors to explore for and get petroleum while attempting to ensure an appropriate share, or fair return, were accruing to the UK economy. The frequency of these changes however increased fiscal instability, making investment into the UK's upstream sector a riskier proposition. In order to develop a stable regime that can also ensure a fair return, therefore, this thesis begins with a brief overview of the fiscal instability and the government's most recent attempt at ensuring an appropriate share. This most recent attempt, the Treasury's Fiscal Review, is a consequence of the review of the entire upstream industry in the UK by Sir Ian Wood. The resultant report of the review, the Wood Report, provides the government's rationale for reform. Using the government position as a guidance, the work then analyses the conditions under which investors are incentivised and ascertains what exactly is meant by an appropriate share, or fair return, for the state. This analysis is carried out using the relevant investment and fiscal theories which, in turn, yields a set of criteria to evaluate the fiscal instruments. Once the criteria are established they are utilised against the fiscal regime that was in place prior to the government's most recent attempt at receiving a fair return. This is not only to assess the extent of the need for reforming the then existing regime but also to understand what was being reformed. The criteria are then employed subsequently in assessing the same for the most recent reforms of the government.

Thesis. 1977. Env.E.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Ocean Engineering. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography : leaves [67]-72. / Env.E.

Thesis (LL.M. (Environmental law and Management)) --University of Limpopo, 2007. / The purpose of this thesis was to critically examine the enforcement of environmental regulations with special reference to the enforcement of offences in the National Water Act 36 of 1998. “Enforcement” was conceptualized as “power” the exercise of which is constrained by the constitutionally guaranteed rights, especially the rights contained in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 – the Bill of Rights. “Compliance” was conceptualized as a rational action. The polluter is both a rational economic actor as well as a rational political actor. “Enforcement” and “Compliance” were further considered as economic activities with costs and benefits. The “responsive enforcement and compliance” model was also adopted in this thesis. Environmental regulation is contentious because of the failure to adequately distinguish environmental crimes (mala prohibita) from common law crimes (mala in se) and the erroneous believe in the immutability of law especially pro-defendant procedural rights in criminal prosecution. This failure to distinguish environmental crimes from common law crimes resulted in the requirement of the proof of mens rea in criminal prosecution for breach of environmental law. Arguments were advanced to show that mens rea can easily be proved in environmental law areas of land use and development and resource conservation while it is a Herculean task for the prosecutor to prove mens rea in waste disposal and pollution offences. Arguments were also advanced, in terms of s. 24 of the 1996 Constitution and s. 2 of the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998, to show that “sustainable development” and the principles derived therefrom, especially the “precautionary principle” and the “polluter–pays principle”, are part of the corpus of South African constitutional and statutory laws. The “precautionary principle” and the “polluter-pays principle” have assumed the status of customary international law, and consequently part of South African laws in terms of s. 232 of 1996 Constitution. The provisions of s. 24(b) of 1996 Constitution prescribed both positive and negative duties for the state in respect of environmental regulation and prescribed the ambit of environmental regulation in South Africa. The “precautionary principle” is interpreted as deliberation guiding in form and a legal rule in content. The “precautionary principle” as a rule guides the actions of organs of state and other environmental stakeholders. The “polluter-pays principles” is interpreted as a legal rule which should be applied in the “all-or-nothing” sense. Arguments were advanced for the application of the “polluter-pays principles” in criminal prosecution. The legal effect of the application of “polluter-pays principle” in criminal prosecution for environmental crimes is to negative mens rea and transform environmental crimes to strict liability offences. In the environmental law areas of land use and development and resource conservation where mens rea is easily provable, the application of the “polluter-pays principle” would limit the prosecutor’s duty to proving, beyond reasonable doubt, the acts that constitute the offence against the accused. Thereafter, it is opened to the accused to prove, on scale of probabilities, that he lacks the mens rea (dolus or culpa) necessary for conviction. In the area of waste disposal and pollution control where proof of mens rea is difficult, the application of the “polluter-pays principle” should result in the application of the rule in Rylands Fletcher. All the prosecutor need do to obtain conviction is to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, the acts that constitute the offence against the accused. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is identified and recognized as the dominant social paradigm (DSP) in South Africa. It is within the context of this DSP that environmental regulation is situated. Examining the penal provisions in the National Water Act 36 of 1998 against the background of the DSP, one is not left in doubt why the water pollution and degradation offences in the Act are fault-based. The DSP also partly accounts for the subordination of criminal law to administrative and civil judicial procedures in the enforcement of offences in the NWA 36 of 1998. Offences in the NWA 36 of 1998 were classified into 5 groups– failure crimes, reporting crimes, fraud crimes, obstruction crimes and environmental injury crimes. The failure crimes, reporting crimes, fraud crimes and obstruction crimes are common law crimes (mala in se) in the environmental law context, they are therefore subject to criminal prosecution like any other common law crime. Most of the environmental injury crimes are subject to administrative and civil judicial penalties, that is, the criminal sanction is subordinated to administrative and civil enforcement. The water pollution and degradation offences in s. 151 (1)(i)(j) of NWA 36 of 1998 are fault-based. In a water stressed country, this is a subsidy to industry for job creation and poverty eradication as dictated by the DSP– the RDP. However, in the prosecution for water pollution and degradation offenses, the application of the “polluter-pays principle” would negative mens rea. The legal effect is that in any prosecution for water pollution or degradation, to secure conviction, the prosecutor is only expected to prove the acts constituting the offence beyond reasonable doubt. It is thereafter open to the accused to the prove, on scale of probabilities, that he lacked either the dolus or culpa required to ground conviction. Since different cast of players are responsible for environmental protection and criminal prosecution (the National Prosecution Authority), coordination amongst the environmental agency, the prosecuting authority and the police is recommended. This can be achieved, inter alia, through joint participation in national enforcement conferences and joint participation in environmental task forces.