The aim of this research project was to evaluate the available theoretical information on Corporate Social Responsibility and with this knowledge to then also evaluate three companieś initiatives based on this information. Gone are the days when an organisation could do business for the sole purpose of making a profit. If the organisation does not take the environment into account in doing business, or if the community where this organisation is situated or does business, feel “abused” or that their needs are not being addressed, the organisation will not survive and its future sustainability can not be assured or guaranteed. This has been proven internationally, but how does South African organisations fare when it comes to corporate social responsibility, and more specifically, what social responsible initiatives are taken? The research also attempted to determine how “industry specific” the three companies'́ initiatives are and whether any changes in initiative-directions should be considered. The Social Responsibility Initiatives of Woolworths, ENGEN and SABMiller (South Africa) were evaluated and certain shortcomings were identified and presented to the various companies. These companies deliver excellent products and services to their client base, but it was felt that should adherence be given to the recommendations that were made, the mentioned companies could in future improve their turnover, market position and increase their client support base. Finally, it could also assist in increasing brand loyalty amongst their customers.

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A recent series of scandals hitting the UK financial industry has had a negative impact on consumer confidence in UK insurance companies. After assuming its powers and responsibility under the Financial Services and Market Act 2000, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) becomes the single statutory regulator directly responsible for the regulation of deposit taking, insurance and investment business. Strong legislation was introduced to maintain IFAs' independence, prohibiting insurance companies from exerting or persuading more IFAs to promote their products. Fighting to survive in an increasingly competitive market, several insurance companies have adopted the extranet to improve their communication and relationships with IFAs. Whilst channel relationship literature insists on the important role of communication in the supplier-distributor relationship, the emerging role of the extranet and how it reshapes IFA-insurer communication and relationships has hardly been explored. Accordingly, the research problem investigated in this thesis is: How has the extranet impacted on communication and relationships between the insurer and independent financial advisors (IE4s) in the UK? The research problem was investigated in two stages. In Stage 1, face-to-face interviews were carried out to help identify 5 research issues. RI 1: How does the extranet facilitate insurer-IFA communication? RI 2: How does the extranet impact on the use of other communication media? RI 3: How does the extranet facilitate the insurer-IFA relationship? RI 4: Impact of the extranet on communication, trust, commitment, cooperation, and conflict - How does this facilitate the quality of relationship between insurers and IFAs? RI 5: Does the perceived impact of the extranet on commitment have the strongest impact on the quality of the insurer-IFA relationship? in Stage2 , a mail survey of UK independent financial advisors was conducted to explore the research issues. In answering the research issues,this thesis' findings make the following contributions. Firstly, this research found that the extranet has a positive impact on insurer- IFA communication in general. However, it is still not conclusive that the extranet increases two-way communication between them. Secondly, this research found that it is highly likely that the extranet will decrease the use of certain modes of communication especially, the facsimile and the telephone. Thirdly, this research found that the extranet improves certain aspects of trust. In terms of commitment, although the extranet increases the IFAs' willingness to maintain their relationship with the insurer, it does not have a strong impact on the IFAs' commitment to the insurer. Concerning the co-operation construct, it is still inconclusive whether the communication enhanced by the extranet leads to better co-operation between the insurer and IFAs. Likewise, it is still not conclusive if the extranet-enhanced communication results in less conflict between the insurer and IFAs. Nevertheless, it is clear that the extranet does not intensify existing disagreements between them. Overall, the IFAs felt that the extranet-enhanced communication increased the quality of their relationship with the insurer. Next, this research found that the perceived impact of the extranet on relationship quality is positively related to the perceived impact of the extranet on trust, commitment, and co-operation and negatively related to the perceived impact of the extranet on conflict and, disagreement. Indeed, insurers need to be aware that to enhance the quality of their relationship with the IFA, they need to maintain and increase the IFAs' trust in, and commitment to them. At the same time, they should also try to facilitate co-operation and effectively solve conflicts between them and the IFAs. This research found that the extranet has the potential to help the insurer achieve these goals if it is implemented appropriately and effectively. Finally, the findings also suggest that commitment has the strongest effect on the perceived quality of relationship.

This study argues that corporations have obligations in relation to fundamental human rights, for which there appears to exist a value consensus across different cultures and societies.  This study argues that the normative thrust of fundamental human rights obligations of corporations derive primarily from national legal orders and only secondarily from the international level, whereas both draw their foundations from an international value system.  This argument is backed by an empirical study of sixty-five national legal orders in relation to corporate fundamental human rights obligations.  Thirdly, it argues that fundamental human rights obligations may also derive from unilateral commitments by corporations themselves. This study thereafter proposes a normative framework of obligations to respect, protect and fulfil fundamental human rights.  In other words, it argues that both corporations and states have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil fundamental human rights.  The study employs a holistic approach which identifies a three-fold responsibility for fundamental human rights violations by or involving corporations: corporate, individual and state responsibility.  In this light, it argues for concurrence between corporate, individual and state responsibility, where possible.  Identifying obligations and responsibility is only one of the aspects of the idea of corporate responsibility.  As important is the question of how one can respond to fundamental human rights violations by corporations.  As international mechanisms are often non-effective, and even non-existent, the provision of effective remedies for victims of fundamental human rights violations by or involving corporations, this study argues, rests where fundamental human rights are best protected within the national normative frameworks.  The final aim is to develop the normative framework <i>de lege</i> <i>ferenda</i>.  This study makes thirteen recommendations on how to improve the normative framework for corporate responsibility for fundamental human rights.

This thesis examines the effect of IFRS No.3, <i>Business</i> <i>Combinations</i>, on managers’ accounting choices with respect to the goodwill impairment losses reported by the largest UK firms.  While IFRS No. 3 was issued to improve the accounting treatment of goodwill and provide users with more useful and value-relevant information regarding the underlying economic value of goodwill, it has been criticized by academics, practitioners, and dissenting IASB members on the grounds of the managerial discretion inherent in the process of testing goodwill for impairment.  It is unclear how IFRS No. 3 has affected the reporting of goodwill impairment losses, including the related managerial flexibility exercised in determining them. Results reveal managers are exercising discretion in the reporting of goodwill impairments following the adoption of IFRS No.3.  Specifically, goodwill impairments are more likely to be associated with recent CEO changes, income smoothing and “big bath” reporting behaviours.  However, results also indicate that goodwill impairments are strongly associated with economic indicators of impairment and have significant positive associations with effective governance mechanisms as measured by the percentage of independent directors on the board of directors, the number of board meetings, the percentage of shares owned by blockholders holding at least 10% of outstanding shares, and the percentage of shares owned by executive and non-executive directors, suggesting that managers are more likely to be using the discretion afforded by IFRS No.3 to convey their private information and expectations about the underlying performance of the firm rather than acting opportunistically in the write-off year.  These inferences are robust to a number of modelling specifications and variable definitions.  Further analysis and principal component aggregation of the corporate governance variables provide additional assurance that the perceived managerial reporting incentives are less likely to be opportunistic.

Sustainable development is generally accepted as a policy imperative. However, it can be interpreted in very different ways and is perhaps best regarded as a discourse rather than as a precisely defined term. It is also generally accepted that `sustainable development' requires actions at all spatial scales and by all levels of government, including the local. However, parish and town councils, which are the most local level of local government in rural England, are given no responsibilities in relation to sustainability. This thesis is intended to investigate the potential of parish and town councils to take a leadership role in increasing the sustainability of their communities. A casestudy approach is used, involving the study of five larger local councils in the county of Gloucestershire, in the context of larger-scale sustainable development discourses. Two case-study projects are also analysed to study how different discourses come together at the local level. We find that the concept of `sustainable development' has been adapted by UK government to conform to wider political discourses. However, government interpretations are not necessarily reproduced at the local level, where inherent contradictions become more apparent. Although parish and town councillors may express commitment to `sustainable development', they tend to interpret it in terms of the local and the relatively short- term. A discourse of local council legitimation is identified by which councillors see their role as caring for their parish, with the benefit of local knowledge and holistic thinking. The thesis concludes that if parish and town councils are to contribute to sustainable development, they must be given specific powers encompassing the global and long-term effects of local activities, and other local groups must see the local council as a leader of the community and `sustainability arbiter', rather than as just another interest group.

This dissertation presents three essays in financial economics with regards to corporate social responsibility and ratings. The first essay develops the first model for the CSR rating agency who has incentives to shirk while the rated firms have incentives to manipulate information through deceptive public relations (greenwash). Depending on the size of the socially responsible investor base and its composition, three possible regimes can be inferred from the model. The first one is where the rating agency is catering to mainly a large group of sophisticated SR investors who compensate the rating agency for the value of information. The second one is where the rating agency is catering to mainly a large group of trusting SR investors who compensate the rating agency for the value of institutional certification. In either of these two regimes, the weight of the large group of SR investors should generate higher market valuations for higher-rated firms that motivate firm managers to perform greenwashing. The third regime is where there are just too few SR investors to justify the effort to produce informative signals and to drive apart market valuations for rated firms. The second essay investigates the empirical predictions of the model described in the first essay. I challenge the conventional wisdom of commercial CSR ratings being informative in a first attempt to understand how this ratings market operates. Using a novel difference-in-difference identification strategy, I show ratings significantly decreased for firms targeted by a regulatory crackdown on informational manipulation that inflates ratings. I find that better environmental ratings predict worse future corporate behavior via a novel set of benchmarks (i.e. penalties, lawsuits, and media coverage) while neither environmental nor social ratings appear to offer incremental predictive value beyond size and other standard firm characteristics. Higher-rated firms are associated with higher market valuations relative to their lower-rated counterparts. My findings point to a world in which the ratings business is primarily catering to a large group of trusting investors who buy ratings not for the value of information but for the value of institutional certification. The third essay examines the ratings of a recently emerged rating agency competitor and find its ratings are of no better predictive quality. I introduce a novel set of measures, `corporate badness (CB) ratings', for corporate environmental and social performance. In contrast to the leading commercial ratings, worse CB ratings correctly predict more future corporate bad behavior out-of-sample. These CB ratings provide a way to study ratings disagreement, which can be used to disentangle greenwashing from the other information contained in the leading commercial CSR ratings.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management specialising in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation, Johannesburg 2016 / Social entrepreneurship has the potential to address and solve social problems and challenges, poverty and inequality among others, which are rife across subSaharan Africa. This academic field holds great potential, is surprisingly under researched and lagging behind in practise. A study of the influence of perceptions within the institutional environment on the decision to become a social entrepreneur is therefore critical in developing an understanding of social entrepreneurial intentions in the context of a developing and emerging economy. This study proposed to use the theory of entrepreneurial event and the institutional theory to investigate the influence of the external environment on the development of social entrepreneurial intentions and its antecedents among tertiary level students in Gauteng, South Africa. This study was quantitative and cross sectional in nature; a structured and closed-ended questionnaire was distributed electronically to the target population. 193 students participated in this study, with the final sample consisting of 128 responses. In order to analyse the data, linear multiple regression was employed. The key findings indicated that the regulatory environment has a positive and significant influence on perceived feasibility and social entrepreneurial intentions. Moreover, the findings indicated that the normative and cognitive environment have a positive but insignificant relationship with social entrepreneurship intention and its antecedents – perceived feasibility and perceived desirability. There is a negative relationship between the regulatory environment and perceived desirability, normative environment and social entrepreneurship intention, cognitive environment, perceived desirability and social entrepreneurship intention. The implications of this research for policy makers and educators is to focus on shaping the perceptions of the institutional environment as well social entrepreneurship, and the attitudes of students and society at large towards positive perceptions to influence social entrepreneurial intentions. / GR2018

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, presented to the School of Law, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand. / Over the last few decades, the debate on the topic of business and human rights has dominated the international scene. Initially, the debate focused on the question whether corporations have obligations beyond making profits. This is no longer contested, and the issue now at hand is the need to define what these obligations are and to determine how they can be enforced. In the history of the development of human rights, the duty to uphold human rights and secure their protection was considered a preserve of the state. However, with changing economic dynamics and increased globalization, it is undeniable that states are no longer the only or major threat to human rights; the modern corporation, much bigger in structure and complex in operations than before, has taken its place beside the state, having as much potential as the state to negatively impact human rights. Kenya adopted a new Constitution in 2010, at the same time that John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Business and Human Rights was finalizing his mandate and putting together his findings based on research he had conducted over a number of years. The business and human rights deliberations Ruggie steered at the international level were expected to culminate in the negotiation of an internationally binding instrument. This did not happen. This study shows that the failure to propose the negotiation of a treaty was not fatal to the Business and Human Rights agenda, but rather that the alternative approach taken presents a more ideal opportunity to prepare the ground for the future negotiation of a treaty. Ruggie developed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and proposed them as a common global platform for action, an authoritative focal point to direct efforts geared at understanding the corporate obligation for human rights. Although both the Constitution of Kenya and Ruggie’s findings underscore the role of the corporation in upholding human rights, the corporate obligation with regards to human rights is not clear. The main objective of the research was therefore to give human rights obligations of corporations in Kenya greater specificity so that both corporations and the State may more effectively implement them. The study undertook to investigate what the corporate obligation for human rights entails, building on the foundation established by the 2010 Constitution, which provides for horizontal application of the Bill of Rights to juristic persons, and the guidance offered for states and corporations and other business entities through the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework and the UN Guiding Principles. The study established what the obligations under the three pillars recommended in the UN Framework would mean for Kenya. The mistaken belief commonly held by corporations that corporate social responsibility is the same as human rights obligation was explored. The findings also show that the State Duty to Protect will mainly be exercised through the enactment of laws that offer guidance to corporations on what constitutes their duty and how it can be executed in practice. The study therefore recommends that amendments and additions be made to particular laws, the main one being the Companies Act of Kenya, to guide corporations in executing their human rights obligation. Furthermore, a recommendation is made that the Commission charged with implementing the Constitution include a specific section on Business and Human Rights in the National Policy and Action Plan drawn up to implement the 2010 Constitution. This will ensure that due attention is given to the subject, and a clear and comprehensive approach adopted to make corporate accountability for human rights violations a practical and realistic goal. The proposals made for the Action Plan include factors that will improve access to remedy for victims of human rights violations. / MT2017

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