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Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-279). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99157

In recent years we have witnessed an increase in the number of two unrelated phenomena in Canada collaborative partnerships and First Nations casino development. This thesis focuses on the integration of these two phenomena by examining the gaming partnership that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) and the Province of Saskatchewan established in 1995. The thesis explores the factors that produced the partnership, the issues of negotiations that influenced the partnership arrangement, and the general nature of the partnerships framework from 1995 to 2002. In analyzing these aspects of the partnership, the thesis will address its fundamental question what is the precise nature of the regulatory framework and its implications for the gaming partnership in Saskatchewan? This study reveals that there were deficiencies in the nature of the partnerships framework, particularly with respect to the accountability provisions of the partnering arrangement. Those deficiencies created an accountability crisis in the year 2000, which caused problems both for and between the partners. Eventually, however, the partners decided to move forward in a relatively positive and constructive manner towards a sustainable and successful partnering arrangement.

Denna uppsats undersöker vad som definierar och karaktäriserar en företagsledare utifrån Agentteorin och Stewardship-teorin. Uppsatsen tar sin ansats i de båda teoriernas definitioner gällande agenten/stewarden för att försöka vidareutveckla resonemanget bakom denna definition och inkluderar därför Intressentmodellen och ansvarslitteratur. Uppsatsens syfte är att studera teoriernas dikotomi gällande agenten/stewardens karaktär genom en empirisk studie av sju olika företagsledare och därigenom testa vår uppställda hypotes om vad som karaktäriserar en företagsledare. Studiens resultat går i linje med hypotesen och vittnar om att en företagsledares karaktär främst definieras av tydliga ansvarskänslor mot företaget genom en avvägning mellan de intressen som återfinns internt och externt organisationen. Studien vittnar även om att beroendeförhållanden mellan parter är av stor betydelse vid de intresseavvägningar som företagsledare gör.

Slow agrarian development has often been blamed on the absence of civil society mobilization. This paper quantitatively analyzes the effect of political and fiscal decentralization on agricultural development in 30 democratizing African States. Hence two hypotheses are tested: H1) New democracies that combine elected sub-national governments with fiscal decentralization will be more likely to spend more in agriculture. H2) In such system we should observe better agricultural outputs, other things equal. Results reveal that counter-intuitively simultaneous democratic and fiscal decentralization have a negative impact on public investment in agriculture. On the other hand, as expected fiscal decentralization does not have any significant impact in the absence of democratic decentralization. Most importantly democratic decentralization is found to have a highly positive impact on the provision of agricultural related public goods when fiscal decentralization is low. The test also reveals that fiscal and political decentralization positively influence agricultural production.

In recent years we have witnessed an increase in the number of two unrelated phenomena in Canada collaborative partnerships and First Nations casino development. This thesis focuses on the integration of these two phenomena by examining the gaming partnership that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) and the Province of Saskatchewan established in 1995. The thesis explores the factors that produced the partnership, the issues of negotiations that influenced the partnership arrangement, and the general nature of the partnerships framework from 1995 to 2002. In analyzing these aspects of the partnership, the thesis will address its fundamental question what is the precise nature of the regulatory framework and its implications for the gaming partnership in Saskatchewan? This study reveals that there were deficiencies in the nature of the partnerships framework, particularly with respect to the accountability provisions of the partnering arrangement. Those deficiencies created an accountability crisis in the year 2000, which caused problems both for and between the partners. Eventually, however, the partners decided to move forward in a relatively positive and constructive manner towards a sustainable and successful partnering arrangement.

Sustainability reporting aims to inform stakeholders of the companies’ activities within environmental, social and economic issues. The reporting is a tool to increase transparency and it shows the company’s effort to take responsibility and account for its actions. Assurance of sustainability reports is an increasing trend that strengthens the credibility of the reports. There is a risk, however, of management taking control over the assurance process. In order to improve the quality of the sustainability report and its usefulness for the stakeholders, reporting and assurance standards have evolved. The purpose of the study is to describe and analyse the assurance statements of sustainability reports of public listed companies in Sweden. The findings allow the evaluation of how the assurance process influences accountability and transparency. The study is a content analysis of eleven assurance statements from 2010. The findings are categorized and analysed by assurance provider: accountants and consultants. The difference between the assurance statements were mainly due to the assurance standard used. The assurance statements provided by the consultants were more descriptive and stakeholder oriented compared to the accountants. We highlight the importance of the assurance process’ usefulness and discuss the limited level of assurance applied in the engagements. We argue that, an open and standardized assurance process increases transparency that enables stakeholders to make own judgements whether the company takes responsibility and accounts for its actions. Transparency also creates incentives for the reporting company to be accountable. To increase transparency and accountability, it is essential to involve stakeholders in the assurance process.

<p>Computer systems not only provide unprecedented efficiency and</p><p>numerous benefits, but also offer powerful means and tools for</p><p>abuse. This reality is increasingly more evident as deployed software</p><p>spans across trust domains and enables the interactions of</p><p>self-interested participants with potentially conflicting goals. With</p><p>systems growing more complex and interdependent, there is a growing</p><p>need to localize, identify, and isolate faults and unfaithful behavior. </p><p>Conventional techniques for building secure systems, such as secure</p><p>perimeters and Byzantine fault tolerance, are insufficient to ensure</p><p>that trusted users and software components are indeed</p><p><italic>trustworthy</italic>. Secure perimeters do not work across trust domains and fail</p><p>when a participant acts within the limits of the existing security</p><p>policy and deliberately manipulates the system to her own</p><p>advantage. Byzantine fault tolerance offers techniques to tolerate</p><p>misbehavior, but offers no protection when replicas collude or are</p><p>under the control of a single entity. </p><p>Complex interdependent systems necessitate new mechanisms that</p><p>complement the existing solutions to identify improper behavior and</p><p>actions, limit the propagation of incorrect information, and assign</p><p>responsibility when things go wrong. This thesis </p><p>addresses the problems of misbehavior and abuse by offering tools and</p><p>techniques to integrate <italic>accountability</italic> into computer systems. A</p><p>system is accountable if it offers means to identify and expose</p><p><italic>semantic</italic> misbehavior by its participants. An accountable system</p><p>can construct undeniable evidence to demonstrate its correctness---the</p><p>evidence serves as explicit proof of misbehavior and can be strong enough</p><p>to be used as a basis for social sanction external to the</p><p>system. </p><p>Accountability offers strong disincentives for abuse and</p><p>misbehavior but may have to be ``designed-in'' to an application's</p><p>specific protocols, logic, and internal representation; achieving</p><p>accountability using general techniques is a challenge. Extending</p><p>responsibility to end users for actions performed by software</p><p>components on their behalf is not trivial, as it requires an ability </p><p>to determine whether a component correctly represents a</p><p>user's intentions. Leaks of private information are yet another</p><p>concern---even correctly functioning</p><p>applications can leak sensitive information, for which their owners</p><p>may be accountable. Important infrastructure services, such as</p><p>distributed virtual resource economies, offer a range of application-specific</p><p>issues such as fine-grain resource delegation, virtual</p><p>currency models, and complex work-flows.</p><p>This thesis work addresses the aforementioned problems by designing,</p><p>implementing, applying, and evaluating a generic methodology for</p><p>integrating accountability into network services and applications. Our</p><p><italic>state-based</italic> approach decouples application state management from</p><p>application logic to enable services to demonstrate that they maintain</p><p>their state in compliance with user requests, i.e., state changes do take</p><p>place, and the service presents a consistent view to all clients and</p><p>observers. Internal state managed in this way, can then be used to feed</p><p>application-specific verifiers to determine the correctness the service's</p><p>logic and to identify the responsible party. The state-based approach</p><p>provides support for <italic>strong</italic> accountability---any detected violation</p><p>can be proven to a third party without depending on replication and</p><p>voting. </p><p>In addition to the generic state-based approach, this thesis explores how</p><p>to leverage application-specific knowledge to integrate accountability in</p><p>an example application. We study the invariants and accountability</p><p>requirements of an example application--- a lease-based virtual resource</p><p>economy. We present the design and implementation of several key elements</p><p>needed to provide accountability in the system. In particular, we describe</p><p>solutions to the problems of resource delegation, currency spending, and</p><p>lease protocol compliance. These solutions illustrate a complementary</p><p>technique to the general-purpose state-based approach, developed in the</p><p>earlier parts of this thesis. </p><p>Separating the actions of software and its user is at the heart of the</p><p>third component of this dissertation. We design, implement, and evaluate</p><p>an approach to detect information leaks in a commodity operating system.</p><p>Our novel OS abstraction---a <italic>doppelganger</italic> process---helps track</p><p>information flow without requiring application rewrite or instrumentation.</p><p>Doppelganger processes help identify sensitive data as they are about to</p><p>leave the confines of the system. Users can then be alerted about the</p><p>potential breach and can choose to prevent the leak to avoid becoming</p><p>accountable for the actions of software acting on their behalf.</p> / Dissertation

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Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 132 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-118).