The main aim of this research is to investigate how elements of the dynamic and temporary team environment of construction project teams influence trust, commitment, satisfaction and learning in the teams. While much can be learnt from the current literature about teams, the theories have mainly derived and focused on teams from permanent environments such as manufacturing, hospitality, health care, education and technology sectors. The uniqueness of construction project teams (for example, temporariness and multi-organisations involvement) creates a team working environment different from common permanent work teams. As such, numerous questions arise when we consider how construction project teams function and how the members are influenced by the temporary and dynamic team environment. For example, how do the project team members establish trust and commitment in the project team environment? How does the interdependency on each other to accomplish their assigned tasks influence individual members?? attitudes and learning in the project teams? The research adopted a cross-sectional mixed method research design employing both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection in Singapore construction industry. The quantitative method involved survey questionnaires collected from 136 construction practitioners from 47 project teams. The qualitative method involved in-depth interviews with 28 construction practitioners. Quantitative statistical analysis was performed on the survey data using Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) and qualitative thematic analysis was performed on the interview data using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software - NVivo. Amongst other things the research findings indicated that individual team members?? perceived task interdependence and reward interdependence are positively related to their trust and commitment in the team. Additionally, their satisfaction in the team played a mediating role between the relationships. With respect to team learning, the research found that team goals, task interdependence and reward interdependence influence team learning, and team learning contributes to the performance of project teams. On a broad view, the circumstances in which how team members?? trust, commitment, satisfaction and team learning are influenced appear to be similar with other work teams. However, in-depth interviews with construction professionals revealed many complex and subtle factors relating specifically to construction project teams, such as, multi-projects and multi-organisations involvement, and degree of familiarity between the members before the team is set up. These factors are central to the team members. In conclusion, this study has brought insights into how temporary construction project team environment influence members?? team attitudes and team learning experience.

Conferencing is a Restorative Justice practice operating in juvenile justice systems in Australia. Some conferences are convened by police, despite research demonstrating that ethnic minority youth often view police as biased or untrustworthy. Justice research in evaluative legal procedures indicates that perceived third party bias and outcomes delivered by a third party affect fairness judgments. Many disputants regard conferences as more fair than court. However, psychological mechanisms underlying fairness judgments in conferences, where offenders participate in outcome decisions, have not been directly investigated. This research program examined the effects of outcome and perceived convenor bias on procedural and distributive justice ratings in conferencing. Past research indicates that people high and low on Hofstede??s power-distance dimension differ in their emphases on outcome and third party bias when forming fairness judgments. This thesis investigated whether power-distance moderated the interactive effect of trust and outcome on fairness judgments in conferences. Study 1 established power-distance variation in a university sample, and similarity with a community sample on perceived police bias. Study 2 confirmed that high power-distance people who consider police biased against them may nonetheless choose to participate in police-convened conferences. Studies 3 and 4 extended previous research examining interactive effects of trust and outcome on justice judgments in evaluative procedures, investigating whether power-distance moderated this effect. No significant effects of power-distance and trust emerged, but the findings demonstrated the importance of outcome fairness (correspondence between outcomes and beliefs) in determining procedural justice. Studies 5, 6 and 7 extended this investigation to conferencing procedures. Studies 6 and 7 employed a computer-simulation, allowing participants to interact with a conference transcript and select outcomes, thereby investigating the effects of trust and power-distance on outcome choice, as well as the effects of trust, power-distance, and outcome on justice evaluations. Studies 5 and 6 were unsuccessful in manipulating bias by varying convenor identity (police versus civilian). Study 7 successfully manipulated bias according to convenor behaviour and revealed that third party bias in conferencing affected outcome choices but not fairness judgments. Results are discussed in terms of implications for culturally-relevant police practices, procedural justice theory and conferencing policy.

信託觀念源自英、美法系國家，由於信託除協助個人管理、運用財產外，並可用以從事公益活動（即公益信託），在運作上頗具彈性，故為多數國家普遍所採納。觀諸我國信託制度之發展，由於信託相關法令付諸闕如，信託行為之法律關係僅採法院判例所承認之制度，從而現行稅法亦未明訂有關信託行為之課稅規定。本文之目的乃在探究信託相關法律關係及課稅事宜，並參考研析美、日等國信託制度資料，檢討我國現行信託制度及課稅規定，並試提建議，以期有助於將來立法之參考，並選定年金信託為探討之對象，利用信託法律制度及課稅原則規定之結論分析年金信託制度，同時參酌美日兩國年金信託相關規定，檢討我國現行規定，並試提建議事項以供修訂相關法令之參研。 　　本文之研究重點包括： 　　一、蒐集中外期刊、書籍及國內外學者專家有關信託、信託課稅、年金、年金信託之論著及相關研究報告等，予以系統之整理、分析，以釐清基本原則與概念。 　　二、研討美日等國信託制度實施概況，俾能進一步了解基本理念之現況。 　　三、檢討我國現行有關法令規定，並參酌基本原理與各國施行制度提出建議。 　　為因應社會變遷及多元化需求，信託觀念及業務之推展實為我國未來發展之必然趨勢，故當務之急應宜儘速制訂信託法及其相關法規，俾憑規範有關信託行為所衍生之權利義務關係，並於現行稅法中配合增修有關信託行為之課稅事宜。至於年金信託制度之推動，其應努力方向為修訂勞動基準法及勞工退休基金收支保管及運用辦法，刪除有關退休金運用虧損由國庫補足規定，放寬勞動基準法行業退休金存放之規定及基金運用之限制，並修訂所得稅法。

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Mobile agents are programs that travel autonomously through a computer network in order to perform some computation or gather information on behalf of a human user or an application. In the last several years numerous applications of mobile agents have emerged, including e-commerce. However, mobile agent paradigm introduces a number of security threats both to the agents themselves and to the servers that they visit. This thesis gives an overview of the main security issues related to the mobile agent paradigm. The first part of the thesis focuses on security of mobile agent itself. In this part, we propose a new coupling technique based on trust as a social control to work together with existing traditional security mechanisms. It relies on the “reputation” of the hosts in the itinerary and ensures that the agent succeeds in accomplishing its task with a high probability. Due to the fact that the coupling technique requires an agent’s itinerary to be known in advance, we introduce two new concepts: a “Scout mobile agent”, whose primary purpose is to determine the itinerary required for accomplishing a given task, and a “Routed mobile agent”, which operates with an itinerary known in advance. This enables the Routed agent to incorporate various security mechanisms, including our new coupling technique. Our Routed agent technique is also applicable independently of the Scout agent, whenever the itinerary and the trust values of the platforms in the itinerary are known. We also proposed a Petrol Station as an entity that would provide a service to other entities, in the form of certifying mobile agents and equipping them with safe itinerary based on trust score and applying the Routed agent. In the second part of the thesis, we shed some light on the security of mobile agent platforms as it is considered more critical than the security of agents. In particular, we consider a scenario where a platform hosts a database containing confidential individual information and allows mobile agentstoquery the data base. This mobile agent maybe behave maliciously which is similar to an intruder in the Statistical Disclosure Control(SDC), where measuring disclosure risk is still considered as a difficult and only partly solved problem[111]. We introduce a scenario that is not adequately covered by any of the previous discloser risk measures. Shannon’s entropy can be considered a satisfactory measure for the disclosure risk that is related to the exact compromise. However, in the case of approximate compromise, we argue that Shannon’s entropy does not express precisely the intruder’s knowledge about a particular confidential value. We introduce a novel disclosure risk measure that is based on Shannon’s entropy but covers both exact and approximate compromise. The main advantage of our measure over previously proposed measures that it gives careful consideration to the attribute values in addition to the probabilities with which the values occur. We use a dynamic programming algorithm to calculate the disclosure risk for various levels of approximate compromise. Importantly, our proposed measure is independent of the applied SDC technique. Finally, we show how this measure can be used to evaluate the security mechanisms for protecting privacy in statistical databases and data mining. We conduct extensive experiments and apply our proposed security measure to three different data sets protected by three different SDC techniques, namely Sampling, Query Restriction, and Noise Addition.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>I uppsatsen utreds om det utländska institutet trust kan vara ett skattesubjekt inom den svenska skatterätten. I sitt eget hemland är truster ofta inte att betrakta som ett eget skattesubjekt utan där behandlas trusters förvaltare som dess ägare och därmed även som skattesubjekt vid beskattning av trustinkomst, förmögenhet m.m.</p><p>När truster figurerat i svenska rättsfall har ofta trusten, utan närmare motivering, liknats vid en stiftelse. Regeringsrätten har ansett en utländsk stiftelse vara en utländsk juridisk person och en i Sverige begränsat skattskyldig person. Kan även trusten vara ett skattesubjekt? Genom att undersöka det civilrättsliga stiftelsebegreppet har upptäckts att stiftelsebegreppet är långt ifrån enhetligt. Vid en genomgång av stiftelsebeskattningspraxis framkommer att stiftelsebeskattning har tillgripits även på förordnanden som inte är stiftelser i strikt mening och att hänsyn måste tas till hur en rättsfigur ser ut och inte hur den benämns. En diskussion förs även kring ur vilken rättsordnings perspektiv som trusten skall granskas.</p> / <p>This essay deals with the question whether a trust can be recognizable for tax purposes in Sweden. In its home state it is often the trustee, and not the trust itself, who is regarded as the owner of the fund and therefore also liable to income tax etc.</p><p>Trusts have often, and without any explanation, been compared to a foundation when it has appeared in Swedish legal cases. The Swedish Supreme Administrative Court has considered a foreign foundation to be recognizable to tax in Sweden. Could that be indicating that also a trust could be recognizable? By examining the concept of foundation it is found that it is far from being uniform. Going through case law regarding foundations and tax one can see that in the assessing of taxes no strict line has been upheld for what is a foundation and what is not. One has to take more into consideration than just the name of a legal figure. The question from what legal system a foreign legal figure, such as the trust, is to be viewed is also brought up to discussion.</p>

This thesis examines consumer behavior towards food risks in three different papers, focusing on two food concerns: genetically modified (GM) food and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The first paper investigates the roles of different measures of trust on consumers stated choices for functional GM/nonGM canola oil products. These analyses show that consumers choices for GM/nonGM canola oil are influenced by both generalized trust and trust in food institutions. In general, trusting people are less likely to be in the group of respondents that can be characterized as being anti-GM; trusting people also tend to place a lower discount on the presence of a GM attribute. The second paper focuses on the modeling of consumers choices of foods with potential health and risk attributes. The analysis extends the linear compensatory utility model by allowing for use of attribute cutoffs in decision making. We find evidence that attribute cutoffs are commonly used by decision makers. Further, incorporating attribute cutoffs into the modeling of consumers choices significantly improved the model fit. This paper also examines a potential problem of endogeneity that may be associated with respondents self-reported cutoffs. Model estimates based on self-reported cutoffs differ substantially from those based on predicted cutoffs (where these are based on respondents demographic characteristics); potential reasons include the possibility that self-reported cutoffs may be endogenous. The third paper reports the impacts of habit and trust on consumers responses to a series of three BSE incidents in Canada. We observe that households reactions to the first two BSE events followed a similar pattern: households reduced their beef expenditure shares following the BSE announcements, but these subsequently recovered. We find that habit persistence reduced some households initial negative reactions to the first BSE incident, but that these households modified their beef consumption habits following recurring BSE incidents. Assessing the impacts of trust on households reactions to these BSE incidents, we find that trust tended to offset the negative effects of recurring BSE cases. / Agricultural and Resource Economics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.