Th.--Droit privé fondam.--Rennes 1, 1978.

Sustainability assurance (hereafter ‘SA’) has been a significant area of development in corporate reporting during the last two decades, but one that so far has been subject to limited research. Existing studies in this field have mainly focused on SA opinions, and have tried to understand the characteristics of, and the elements included in, assurance statements, instead of enquiring beyond such outputs to obtain evidence from SA providers themselves. This thesis aims to provide insights into the SA process regarding how decisions in the process are made and what could influence such decisions. It aims to understand what SA practice actually is by examining SA providers’ understandings of the meaning of the practice and the influences that such understandings have on the actual assurance process. Hence, the study focuses on the development of SA practice from the perspective of the assurance providers. It focuses on issues beyond the content of the SA statements to explore the processes leading to the actual delivery of such statements and a wide range of factors that influence the production of such statements and the development of SA practice in general. This study employs a qualitative research approach, using semi-structure interviews as the main data collection method supplemented by various textual data sources. Research participants are SA providers in the UK, including accounting and non-accounting assurance providers. Drawing on the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT), the thesis focuses on the associations involving both human (e.g. assurance providers, reporting organisations, and stakeholders) and non-human (e.g. reporting guidelines, and assurance standards) elements shaping the assurance practice. The theoretical framework based on ANT allows the flexibility in exploring important issues by following the actors, their associations, and their influence on the practice. The findings show that assurance providers’ understandings of the assurance practice vary significantly and that such variation has a major effect on how the assurance practice is conducted. The assurance providers may perceive their roles as independent assurance providers but also adopt other roles to match with the interests and demands of various constituencies. The study shows, in particular, that the providers’ perceived roles vary between what can be termed an ‘independent verifier’, a ‘sustainability consultant’ and a ‘sustainability promoter’, depending on the way in which they place importance on assurance- as against sustainability-related elements of the assurance process. Their different perceptions of their roles influence the internal dynamics of how assurance engagements are conducted. In particular, the study identifies four types of SA engagements, namely ‘social assurance’, ‘integrated assurance’, ‘formative assurance’ and ‘compliance assurance’. Such a categorisation provides a broad-based understanding of the SA as a practice field and the degree of heterogeneity within it. This study provides methodological and empirical contributions by providing evidence on the process associated with SA practice through interviews with different types of organisations providing SA services. Moreover, basing the theoretical framework on ANT highlights the interactions between different actors as a part of the development of SA practice and offers a new perspective to explore the practice and factors influencing its development.

Thesis (MProjMgmt)--University of South Australia, 2000

Thèse (L.L. M.)--Université Laval, 1996. / Comprend une table de jurisprudence. Bibliogr.: f. [127]-128. Publié aussi en version électronique.

Published Article / Due to the new Higher Education landscape in South Africa, Universities of Technology will have to adapt to the changing socio-political scene on and off their campuses. This implies that public accountability is becoming the most significant vehicle of government policy and an integrated part of decision-making models. Subsequently, it also imp lies part time services to distance campuses or at regional learning centres too. In 2004, the Higher Education Quality Assurance Committee (HEQC), audited the Kimberley Regional Learning Centre of the CUT exactly according to the universal standards related to quality assurance for part time or so called distance learners. These universal concepts entail self-evaluation practices, selection approaches, efficiency and performance and of course, public accountability. In follow up reports to the HEQC what has been done to ensure better services to part time distance learners, the manager of the Regional Learning Centre and the director for distance learning launched an ongoing research project on quality assurance to find answers to problems that the HEQC audit has revealed. The following article contains the very first phase of an ongoing process to research universal standards that implies universal standards for other universities of technology as well.

No description available.

M.A. (Biblical Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

En Afrique et particulièrement dans la zone CIMA, l’assurance vie classique représente moins d’un tiers du chiffre d’affaires de l’assurance, alors qu’à titre de comparaison, elle représente plus de deux tiers du chiffre d’affaires de l’assurance en France. L’une des nombreuses raisons du faible développement de l’assurance sur la vie dans l’espace CIMA est que les populations n’ont pas assez confiance au mécanisme de l’assurance et surtout aux assureurs qu’ils considèrent comme des arnaqueurs. Nous avons estimé qu’une réelle protection juridique des consommateurs d’assurance sur la vie pourrait modestement contribuer à développer cette activité dans ces pays où l’inexistence de véritables systèmes de protection sociale a laissé la place à une forme de solidarité informelle qui gagnerait beaucoup à être mieux organisée. En essayant de savoir contre qui et comment sont protégés les consommateurs d’assurance sur la vie dans l’espace CIMA, nous avons constaté que les Etats interviennent avant la souscription du contrat et même avant la rencontre des parties au contrat. Les professions d’assureur et d’intermédiaire d’assurance sont organisées et contrôlées aussi bien au niveau de leur accès que de leur exercice, dans l'intérêt des assurés, souscripteurs et bénéficiaires de contrats d'assurance sur la vie. Des ratios et normes de gestions sont imposés pour s’assurer que l’assureur sera toujours capable de remplir ses engagements envers le souscripteur et le bénéficiaire. Dans la relation purement contractuelle, l’Etat intervient également pour veiller à ce que les clauses contractuelles ne soient pas abusives pour le souscripteur, et aussi pour imposer des obligations contractuelles et précontractuelles aux professionnels de l’assurance que sont l’assureur et les intermédiaires d’assurances. Il nous est donc ainsi apparu que l’assureur, nonobstant sa qualité de partenaire ou cocontractant est la principale personne de qui les consommateurs d’assurance sur la vie doivent être protégés. Mais le danger pouvant aussi venir d’ailleurs, les consommateurs d’assurance sur la vie devraient également être protégés contre les interventions de certaines autres personnes qui, contrairement à l’assureur, sont des tiers au contrat d’assurance. Il s’agit notamment des créanciers du souscripteur, ainsi que de ses descendants et même parfois de son conjoint. Pour garantir cette protection, le capital d’assurance a été rendu insaisissable, même si, comme nous l’avons constaté, ce principe d’insaisissabilité est de plus en plus mis à mal, notamment dans le cadre de la lutte contre le grand banditisme et la délinquance fiscale. / In Africa and particularly in the zone CIMA, the classic life insurance represents less than one third of the turnover of the insurance, while as comparison, it represents more than two thirds of the turnover of the insurance in France. One of the numerous reasons of the low development of the life insurance in the space CIMA is that the populations do not enough trust in the mechanism of the insurance and especially to the insurers whom they consider as swindlers. We considered that a real legal protection of the consumers of life insurance could modestly contribute to develop this activity in these countries where the non-existence of real systems of social protection made way for a shape of informal solidarity which would a lot win to be better organized. While trying to know how are protected the consumers of life insurance in the space CIMA, we noticed that the States intervene before the subscription of the contract and even before the meeting of the parts to the contract. The occupations of insurer and intermediary of insurance are organized and checked as well at the level of their access as of their exercise, in the interest of the insurants, the subscribers and the beneficiaries of insurance contracts on the life. Ratios and standards of managements are imposed to make sure that the insurer will be always able to fill his commitments towards the subscriber and the beneficiary. In the purely contractual relation, the State also intervenes to take care that the contractual clauses are not abusive for the subscriber, and also to impose contractual and precontractual obligations to the professionals of the insurance that are the insurer and the intermediaries of insurances. It appeared to us that the insurer, in spite of his quality of partner orcocontracting party is the main person from whom the consumers of life insurance must be protected. But the danger which can also come moreover, the consumers of life insurance would also be protected against the interventions of other certain people who, contrary to the insurer, are third parties to the insurance contract. It is in particular about creditors of the subscriber, as well as about his descendants and even sometimes about his spouse. To guarantee this protection, the capital of insurance was made imperceptible, even if, as we noticed it, that protection is more and more damaged, in particular within the framework of the fight against the organized crime and the fiscal crime.

Adherence to a defined process or standards is necessary to achieve satisfactory software quality. However, in order to judge whether practices are effective at achieving the required integrity of a software product, a measurement-based approach to the correctness of the software development is required. A defined and measurable process is a requirement for producing safe software productively. In this study the contribution of quality assurance to the software development process, and in particular the contribution that software inspections make to produce satisfactory software products, is addressed. I have defined a new model of software inspection effectiveness, which uses a Bayesian Belief Network to combine both subjective and objective data to evaluate the probability of an effective software inspection. Its performance shows an improvement over the existing published models of inspection effectiveness. These previous models made questionable assumptions over the distribution of errors and were essentially static. They could not make use of experience both in terms of process improvement and the increased experience of the inspectors. A sensitivity analysis of my model showed that it is consistent with the attributes which were thought important by Michael Fagan in his research into the software inspection method. The performance of my model show that it is an improvement over published models and over a multiple logistic regression model, which was formed using the same calibration data. By applying my model of software inspection effectiveness before the inspection takes place, project managers will be able to make better use of inspection resource available. Applying the model using data collected during the inspection will help in estimation of residual errors in a product. Decisions can then be made if further investigations are required to identify errors. The modelling process has been used successfully in an industrial application.

Dissertation--Fakultät für Wirtschafts-und Sozialwissenschaften--Heidelberg--Universität, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 355-369.