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This dissertation analyses the origin, purposes, nature, operation and achievements of the Commonwealth's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works (Public Works Committee - PWC), and assesses its utility to parliament. The PWC originated in 1913 as a permanent committee of parliamentarians established to examine government proposals for public works, and report on them to parliament. Its purpose is to provide detailed data on works proposals in order to allow informed voting. In the process parliament also achieves a degree of control over government - ministers and public servants. Unlike most parliamentary audit of government expenditure, the PWC scrutinises proposals before works are built. It is a joint, statutory, scrutiny committee. The proper role for parliamentary committees in general is the checking of government, through influence, criticism, scrutiny, and publicity. The PWC is assessed against this role through an analysis of its legislation and operation, and interviews with involved parliamentarians and bureaucrats. Criteria used include adequacy of evidence obtained, precision and clarity of reports, and degree of influence on government and acceptance of recommendations. In these terms the PWC has little effect in controlling policy making by the executive government - cabinet and ministers. Moreover, specific amendment of its act together with the consequential effects of nominally unrelated legislation, have reduced the scope of Committee activities to an estimated less than half of all Commonwealth public works. This trend is continuing under current policies of corporatising departmental activities and excluding the resulting statutory corporations from PWC examination. These moves prevent parliament playing its proper role in the governance of the country. However, within the ambit of its powers, the PWC generally rates highly against the above criteria, and exerts a significant degree of parliamentary control over government administration - the public service - in the implementation of public works.

<p>The aim of this research is to ask questions as to why child right laws for the protection of child soldiers have failed to protect children in the Darfur region of Sudan despite the<br /> fact that Sudan is a member to many of these children&rsquo / s rights instruments. Can conflict transformation therefore be of any help? This is research seeks to address the question posed above.</p>

Purpose: the purpose of the thesis is to find out how Lithuanian commercial banks position their internal audit function within their organizational structure to overcome the tension of working with the management and keeping the distance to be able to report on them at the same time; and is internal audit function considered as one of the cornerstones of corporate governance. Moreover, comparison of banks is made to inspect any patterns, differences and similarities concerning the origin of the capital. Method: to answer the research question a qualitative approach was chosen: analysis of audited financial reports in the period of 2008-2011, organizational statutes and all available public information in 7 Lithuanian commercial banks is performed. Moreover email-interviews were held with all chief internal auditors. Findings: the internal audit function in Lithuanian commercial banks is not considered as one of the cornerstones of corporate governance – the function only participates in the corporate governance through the audit committee. Threats for independence are mitigated by giving the responsibility to the audit committee to appoint and dismiss the chief internal auditor and to approve the annual audit plan; and by composing the audit committee with at least one financial expert. Moreover, there is no clear pattern or distinction between internal audit positioning in foreign-capital and Lithuanian- capital banks. Concluding remarks: the need for improved controls is a very important issue in the public debate. The position that internal auditors are put in nowadays is very challenging – internal auditors are expected to provide both assurance and consulting services and maintain their independence at the same time – and organizations handle it differently.

Nowadays financial fraud scheme become more and more prevalent in public-traded companies in western and oriental countries. Many finance-related literatures realize and put stress on the importance of corporate governance. In this study, we would like to explore the relationship between audit committee and CEO compensation and equity incentives. We use multiple regression as methodology, take the public companies in technological field in Taiwan as sample from 2005 to 2010. We discover that, there is a positive relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation; there is no significant relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors also serve as CEO directors in other firms divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation; there is a negative relationship between the ratio of the number of financial-accounting expertise divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation. And with regard to the equity incentives, there is no significant relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors divided by the audit committee members, the ratio of the number of independent directors also serve as CEO directors in other firms divided by the audit committee members, the ratio of the number of financial-accounting expertise divided by the audit committee members and equity incentives.

Considering the problems of the fast aging of population and the heavy burden of the next generation to raise the elder people, the ¡§Implementation Rules of the Labor Pension Act¡¨ law was put into practice in July 1st, 2005 to release the heavy load of the next generation. The law changed the older system ¡§defined benefit pension plan¡¨ into a new system ¡§defined contribution pension plan¡¨ to slow down the problems of aging of population. Nevertheless, there were so many controversial issues about the enactment not passing the draft plan of setting up the supervisory committee of the Fund of the Labor Pension. The amount of the Labor Pension one can obtain when retiring is related to the operation of the Fund of the Labor Pension. However, now the money is putting in the bank and not doing any effective investment. This makes us start wondering if we can get our pension on time or the insufficient part of labor pension will become a heavy burden of the next generation. It can be a big issue for government in the future. In this research we will discuss the general situation of the pension scheme and the operation of the fund of pension to analyze the legal problems of draft plan in setting up the supervisory committee of the Fund of the Labor Pension. The results show that the main drawbacks of the draft plan right now are: the problems of adopting the system of Incorporated Administration, lacking the supervisory committee of labor organization and undefined responsibility of the supervisory committee. Also, the injustice of the modern pension plan is discovered in our research. We hope that this study can provide an excellent direction to improve the system.

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Abstract The aim of a company¡¦s legal system is to harmonize the conflict interests among stakeholders for pursuing the company¡¦s maximum value. However, in the recent years, we have seen that a lot of enterprises happened abuses one after another. Securities authority and investors therefore deem the corporate governance necessary to enhance. Facing the insufficiency of corporate governance, Taiwan added the Articles 14-2, 14-3, 14-4, 14-5 of Securities and Exchange Act when the Act was amended in January 2006. These added articles introduced the system of independent directors, but they caused the disputes in the domestic industries and academic circles. This article is trying to find the ways of improvement for each problem in order to promote the efficiency and competence of independent directors, as well as induces the following major conclusions and suggestions. 1. Conclusions (1) The topic of independent directors is still a difficult issue. (2) It has to meet six elements for promoting the efficiency and competence of independent directors. They are: a. independency; b. professional and time input; c. proper incentive of monitor and control; d. freely acquire the needed data and information for monitoring and controlling; e. economic cost of monitor and control, or efficient monitor and control; f. adequate limits of authority for controlling and balancing. (3) Only legal system and honest and trusted operation are working at the same time, can the efficacy of corporate governance be brought into fully play. (4) The fulfillment of corporate governance needs the implement of all members in the company. 2. Suggestions (1) The facet of legal regulations: a. amend the Article 27 of Company Law; b. independent directors occupies 50% of the number of all board directors; c. the shareholders with holding rate less than 1% in the company are elected as independent directors. (2) The facet of systems: a. whether the company sets up the independent directors or not is the company¡¦s free selection; b. the solutions or opinions of the independent directors for the items on the agenda should be bulletined on the Market Observation Post System and the company¡¦s website; c. appropriate rewards; d. compelling standards for setting up other functional committees.

Diss.--Fachbereich Geschichtswissenschaft--Universität Hamburg, 1992. / Bibliogr. p. [226]-272. Index.

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2009