This study is concerned with the problem of measuring, describing, and analyzing the academic performance and progress toward graduation over a five-year period (1977- 1983) of students who entered a large public university through an admissions review committee process for presumptive-deny students. The purpose of this study is to compare the academic performance of these students (N = 310) with that of randomly selected students who entered through the regular admissions process (N = 350) to determine if the review committee's decisions were as effective in selecting students for admission as were the objective data (college entrance examination scores and rank in high school class) used in the regular admissions process. Neither transfer nor non-United States citizens were included in either group.

A common discussion within the international development cooperation discourse is that of ownership and dependency. A discussion which has become of great significance within the context of Myanmar as more and more international and foreign development agencies and organizations have been aloud into the country during the major structural reform process Myanmar is currently undergoing. When the state, as a public service provider, is not able to supply what is needed within the villages around Myanmar these international and foreign organizations and agencies become of great importance as they have access to the necessary funds to provide these services. The support to the villages is often distributed through the most deeply rooted and inclusive forum there are within these villages, namely community committees. This study investigates how the vertical relationship between the INGOs, their local partner NGOs and the community committees affect the role and possibly the legitimacy of the community committees. This is done through a case study of a village that is currently provided support through its two community committees by two INGOs and their local partner NGO. To understand the role and legitimacy interviews have been conducted with the legitimizing environment of the community committees as well as with the community committees and the local NGO themselves to try to identify the affects of the aid on the perceived role and legitimacy of the community committees. The study found that the relationship does have a significant affect on the role and legitimacy of the community committees. It seems that the relationship does, through a top-down approach, influence the community committees to monopolize the definition of development within their village. Due to this the community they are based within also considers the community committees legitimate.

During the past few decades, decentralization efforts in México have coincided with efforts to democratize the administrative decision-making process. Adopted in 1988, the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (National Solidarity Program; PRONASOL) required citizen participation in decisions involving the use of federal resources for regional development and poverty alleviation projects. In 1998, Section 33 of the Ley de Coordinación Fiscal (Fiscal Coordination Law; LCF) placed Social Infrastructure Funds (SIF) directly under the supervision of municipalities and retained the requirement that citizens participate in decisions involving the allocation of funds. The present study seeks to understand the factors that affect the participation of citizen committees (composed of community members; organized to address a particular cause) in SIF allocation decisions and assess the impact of this form of citizen participation on government performance. To pursue this objective, the study analyzes the implementation of LCF with respect to the role of citizen committees in SIF allocation decisions at two different locations: the township of Santa Maria Tonantzintla, located in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, in the state of Puebla, and the rural municipality of Tenango Del Aire, located in El Estado de México (the State of México). The study finds that gender, church participation, and personal economy play major roles in the formation of citizen committees. Although the citizen committees have been instrumental in getting their SIF projects prioritized, they have had little effect on the quality or efficiency with which the projects were carried out. In general, the municipal decision-making process in both municipalities lack mechanisms to guarantee citizen participation and thus to ensure consideration of the broader public interest beyond the interest of organized groups. Because SIF can be used for various economic development projects, such as water, sewage, electrification, emergency clinics, and schools, it was of particular importance to determine whether the participatory mechanism was functioning correctly. Given the nature of the projects carried out by municipalities, flaws in the implementation process, including failures to include the broader public, could hinder not only local economic development, but also the economic growth of the nation.

Uganda endorsed school-based management (SBM) through the enactment of the Education Act (2008), which provided for the establishment of the School Management Committees (SMCs) in public primary schools to be in charge of managing schools on behalf of the government. The Act states that SMCs are specifically in charge of Universal Primary Education (UPE) in Uganda and are responsible for the successful implementation of the policy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of SMCs in the accountability for the UPE achievements. This study is rooted in the interpretivist constructionist research paradigm. The researcher utilised semi-structured interviews and observations to generate data to answer the research questions. The qualitative approach enabled the researcher to interact with the participants in order to harness their primary voice while sharing their lived experiences in the real world. Data obtained from the interviews and observations were corroborated with document analysis data related to SBM and accountability for universal basic primary education achievement. The researcher used multiple research sites and participants to generate data, a case study approach which is more robust in comparative data. The sampling for the participants was purposive and four SMCs from four regions of Uganda and four participants from each of the SMCs were selected. The findings of the study indicate that the voluntary SMCs did implement the roles and responsibilities for UPE accountability, though there were diverse degrees of success. The differing measures of SMC effectiveness were as a result of factors such as: member capacity and perceptions; lack of policy implementation; other stakeholder actions: and inadequate resources. The importance of a volunteerism strategy as a cornerstone of UPE implementation was eminent in this study since the schools were poorly resourced partly due to high poverty levels in the community. The researcher concludes that the effectiveness of the SMC in monitoring the implementation of UPE is based on the relationship they have with other stakeholders and, thus, a model was developed to emphasise the importance of the relationships. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Education Management and Policy Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

The EU integration process has led to severe changes in policy-making. On the one hand, authority shifted from the national level to the EU. On the other hand, national level executives have gained power relative to the national legislatures. However, since the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, scholars argue for a comeback of national legislatures. In Germany, parliamentary standing committees have gained considerable power throughout these developments. Nonetheless, their traditional role as policy shaper is contested among scholars. Thus, clarification of their role is needed. While, previous analysis has mainly focused on the Bundestag as a unitary actor. This thesis investigates the role of two standing committees of the Bundestag – Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung and Ausschuss für Gesundheit – in the EU policy-making process across two different competence areas emerging due to the Lisbon Treaty. To answer the research questions, semi-structured interviews with committee members have been conducted. The results of the study show a diverging picture. The members of the Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung are considerably constrained in their ability to act as a policy shaper. The members of the Ausschuss für Gesundheit can secure their policy-shaping powers to a great extent. The former committee lacks these qualities concerning the shift of an increasing amount of policy authority in agriculture to the EU, the restricted use and abilities of the Early Warning Mechanism and the constrained ability to influence the minister’s position in the Council. The members of the latter are more successful in securing policy authority in public health at the national level by making use of the EWM. Nonetheless, the restricted ability to influence the minister’s position in the Council is present, too. We can conclude that the Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung has inherited the role of a scrutiniser and executer meanwhile the Ausschuss für Gesundheit can be described as policy shaper.

The corporate form that developed in the early 20th century created enormous pressure for corporate governance mechanisms to curb the power of corporate managers. Berle and Means, legal pluralists, warned about concentrating economic power in the hands of a small but powerful class of professional managers. They claimed this "new form of absolutism" required governmental oversight and viewed boards of directors as part of management, rather than monitors for shareholders. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed that corporations establish a special board committee, made up of "nonofficer members" in response to the McKesson & Robbins scandal of the late 1930s. My dissertation examines the evolution of the U.S. corporate audit committee through three specific time periods: (1) 1920-1954; (2) 1955-1986; and (3) 1987 to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. My purpose is to determine if evolution of the audit committee throughout these periods has been a reform continually couched in symbolism or whether the audit committee concept has evolved into real reform, allowing proper corporate governance and mitigation of unchecked corporate power. My analysis is a traditional empirical analysis, relying on both primary and secondary sources to develop a coherent ordering of facts. I use narrative in a narrow sense as my historical methodology, examining patterns that emerge and interpreting facts to develop a clear understanding of demands for and uses of audit committees. I use a holistic approach in studying the data, using narrative to show how these patterns ensue from the historical data.

Sammanfattning Titel: Revisionskommittéers påverkan på hållbarhetsrapporters tillförlitlighet: En kvantitativ studie på 298 börsnoterade företag i en low-litigation kontext. Nivå: Examensarbete på grundnivå i ämnet företagsekonomi (kandidatexamen). Författare: Albin Eriksson, Philip Lindholm Handledare: Jan Svanberg Datum: 2022-05-31 Syfte: Förekomsten av hållbarhetsrapportering externt granskad av tredje part har, i tidigare studier tolkats som väsentligt hos större företag, eftersom de i dess intressenters ögon önskar framstå som tillförlitliga och legitima. Detta eftersom revisorer som granskar rapporteringen kännetecknas av ett oberoende gentemot verksamheten. Då tidigare studier endast utförts inom en institutionell kontext kännetecknad av hög risk för stämning vid felaktiga beslut blir det intressant att jämföra dessa resultat med en miljö där granskare har friare tyglar. Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka huruvida revisionskommittéers granskning av hållbarhetsrapporteringen påverkar dess tillförlitlighet i en annan institutionell kontext, nämligen en lägre litigationsnivå än hos den befintliga litteraturen inom ämnet.   Metod: Studien baseras på den positivistiska forskningsfilosofin med en hypotetisk-deduktiv ansats. Studien har en kvantitativ strategi där 298 börsnoterade företag ligger till grund för sekundärdata genererad från databasen Thomson Reuters Eikon. Vidare har datamaterialet bearbetats och analyserats i statistikprogrammet SPSS.     Resultat och slutsats: Studiens resultat påvisar ett positivt samband mellan revisionskommittéers förekomst och hållbarhetsrapporters tillförlitlighet. Vi finner även att finansiell expertis inom revisionskommittéer har ett positivt samband med hållbarhetsrapporters tillförlitlighet. Revisionskommittéernas oberoende inom studiens institutionella kontext indikeras ha ett negativt samband med hållbarhetsrapporters tillförlitlighet.   Examensarbetets bidrag: Studien bidrar till att fylla forskningsgapet för revisionskommittéernas påverkan på hållbarhetsrapporteringen inom en low-litigation kontext. Studien gynnar även litteraturen om sambandet mellan revisionskommittéers karaktärsdrag och hållbarhetsrapporters tillförlitlighet, samtidigt som den avser ligga till grund för framtida forskning. Resultatet bidrar med värdefull teoretisk information till den företagsekonomiska forskningen gällande sambandet mellan extern granskning och företagens legitimitet.    Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Förslag till framtida forskning är att utföra en liknande typ av studie i denna institutionella kontext där fler av revisionskommittéernas främsta karaktärsdrag tas i åtanke, eftersom det möjligtvis kan innebära en annorlunda påverkan på tillförlitligheten.   Nyckelord: SRA, hållbarhetsrapportering, revisionskommittéer och low-litigation / Abstract Title: Audit committee impact on the credibility of sustainability reporting: A quantitative study of 298 public companies in a low-litigation context. Level: Student thesis, final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration  Authors: Albin Eriksson, Philip Lindholm Supervisor: Jan Svanberg Date: 2022-05-31 Aim: The existence of externally assured sustainability reporting by a third party, have in previous studies been interpreted as essential by bigger companies since they, in their stakeholder’s eyes, wish to appear as reliable and legitimate. This because the auditors that review the reporting are characterized by an independence towards the company. Since previous studies have only been implemented within an institutional context characterized by greater risk in case of wrongdoings it becomes interesting to compare these results with an environment where auditors have more space to act. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine whether audit committees review of sustainability reporting affects its reliability in a different institutional context, namely a lower litigation level than in the subject's existing literature.   Method: The study is based on the positivist philosophy of research with a hypothetical-deductive approach. The study has a quantitative strategy where 298 listed companies are the basis for secondary data generated from the database Thomson Reuters Eikon. Furthermore, the data material has been processed and analyzed in the statistical program SPSS.    Result and Conclusions: The results of the study show a positive relationship between the audit committees external review and the reliability of sustainability reports. We also find that financial expertise within audit committees is positively related to the reliability of sustainability reports. The independence of the audit committees within the institutional context of the study is indicated to have a negative relationship with the reliability of sustainability reports.   Contribution of the thesis: The study fills the research gap for audit committees impact on sustainability reporting in a low-litigation context. The study also benefits the literature on the relationship between the characteristics of audit committees and the reliability of sustainability reports, at the same time as it intends to form the basis for future research. The results contribute valuable theoretical information to the business economics research regarding the connection between external review and the company’s legitimacy.   Suggestions for future research: Suggestions for further research are to carry out a similar type of study within this institutional context where several of the audit committees main characteristics are taken into account, as this may have a different impact on reliability.   Key words: SRA, sustainability reporting, audit committees and low-litigation

Includes bibliographical references / BACKGROUND: People with disabilities encounter major barriers that prevent them realising their right to health in South Africa. Health committees are legislated structures for community participation in health at a local level. This study investigated how health committee members understand and practise their role in community participation and how this advances the right to health for persons with disability. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted with three health committees in the Cape Town Metropole in the Western Cape province of South Africa purposively selected for the study. Three facility managers and eight health committee members took part in focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by participant observations of committee meetings. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 2 disability activists. These methods were used to gain a rich understanding of health committees’ roles and practises in relation to persons with disabilities. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. RESULTS: The main research findings were: (i) health committees did not prioritise disability on their respective agendas; (ii) persons with disabilities were not adequately represented on health committees; (iii) health committees exhibited poor understanding of disability barriers relating to health; (iv) lack of egalitarian values led to persons with disabilities not trusting the health committee, and distrust amongst health committee members; lastly (v) health committees augment health facility operations instead of fulfilling their governance and oversight function. These factors may have contributed to health committees not helping to advance the right to health for persons with disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: Health committees should include mandated representation of persons with disabilities, whilst addressing marginalisation directed toward persons with disabilities on committees. Training of health committees, as well as networking with disabled organisations, could help improve their limited understanding of disability. Health committees should consider addressing disability a human rights issue, which critically involves community mobilisation, raising awareness around issues of disability and promoting agency amongst persons with disabilities to claim their rights.

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF EDUCATION At the University of Zululand in fulfilment or partial fulfilment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Education in the DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION, 2000. / This research examined the role of parents and community leaders in the development and maintenance of school culture in the Inanda District schools. The study made use of interviews and questionnaires to determine whether parents and community leaders perceive themselves as role players in developing the school culture. On the basis of the views from respondents, the study concluded that although parents and community leaders are aware of their role but they do not seem to be willing to do it. The research project, however, established that a high percentage of community leaders are not aware of what is taking place in the school. A high percentage of community leaders responded that there was poor communication between the schools and the community. This seems to limit their contribution to the development of school culture. The study makes recommendations which may facilitate the role of parents in creating the appropriate school culture.

During the past two decades business has become increasingly active in the political process, and scholars continue to debate the extent to which this activity is organized. This fundamental issue is addressed by examining corporate political activity within the context of resource dependence and class cohesion theories. Political action committee (PAC) campaign contributions, this study's measure for corporate political activity, are structurally analyzed to determine if either resource dependence or class cohesion theory explains the forces which drive business participation in the U.S. public policy process. The rationale which forty-two diverse corporate PACs exercise when selecting which congressional campaigns to support during two election cycles is explored. Resource dependence theory contends .that a firm's behavior is a function of its dependence on the environment for resources. Successful firms attempt to manage this external dependence by controlling or manipulating their environment corporate involvement in politics, therefore, will reflect a firm's dependence on the government for sales, subsidies or regulation. The regulatory environment in which a firm operates is this study's measure of resource dependence. Conversely, class cohesion theory argues that a firm's political activity is a function of its top management's inclusion in a network of corporate elites. Board members and chief executives from the nation's largest corporations coalesce to advance a political agenda which is compatible with the overarching goals of the business community rather than the parochial goals of an individual firm or even industry. Interlocking directorates, professional association memberships, shared educational experience and geographic proximity of headquarters locations are this study's indicators of a corporate elite network. Two categories of analytical methodology are applied. Multidimensional scaling maps corporate patterns of support for congressional candidates based on a PAC contribution proximity measure. These patterns are subsequently subjected to discriminant analysis, canonical correlation, regression and chi-square analysis to test for Resource Dependent and Class Cohesive political behavior. The results are conclusive: Support of selected congressional campaigns is more likely fueled by fragmented business interests, as resource dependence theory suggests, rather than the collective motives of a corporate elite. In fact, no support emerged for class cohesion theory as an explanation for the observed patterns of intercorporate relations. Further, a corollary proposition that PAC activity will vary with the ideology of White House administrations is not supported. Rather, PAC contribution patterns do not vary significantly between the Carter and Reagan administrations. This research renders four significant contributions to scholarship: 1. It provides empirical evidence to clarify a central issue in business-government relations, i.e., the atomistic or collective nature of corporate political activity. 2. It introduces a rigorous mathematical technique to the business-government relations discipline. 3. It indirectly addresses an ongoing scholarly debate over the role of interest groups in a democracy. 4. It indirectly addresses the current public policy debate over campaign finance reform.