While a significant amount of research has examined the more traditional budgetary and procedural controls used by governments to maintain control over social security expenditure, very little research has examined the more obscure formal social controls used to achieve the same purpose. The primary aim of this study was to fill this research vacuum by examining both the formal and informal mechanisms used by governments to maintain control over social security expenditure and to achieve longer-term public policy appropriation. In particular the study focused on the payment of Job Newstart and Youth Allowances and how the social control discourse of marginalisation was used to achieve such control. The study was undertaken in two stages. In stage one, an e-mail questionnaire was distributed to Job Network consultants (n = 739) employed at 66 not-for-profit Job Network Providers throughout Australia. In stage two, focus group interviews were conducted to expand on the responses previously obtained from the e-mail questionnaire survey. The study produced several significant findings from the views of Job Network consultants. Most significantly the results support Foucault's discourse on marginalisation. That is the results help to explain how consultants identify and single out people who do not fit the norm and therefore represent a case for special treatment. The effect of this marginalisation process is that governments are able to assert power and authority over welfare claimants and that the process is justified from the government's viewpoint. It would also seem that society and the individual accept such institutional arrangements. The techniques of marginalisation are disciplinary in their nature and relate to the multiplication of social security rules and procedures and a correlative division of the claimant population in accordance with constitutive criteria of status and entitlement. The study also concluded that Job Network consultants recognised that the breaching regime should be modified longer-term to take account of the i nformal ethical and moral criteria of fairness, justice and the rights of individuals. Having said this however, the same group of consultant's indicated in very strong terms that recipients' of Newstart and Youth Allowances should comply with their mutual obligation requirements and that they should be penalised in those instances where they do not comply with these requirements.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106=108).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-108). Also available in print.

The following is a conceptual study that seeks to bring together the Innovation System concept and the internal audit profession to develop a universal and transferable audit framework that aims to test organizational compliance against established internal controls and audit criteria. For this study, the literature surrounding innovation systems was reviewed in order to uncover internal controls within the system that public sector organizations such as governments are responsible for implementing. Findings from the literature review were then validated through consultation with innovation leaders in the Canadian federal government; they also 'contextualized' the findings within the Canadian federal public sector. Additional internal controls and audit criteria were identified through a content analysis of a sample of 11 internal audits conducted by Government of Canada departments and agencies. The internal controls derived from these sources were the basis for developing audit criteria that could be tested for each of the internal controls respectively. The Innovation System internal controls identified within this study were governance, monitoring, strategic decision-making, and oversight; stakeholder/actor interactions and knowledge and information exchange/flows; supporting policy and funding; incentives for private investment and adoption of innovation; and intellectual property rights. A total of 60 audit criteria were created and included in the comprehensive audit framework at the end of this study.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Guoqiang Hu / In this thesis, several algorithms and experiments involving the control of robot formations are presented. The algorithms used were focused on decentralized control. The experiments were implemented on two different experimental testbeds consisting of teams of wheeled mobile robots. The robots used are described along with their sensors and supporting hardware. Also, there is a discussion of the programming framework used to build the control software. The first control algorithm and experiment uses a robust consensus tracking algorithm to control a formation of robots to track a desired trajectory. The robots must maintain the correct formation shape while the formation follows the trajectory. This task is complicated by limited communication between the robots, and disturbances applied to the information exchange. Additionally, only a subset of the robots have access to the reference trajectory. In the second experiment, the same algorithm was re-implemented in a decentralized way, which more effectively demonstrated the goals of the algorithm. The second algorithm involves controlling a formation of robots without a global reference frame. In order to accomplish this, the formation description is reformulated into variables describing the relative positions of the robots, and vision-based measurements are used for control. A homography-based technique is used to determine the relative positions of the robots using a single camera. Then a consensus tracking controller similar to the one used previously is used to distribute the measured information to all of the robots. This is done despite the fact that different parts of the information are measured by different agents.

Sustainability is becoming increasingly more important for companies as the public demands that companies are more transparent and act in a responsible manner. This thesis researches what role management control systems play when implementing and working with sustainability. This was done by interviewing CSO’s and controllers as well as examining annual financial and sustainability reports at three large Swedish firms, all praised for their sustainability work. The data was compared between the case companies and analysed by using the management control systems framework by Malmi and Brown (2008). The findings show that the cultural controls coupled with the administrative controls have the most important role to play when implementing sustainability, as they provide the basis for the other control systems. These other control systems have currently a much smaller role to play as there are still challenges connected to sustainability that hinder the use of these control systems to their full potential. The findings further show that the key to implementing sustainability lies in the company’s ability to find and create business cases concerning sustainability as this help aligning the sustainability goals with the business goals and overall strategy.

Structural Health Management (SHM) combines the use of onboard sensors with artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically identify and monitor structural health issues. A fully integrated approach to SHM systems demands an understanding of the sensor output relative to the structure, along with sophisticated prognostic systems that automatically draw conclusions about structural integrity issues. Ultrasonic guided wave methods allow us to examine the interaction of multimode signals within key structural components. Since they propagate relatively long distances within plate- and shell-like structures, guided waves allow inspection of greater areas with fewer sensors, making this technique attractive for a variety of applications.;This dissertation describes the experimental development of automatic guided wave interpretation for three real world applications. Using the guided wave theories for idealized plates we have systematically developed techniques for identifying the mass loading of underwater limpet mines on US Navy ship hulls, characterizing type and bonding of protective coatings on large diameter pipelines, and detecting the thinning effects of corrosion on aluminum aircraft structural stringers. In each of these circumstances the signals received are too complex for interpretation without knowledge of the guided wave physics. We employ a signal processing technique called the Dynamic Wavelet Fingerprint Technique (DFWT) in order to render the guided wave mode information in two-dimensional binary images. The use of wavelets allows us to keep track of both time and scale features from the original signals. With simple image processing we have developed automatic extraction algorithms for features that correspond to the arrival times of the guided wave modes of interest for each of the applications. Due to the dispersive nature of the guided wave modes, the mode arrival times give details of the structure in the propagation path.;For further understanding of how the guided wave modes propagate through the real structures, we have developed parallel processing, 3D elastic wave simulations using the finite integration technique (EFIT). This full field, numeric simulation technique easily examines models too complex for analytical solutions. We have developed the algorithm to handle built up 3D structures as well as layers with different material properties and surface detail. The simulations produce informative visualizations of the guided wave modes in the structures as well as the output from sensors placed in the simulation space to mimic the placement from experiment. Using the previously developed mode extraction algorithms we were then able to compare our 3D EFIT data to their experimental counterparts with consistency.

To acquire heat transfer measurements of a high temperature Mach two flow a water-cooled calorimeter was placed in the flow and the water temperature rise was used to calculate the heat transfer rate and the recovery temperature of the gas. In addition, a graphite rod with a stainless steel tube at its core was used to measure the total pressure of the flow. This pressure probe was swept through the flow for two test runs to acquire a stagnation pressure profile of the gas flow. All results were compared to NASA CEA computer simulation code results. The heat transfer and recovery temperature results agreed well with the computer simulation code, while the total pressure results from the probe data agree excellently with the computer simulation code. A sensitivity analysis on the results was also preformed on the results.

To acquire heat transfer measurements of a high temperature Mach two flow a water-cooled calorimeter was placed in the flow and the water temperature rise was used to calculate the heat transfer rate and the recovery temperature of the gas. In addition, a graphite rod with a stainless steel tube at its core was used to measure the total pressure of the flow. This pressure probe was swept through the flow for two test runs to acquire a stagnation pressure profile of the gas flow. All results were compared to NASA CEA computer simulation code results. The heat transfer and recovery temperature results agreed well with the computer simulation code, while the total pressure results from the probe data agree excellently with the computer simulation code. A sensitivity analysis on the results was also preformed on the results.

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