The purpose of this survey research is to unveil the leadership styles of elementary school principals. 350 principals and 700 teachers participated in this study which was conducted in Turkey. Leadership Orientations Questionnaire (Bolman and Deal, 1991) was used to gather data. According to the results of the study, the dominant leadership frame that the principals employ was the human resource frame as to principal and teacher ratings.

Autism has just recently become a widely researched field and due to the sudden pique of interest, there has been little research conducted in regards to the effect children with autism have on their families, in particular on the siblings. Through the limited research that has been conducted, evidence has surfaced for both positive and negative effects on the relationships between children with autism and their typically developing siblings. By taking a deeper look into the social, emotional and academic aspects that are affected in typically developing siblings of children with autism, I hypothesize that having a sibling with autism will lead to internal emotional damage and restrict the non-autistic siblings’ social capabilities. There will be no significant results in regards to the normal sibling’s academic behavior. This paper aims to review the literature in hopes of exploring possible ways to treat or prevent the negative effects children with autism have on their typically developing sibling, in hopes of creating a healthier environment for the family.

Generation of solid waste is a problem of great environmental significance in the Mexican Federal District. With an estimated daily generation of 12,500 tons waste management is a priority for the district government. Through the launch of a new initiative known as ‘Green Plan’, the government is proposing to implement an integrated waste management system that will not only reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, increasing reuse and recycling of waste, but also will allow the district government to realize economic gains by charging a fee for collection services and selling energy generated from incinerating waste. Integrated waste management programs have been implemented in the Mexican Federal District in the past. They have failed. This research has examined the most recent initiative in an effort to discover the causes of failure, using a case study approach. In addition to identifying barriers to and opportunities for implementation of an effective integrated waste management system in the Federal District, this research recommends options for the newly proposed waste management system that will achieve the objectives desired by the government, while aiding in the pursuit of sustainable development. The research has revealed that the performance of the Federal District’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Program, or any other program of the sort, is affected mainly by a combination of factors that are under the local government’s control: legal instruments, administrative organization and political conflicts, allocation of resources, education and training, and citizen participation. Strengthening these areas will improve the performance of the program. In comparison to much of the existing waste management literature that aims at identifying opportunities for supporting proposed systems through technological innovation (Chambal, et.al., 2003; Eriksson, et.al., 2005; Hung, et.al., 2007), this research has found that key barriers and opportunities lie in the strengthening of the institutional capacities of the local government. While recommendations of this study have been developed within the specific context of Mexico City, they may offer some more general guidance about how to respond to concerns which are likely to apply to many other large urban municipalities in developing countries. Application of the Gibson principles for sustainability in the context of Sandra Cointreau’s guidelines for sustainable waste management has provided a useful evaluation guide. This research has focused not just on evaluation of a particular waste management system, but also on the geographic and administrative context of the system in order to gain a broader insight into the factors over and above technical standards and mechanisms that affect the performance of the system.

This research builds further on the existing conceptual framework of the relationship between decentralization and service delivery and provides a cross-country empirical examination of the core dimensions of decentralization reform on access to two key services: health care and improved drinking water sources. The regression results provide evidence supporting positive and significant effects of fiscal, administrative, and political decentralization, individually, on the variables used to measure access to health care, and improved water provision; although the size and robustness of such effects varies for each dimension of decentralization in relation to each service examined. The results obtained in this study suggest that there is an additional (or "extra") positive effect coming from the interaction of two decentralization dimensions on access to health care and water services (that is, a mutually-reinforcing effect additional to the individual effect of each dimension of decentralization). The results obtained also support the expectation that developing countries could benefit significantly more from decentralization reforms compared to developed countries. These findings underscore the importance of considering all dimensions of the decentralization process when investigating the effects of this reform on any economic, institutional, or social variable. The policy implications are highly relevant, particularly for developing countries: decentralization implemented only through one dimension may render fewer positive fruits in terms of access to services than a multi-dimensional approach. Moreover, learning more about the most beneficial mutually-reinforcing effects across dimensions of decentralization may also help strategically in how the overall decentralization reform is designed.

As much as going green is a very popular topic of discussion and much emphasis is put on the subject, not all areas, topics and locations are explored. Some continents have effectively, strategically and efficiently addressed the problem while others are still fighting to address it. We undertook this research to find out what it takes to ensure that the e-waste problem is solved in a developing country. The purpose of the study was to investigate what factors contributed at a financial, technological and environmental level to the prosperity of the e-waste project in Kenya. The financial factor attempts to investigate if any economic value is achieved. The technological factor investigates if there is any new technology added to the recycled and the technology used to breakdown the e-waste.The environmental factor deals with how the environment is affected by e-waste. To achieve this, a questionnaire, interviews and reports were used to collect data. The semi-structured approach of the interviews employed allowed us to achieve an in-depth approach of collecting data. This in turn helped us collect many different views of the subject. Various theories where used in addition to the data collected so as to give an interpretation and create scenarios of various outcomes should the models be applied. The translation of this data led to results showing that not all the three factors have to be in place to ensure success. Depending on which theory was applied some factors become more attainable than others. However all three factors are achievable and attainable when dealing with green IT. It became apparent that other factors like sensitization, government involvement and extended producer responsibility apart from the three did also have a direct impact on the result.

Generation of solid waste is a problem of great environmental significance in the Mexican Federal District. With an estimated daily generation of 12,500 tons waste management is a priority for the district government. Through the launch of a new initiative known as ‘Green Plan’, the government is proposing to implement an integrated waste management system that will not only reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, increasing reuse and recycling of waste, but also will allow the district government to realize economic gains by charging a fee for collection services and selling energy generated from incinerating waste. Integrated waste management programs have been implemented in the Mexican Federal District in the past. They have failed. This research has examined the most recent initiative in an effort to discover the causes of failure, using a case study approach. In addition to identifying barriers to and opportunities for implementation of an effective integrated waste management system in the Federal District, this research recommends options for the newly proposed waste management system that will achieve the objectives desired by the government, while aiding in the pursuit of sustainable development. The research has revealed that the performance of the Federal District’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Program, or any other program of the sort, is affected mainly by a combination of factors that are under the local government’s control: legal instruments, administrative organization and political conflicts, allocation of resources, education and training, and citizen participation. Strengthening these areas will improve the performance of the program. In comparison to much of the existing waste management literature that aims at identifying opportunities for supporting proposed systems through technological innovation (Chambal, et.al., 2003; Eriksson, et.al., 2005; Hung, et.al., 2007), this research has found that key barriers and opportunities lie in the strengthening of the institutional capacities of the local government. While recommendations of this study have been developed within the specific context of Mexico City, they may offer some more general guidance about how to respond to concerns which are likely to apply to many other large urban municipalities in developing countries. Application of the Gibson principles for sustainability in the context of Sandra Cointreau’s guidelines for sustainable waste management has provided a useful evaluation guide. This research has focused not just on evaluation of a particular waste management system, but also on the geographic and administrative context of the system in order to gain a broader insight into the factors over and above technical standards and mechanisms that affect the performance of the system.

Food and nutrition policy analysis, especially for a developing country, requires information on food price and expenditure elasticities. Often, such information is not readily available for different income groups. For Lesotho, this information currently does not exist. This study analyses the food consumption and nutrition of households in Lesotho by estimating a set of food demand parameters. The Lesotho government, in the process of developing the agriculture sector, aims to increase the domestic production of maize through the Food Self Sufficiency Programme (FSSP) by providing incentives to producers. The FSSP has the potential to affect prices at the consumer level for maize and maize meal. Higher maize meal prices could have adverse nutritional impacts especially for low income households. The objective of this study was to analyze the effects of price and income changes on the nutritional well being of consumers with a focus on low income households. A related objective was to provide an estimate of the parameters for food demand. The Almost Ideal Demand System was used to estimate demand parameters for seven food groups: maize, other cereals, meat, milk, eggs, fats and oils, and fruits and vegetables. Data for analysis was obtained from the Household Budget Survey (HBS) that was carried out in 1986/87 by the Bureau of statistics over a twelve month period. Households were divided into low, middle and high income groups. The share equations were first estimated by imposing the homogeneity and symmetry restrictions. The null hypothesis of symmetry given homogeneity is not rejected in any of the income groups. The results of the estimation indicate that total food expenditure elasticity declines as income increases. The sign and magnitude of the elasticities indicates that all food groups are relative necessities. Expenditure elasticity of maize declines from 0.91 for the low income group to 0.47 for the high income households. The estimated demand and expenditure elasticities were used to calculate calorie and protein price and expenditure elasticities for the low income households. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This study analyses whether urbanization and poverty have any importance for private sector participation (PSP) in the water sector, in developing countries. In the beginning of the 1990’s there was a surge in the interest of the private sector to participate in water and sanitation projects, after a long period of public dominance. There is a large need for investments since much of the population in developing countries does not have access to water and sanitation services and the demand is increasing. At the same time the water sector is prone to inefficiencies resulting from externalities and natural monopoly characteristics, and is therefore often highly regulated. A negative binominal regression model is used for the analysis. The dependent variable is the number of water and sanitation projects with private sector participation in a country. The independent variables are population, GDP/capita, aid, debt, water resources, government effectiveness, degree of urbanization and degree of poverty. The main results are that urbanization is positively significant for PSP in the water sector, while poverty has no significant effect.

The purpose of the thesis is to examine the effect EU’s subsidised dairy export has on developing countries’ dairy production. This is done by constructing a model containing various factors that are assumed to affect production. Data was collected for 23 countries in Africa, Central- and South America and was pooled together using a least squared dummy variable model (LSDV). The variable of interest for this study is the imports from EU to the selected countries. The regression result showed that this variable was negatively correlated with the countries’ domestic dairy production and was significant on the 1% level confirming the hypothesis of the variable. Due to the negative correlation, a reduction of the EU exports is thus assumed to increase these countries’ own production within this agricultural sector. As shown in the thesis, agriculture is important for a country’s development and hence, by exporting subsidised goods, EU might hinder development in the countries studied. However, over the years the EU has received a lot of pressure from the WTO to decrease its domestic- and export subsidies. Due to this, the EU has promised, based upon certain conditions, to remove its export subsidies completely by 2013. This is seen as positive for the developing countries’ future development prospects.

This thesis investigates the relevance of currently used firm-level innovation concepts in a developing country context. I draw on the results of a comprehensive survey of manufacturing and service firms instrumented to assess the knowledge- capabilities of the economic sectors in Malaysia. The thesis presents a discussion of the extant literature on firm-level innovation and tests hypotheses regarding the impact of firms organizational structure, strategies, resources and environment as determinants of product, process and organizational innovations. These are examined from the classifying framework provided by Keith Pavitts model of technology trajectories to better understand the nature of innovation and its production determinants. I find that Malaysian firms -- across all sectors -- show a greater propensity to make process and organizational innovations as against product innovations. Soft factors like training, knowledge management practices and collaboration with market actors are used as significant inputs in their innovation process.