Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / During this study, the challenges and best practices of youth participation in problem identification, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes were investigated and the effect of project outcomes on the youth and its implications for community development observed. The use of the qualitative research methodology to examine the extent to which the youth are involved in the decision-making processes was employed. In addition, a literature review that pertained to youth development and participatory community development was conducted. In particular, the participatory concept, and its relation to the inclusion of the youth at the decision-making table, was examined. By providing evidence from the empirical data, an argument is presented that there are internal rigidities that are a hindrance to the youth in expressing their voice in the decision-making platform. However, the conclusion can be drawn that in order to understand the process of participatory development, it is crucial for the youth, community development practitioners and other stakeholders to understand the socio-economic conditions surrounding the youth as these will ensure positive programme outcomes as well as subsequent sustainable youth development. / South Africa

Abstract  Bachelor´s thesis, Enterprising and Business Development, Linnaeus University School of Business and Economics, 2EB01E, VT 2017  Authors: Malin Borg and Emma Hattenhauer Tutor: Dan Halvarsson  Title: ”Is doing good ever good enough?” - a study of Swedish consumers’ perception and attitude towards companies using green marketing. Background: More now than ever are people interested in how they themselves affect the environment and how the companies work green. By implementing a “green marketing” strategy, companies use their environmental work as a marketing tool with different agendas. Some authors claim that this strategy is used in order to find new markets and new consumers while some say that it is a way for companies to encourage further green work to their market shares. Not all green work is however shown to the public, in some cases it is done in the dark in order to lower the external pressure of possible scrutiny, a strategy also called lean or muted greening. Theory explains that in contrast to this muted strategy consumers perceive transparency within a company and its green work highly important, as well as how a green marketing campaign is presented with words and terminology. It is of great important to consider what the consumers demand from a company in order for them to fully succeed with their green marketing campaign and build trust between the company and the consumer.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to create understanding of Swedish consumers’ perception and attitude towards companies that are using a green marketing strategy. Method: This study uses a deductive approach with a qualitative nature, where words and explanations are of interest and is carried out through eight individual semi-structured interviews with respondents all living in Sweden found through a convenience sampling method. With a used hermeneutic approach the respondents subjective opinions has lead the research in the direction it has taken and further pre-understandings has been created. Conclusion: Through this study it has been found that the main-key to a successful green marketing campaign among Swedish consumers is trust. Without trust towards a company Swedish consumers explain themselves as not believing in green marketing done by a company. Social media is a communication channel that, among Swedish consumers is not perceived credible and should therefore not be used when doing a green marketing campaign. The concept of lean or muted greening is something that 6/8 respondents considered positive while 2/8 felt the opposite, however all considered transparency as a highly important factor in order to not miss trust a company and believing that, if something is hard to find maybe it is not done as presented. Language and terminology are two closely related and much important aspects that need to be clear and easily understood, however not excluding important aspects but rather give further explanations about concepts that might be considered complicated.

Syftet med studien är att bidra med ökad kunskap om konsumenters uppfattning av märkta samarbeten. En kvalitativ forskningsmetod genomförs där respondenterna får ta del av tre exempelvideor med en fiktiv influencer som praktiserar olika former av deklarationer. Tio semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförs med fältanteckningar som stöd för att få en djupare förståelse av respondenternas uppfattning av materialet. Studien bidrar med kunskap kring muntliga och grafiska deklarationer inom influencer marketing på Youtube. Studiens resultat indikerar att högre transparens bör praktiseras för att ge konsumenter en mer positiv syn på influencern och varumärket som marknadsförs. Med resultatet som grund utformades en lista med rekommendationer för hur influencers kan deklarera samarbeten för att på ett effektivt sätt undvika manipulation och missförstånd hos konsumenterna. / The purpose of our research is to contribute with increased knowledge of consumers' perceptions of sponsored collaborations and their declarations. A qualitative research method is implemented in which respondents get to see three example videos with a fictional influencer practicing different forms of declaration. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with supporting field notes to reach a deeper understanding of respondents' perceptions of the material. The study's results indicate that higher transparency should be practiced giving consumers a more positive view of the influencer and the brand being marketed. With the result as a basis, a list of declaration recommendations was formulated in order to effectively avoid consumer manipulation and misunderstanding.

Microfrontend applications are composed of multiple smaller frontend applications, which are integrated at run-time. As with microservices, microfrontends can be updated in production at any time. There are no technological restrictions for releasing API-breaking updates. Therefore it is difficult to trust microfrontend applications to perform reliably in run-time and to introduce API-breaking updates without the risk of breaking consumers. This thesis presents Plutt, a tool that provides automatic guarantees for safely consuming microfrontends, by ensuring that updates in run-time are compatible. By using Plutt, consumers can be confident that a provided microfrontend will per- form the same during production as in development. Likewise, microfrontend providers can release updates without being concerned about how it will affect consumers. Moreover, a comprehensive survey about microfrontends is presented, where five industry experts are interviewed. Aspects that are not found in existing literature are discovered, which contributes to a broader knowledge base that helps future microfrontend research. / Mikrofrontend-applikationer är sammansatta av flera mindre frontend-applikationer som integreras under exekvering. Precis som med mikrotjänster, kan mikrofrontends bytas ut i produktion när som helst. Det saknas teknologiska restriktioner för att publicera API-brytande uppdateringar. Därför är det svårt att lita på att en mikrofrontend-applikation beter sig tillförlitligt under exekvering samt att introducera API-brytande uppdateringar utan att riskera att förstöra konsumenter. Det här examensarbetet presenterar Plutt, ett verktyg som erbjuder automatiska garantier för att säkert konsumera mikrofrontends genom att säkerställa att uppdateringar som introduceras i körtid är kompatibla. Genom att använda Plutt, kan konsumenter vara trygga i vetskapen att en försedd mikrofrontend presterar likadant under produktion som i utveckling. Samtidigt kan utvecklare som förser mikrofrontends släppa uppdateringar utan att bekymra sig över hur det påverkar konsumenter. Utöver Plutt, presenteras en grundlig kartläggning över mikrofrontends, där fem experter från industrin är intervjuade. Aspekter som inte hittas i existerande litteratur är upptäckta, vilket kunskapsbas och framtida forskning om mikrofrontends.

Angesichts der zentralen Rolle der Root-Zertifizierungsstellen als Vertrauensanker der Web PKI und der in der Vergangenheit aufgetretenen Vorfälle mit unberechtigt oder inkorrekt ausgestellten Zertifikaten, ist die Transparenz und Verantwortlichkeit dieser Root CAs von großer Bedeutung. Seit der Einführung von Certificate Transparency Logs werden alle von Certificate Authorities ausgestellten Zertifikate in diese öffentlichen Logs eingetragen. Die Arbeit stellt die Problematik der eingeschränkten Zugänglichkeit dieser Daten für die Wissenschaft dar und entwickelt ein Werkzeug, dass eine unabhängige Aufzeichnung und Auswertung von Certificate Transparency Logs ermöglicht. Das entwickelte System nutzt eine containerbasierte Architektur und Elasticsearch zur effizienten Speicherung und Analyse der Daten. Es bewältigt ein hohes Datenaufkommen von durchschnittlich 25 Millionen Log-Einträgen pro Tag und ermöglicht eine anpassbare Datenverarbeitung und -auswertung. Die Vorverarbeitung und Indexierung sowie die Auswertung der Daten erfolgte mit Python, was eine flexible Anpassung des Systems an unterschiedliche Forschungsfragen erlaubt. Über einen Zeitraum von 42 Tagen wurden insgesamt 645 Millionen CT Log-Einträge aufgezeichnet und analysiert. Aus den Auswertungen geht hervor, wie verschiedene CAs und deren Root-Zertifikate genutzt werden und wie stark die unterschiedlichen CT Logs von CAs verwendet werden. Die Arbeit identifiziert jedoch auch Herausforderungen, wie den hohen Speicherbedarf und notwendige Optimierungen in der Datenindexierung.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Problemstellung 1.2 Zielstellung 2 Grundlagen 2.1 X509-Zertifikate 2.1.1 Felder 2.1.2 Erweiterungen 2.2 Certificate Transparency 2.2.1 Certificate Transparency Log 2.2.2 Überprüfung durch User Agents 2.2.3 Überprüfung durch Monitors 2.2.4 Eintragung durch Certificate Authorities 3 Konzeptionierung 3.1 Abfrage der CT Logs 3.2 Verarbeitung der Zertifikate 3.3 Speicherung & Auswertung der Daten 3.4 Überwachung 3.5 Docker 4 Implementierung 4.1 Plattform 4.2 Überwachung 4.3 certstream-server 4.4 Verarbeitung 4.4.1 Pufferung (stream-to-queue-publisher) 4.4.2 Vorverarbeitung (cert-indexer) 4.5 Elasticsearch 4.5.1 Speicherverbrauch 4.5.2 Field Mappings 5 Auswertung 5.1 Logs & Log-Betreiber 5.2 Certificate Authorites 5.3 Zertifikats-Größe 5.4 Gültigkeitsdauer 6 Schluss 6.1 Fazit 6.2 Ausblick A Beispiel X509 Leaf-Zertifikat B Beispiel X509 Root-Zertifikat C Beispiele Elasticsearch Abfragen Literatur Abbildungsverzeichnis Tabellenverzeichnis / In view of the central role of the root certification authorities as trust anchors of the Web PKI and the incidents that have occurred in the past with unauthorised or incorrectly issued certificates, the transparency and accountability of these root CAs is of great importance. With the introduction of Certificate Transparency Logs, all certificates issued by Certificate Authorities are now entered in public logs. The work presents the problem of the limited accessibility of this data for science and develops a tool that enables an independent recording and evaluation of Certificate Transparency Logs. The developed system uses a container-based architecture and Elasticsearch to efficiently store and analyse the data. It can handle a high volume of data, averaging 25 million log entries per day, and enables customisable data processing and analysis. Python was used to pre-process, index and analyse the data, allowing the system to be flexibly adapted to different research questions. A total of 645 million CT log entries were recorded and analysed over a period of 42 days. The analyses show how different CAs and their root certificates are used and how much the different CT logs are used by CAs. However, the work also identifies challenges, such as the high memory requirements and necessary optimisations in data indexing.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Problemstellung 1.2 Zielstellung 2 Grundlagen 2.1 X509-Zertifikate 2.1.1 Felder 2.1.2 Erweiterungen 2.2 Certificate Transparency 2.2.1 Certificate Transparency Log 2.2.2 Überprüfung durch User Agents 2.2.3 Überprüfung durch Monitors 2.2.4 Eintragung durch Certificate Authorities 3 Konzeptionierung 3.1 Abfrage der CT Logs 3.2 Verarbeitung der Zertifikate 3.3 Speicherung & Auswertung der Daten 3.4 Überwachung 3.5 Docker 4 Implementierung 4.1 Plattform 4.2 Überwachung 4.3 certstream-server 4.4 Verarbeitung 4.4.1 Pufferung (stream-to-queue-publisher) 4.4.2 Vorverarbeitung (cert-indexer) 4.5 Elasticsearch 4.5.1 Speicherverbrauch 4.5.2 Field Mappings 5 Auswertung 5.1 Logs & Log-Betreiber 5.2 Certificate Authorites 5.3 Zertifikats-Größe 5.4 Gültigkeitsdauer 6 Schluss 6.1 Fazit 6.2 Ausblick A Beispiel X509 Leaf-Zertifikat B Beispiel X509 Root-Zertifikat C Beispiele Elasticsearch Abfragen Literatur Abbildungsverzeichnis Tabellenverzeichnis

Research report presented to SBL, Unisa, Midrand. / The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of employees’ perceptions on the effectiveness of the board in the public sector. The units of analysis relevant to this research were the board of directors and the employees in the public sector. Thus, two questionnaires were designed: one for the board members, and the other for employees. The questionnaires were designed around various themes aimed at establishing the following: whether employees in the Public Sector perceive their Board of Directors to be effective, whether the Board of Directors in the Public Sector believe that their effectiveness is impacted by employee perceptions, and to determine what factors need to be in place to promote a positive relationship between employee perceptions and board effectiveness. The survey confirmed that the board members do believe that they are effective in the execution of their functions. The employees do agree that the board plays an important role in organisations, that organisations will be impacted negatively without the direction of the board, and that the board is conducting its roles and responsibilities as effectively as possible. In terms of whether the board of directors in the public sector believe that their effectiveness is impacted by the employees’ perceptions, the results from both the employees and members of the board were inclined towards ‘agree’ on the Likert scale. The survey also revealed that the prevalence of other factors in the organisation, (Transparency and Accountability, Communication, Stakeholder Relations Strategy, Board’s high Ethical Standard, Speedily Resolution of Labour disputes, Commitment to employee development, and Consistency in policy implementation), will have a high impact in their organisations, particularly in promoting a positive relationship between employee perceptions and board effectiveness.

Inledning. Stora klimatförändringar och ekonomiska kriser har allt tydligare börjat peka mot att det behövs ett nytt hållbart tankesätt i hur vi lever, driver företag och vad vi lämnar efter oss till nästa generation. I Sverige har framförallt miljödebatten tillsammans med ett förändrat samhällsklimat skiftat synen på långsiktighet, till att idag utgöra en viktig del i de flesta företags långsiktiga strategier. Emellertid har tidigare forskning visat att utan en statlig hänsyn kommer de mer avancerade utmaningar som företagen ställs inför att förbli underutvecklade. Den svenska staten som är en betydlig företagsägare har sökt hålla sig i framkant genom att tidigt främja sådant arbete inom sina företag. 2008 infördes en obligatorisk redovisning av hållbarhetsansvar förstatliga bolag enligt en internationell standard, -GRI. Ett av syftena med detta var även att främja transparens i de statliga bolagens arbete med hållbarhet samt en transparent redovisning av detta arbete. Enligt den tidigare forskningen är transparens ett vitalt villkor för hållbarhetsarbete och utgör ett krav för de statliga bolagen. Syfte. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka vilken betydelse kravet på transparens har för utvecklingen av hållbarhetsarbetet i de statligt ägda bolagen samt hur väl bolagens och statens uppfattning av begreppet transparens stämmer överens. Metod. Det är en kvalitativ flerfallstudie som baserar sig på sex djupa intervjuer, varav fem av dem avser de statliga bolagen och en intervju med näringsdepartement. Även en genomgång avde års-och hållbarhetsredovisningar som är tillgängliga på bolagens hemsidor har gjorts för att se hur redovisning av hållbarhetsansvaret har förändrats under åren. Slutsatser. Transparens är en av grundpelarna i allt hållbarhetsarbete. Transparens innebär att vara öppna och ärliga, redovisa sina resultat oavsett utfall, samt våga tala om sina risker och hur dessa hanteras. Uppfattningen som den svenska staten och de statliga bolagen har angående transparens och dess betydelse för hållbarhetsarbete stämmer till en hög grad överens och skiljer sig mest i den rollen som GRI:sriktlinjer spelar för transparens kvalité. Genom ett krav på extern granskning och en obligatorisk redovisning enligt GRI, ägardialoger samt statens egna hållbarhetsanalyser, säkerställer den svenska staten en god och jämn nivå på transparent hållbarhetsarbete hos de statliga bolagen. Tack vare GRI:s G4 fokus på väsentlighet och dialog med intressenter, säkerställer en robust transparens förtroendet för företagen och utgör ramen för en bra hållbarhetsredovisning. Det finns dock en del svårigheter med transparens och GRI, förknippade till delvis bristfälliga indikatorer samt avsaknaden av utarbetad praxis och rutiner för hållbarhetsredovisning enligt GRI. / Background. Big climate change and economical crises have ever more clearly showed the need for a new sustainable way of thinking, on how we live our lives, run our companies and what we leave for the next generation. In Sweden the environmental debate has combined with a changed social atmosphere shifted public opinion in sustainability, to what is today an integral part inthe long term strategy of most companies. However, earlier research has shown that without government consideration, the more advanced challenges will remain unanswered. The Swedish government is a major shareholder and owner of several companies and has sought to remain in the advantaged by favoring that kind of work within there companies. In 2008 a law was passed which made obligatory thesustainability reporting inaccordanceto a international framework, -GRI. One of the primary purposes of this was toenforce transparency in the sustainability work of government owned companies and a transparent accountingof that work. According to theearlier research, transparency is a vital part of sustainability work and constitutes an absolute condition on the government owned companies. Purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to research what meaning the term transparency has for the development the sustainability work in governmentally owned companies as well as how well the interpretation of the term transparency correlate with that of the government. Methodology. This is a qualitative case study, based on six in depth interviews, five of whichare regarding government owned companies and one is with the ministry of enterprise and innovation. A study of the financial statements and sustainability reporting available on the company webpages has been made to determine how this sustainability reporting has changed over time. Conclusions. Transparency constitutes part of the foundation in all sustainability work.Transparency means to be open and honest, to report your results no matter the outcome, and to dare talk about risks and how they are managed. The perception that the Swedish government and state owned companies have regarding transparency and its importance for the sustainability work is in the same line and differ mostly in what role the GRI plays for transparency. Through the condition of external audit, a mandatory reporting in accordance to GRI, owners dialogue, and the governments own sustainability-analysis, ensures a high sustained level of transparent sustainability-work of the governmentally owned companies. Because of the focus of GRI:s G4 on the essential elements and dialogue with stakeholders, transparency create trust in the governmentally owned companies, and constitutes the framework for a good level of sustainability-reporting. There are however a few difficulties with transparency and GRI, associated with flawed indicators or the lack of a working precedence and any set of routine for sustainable reporting according to GRI.

Creditworthiness is a quality that is important to all stakeholders of an organisation, especially bondholders. It is posited that good corporate governance practices assist the confidence that stakeholders have in an organization’s ability to generate the strong cash flows that are needed to meet financial obligations, which in turn should enhance credit risk assessments. Much research has been conducted into rating assessments, but these have largely been directed at developed markets and they have not generally been focused on the impact of good corporate governance practices and procedures. The primary focus of this research is to address this issue through an investigation into the impact of key factors upon the credit risk assessments of listed companies on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) in Jordan, as assessed by World'vest Base Inc. (WVB) credit risk assessment scores for Jordanian companies between 2005 and 2007 inclusively. Drawing upon insights from agency (including management disciplining and wealth redistribution hypotheses), stewardship, stakeholder, signalling, legitimacy and the diffusion of innovation theories, this thesis investigates the determinants of WVB credit risk assessments of Jordanian firms under five headings: accounting and financial aspects, market and regulatory perspectives, influence of ownership structure, financial transparency/disclosure and corporate governance factors. To achieve this, an array of modelling techniques is used in order to provide a more comprehensive picture. They include bivariate analysis, one-way analysis of variance, ordinary least square regressions for numerical scores, binary logistic regressions, and ordinal logistic regression. The results demonstrate that accounting and financial factors have a significant impact on credit risk assessments but not capital intensity. Profitability is positively associated with credit risk assessments, while leverage and loss propensity have a negative association. With respect to market and regulatory factors, size and Tobin’s Q are positively associated with credit risk assessments. By contrast type of sector and audit are not related to credit risk assessments. Foreign ownership enhances ratings, whilst institutional ownership has a negative impact. Also, insider ownership and family ownership have some importance. It was surprising to find that whilst financial transparency and disclosure variables are significantly associated positively with credit risk assessments in some models, they were generally not significant across other models. Nevertheless, the study finds empirical evidence to support a degree of association between credit risk assessments and corporate governance factors. There is also a positive association between board size and credit risk assessments, but the most important aspect of corporate governance for Jordanian firms is board expertise. The originality of this thesis also embraces the inclusion not only of externally published WVB risk assessments in the Jordanian context, but also internal numerical ratings that were made available with kind permission from the WVB agency for the purposes of this research. The question is whether there are insights that can be gained from such internal ratings that have not hitherto been made available to other researchers. The answer is in the affirmative, for role duality on the board of directors is evidently more important to WVB’s own internal numerical rating assessments than is evidenced by the WVB externally published credit risk assessments. Specifically, the significance of corporate governance (role duality) is missed by multivariate models that are based solely on externally published data. Furthermore, financial transparency and disclosure variables reveal more (albeit moderate) support for the more refined internal scores of WVB than for the external assessment ratings. Finally, family ownership is also important to WVB’s internal scores. Thus, this research has enabled deeper insights to be gained into credit risk assessment determinants within the Jordanian context.

The overarching aim of this master’s thesis is to investigate what role the accessibility of EU documents plays for the democracy in the EU. A three-pillar approach was adopted, consisting of a text analysis of the Regulation 1049/2001, which promotes transparency, and an analytical induction analysis of the cases where access to EU documents was denied despite the European Ombudsman’s recommendation to the contrary. The third pillar refers to the interplay between the two first; a contested field with ideals on the one side and the political reality on the other. The main findings are that the positive picture of openness presented in the Regulation does not correspond with the cases. Although openness is used as a rhetorical tool in the Regulation, the case material shows that the EU has tried to restrain the development towards openness. The study suggests that although the EU officially promotes accountability through openness, its unofficial attitudes rather reminds of the concept of responsibility (Lewin 2007) that enables a more restrictive approach to transparency. Thus, both the legal frameworks and the informal factors play a role in determining the accessibility of the EU archives and its role for European democracy. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum Studies with special focus on Archival Science. / Den här masteruppsatsen behandlar tillgänglighetsfrågor i samband med EU:s arkiv- och dokumenthantering och dess roll och betydelse för demokratin inom EU. Först undersöktes förordning 1049/2001 med hjälp av en textanalys för att ta reda på hur EU värderar öppenhet. Därefter vändes fokus till de fall där tillgång till dokument nekats, trots Europeiska Ombudsmannens råd. Slutligen sammanfördes dessa komponenter för att skapa en bild av spänningsfältet mellan ideal och realitet. Studien visar att öppenhet framställs mycket positivt i förordningen. Emellertid stämmer den bilden inte överens med fallmaterialet. Detta visar hur EU i de enskilda fallen försökt motverka utvecklingen mot ökad öppenhet. En trolig slutsats vore att EU stödjer koncepten öppenhet och ansvarsskyldighet i teorin, men att attityden i praktiken snarare ligger nära begreppet ”responsibility” (Lewin 2007), som möjliggör en mer restriktiv inställning till öppenhet. Det lagliga ramverket är därmed inte den enda faktorn som påverkar hur tillgängliga EU:s handlingar verkligen är och vilken roll de spelar för demokratin inom unionen. Denna masteruppsats är skriven inom mastersprogrammet i ABM (arkiv, bibliotek, museum), inriktning arkivvetenskap.

This thesis explores the theoretical foundations of cross-phase modulation (XPM) between optical fields in the N-configuration atom. This is the process by which the refractive index experienced by one field can be modulated by controlling the intensity of another. The electro-optical version of this effect was first discovered by John Kerr in 1875 and found applications in photonics as a means of very rapidly modulating the phase and intensity of electromagnetic fields. Due to recent advances in experimental techniques there has been growing interest in generating nonlinear optical interactions in coherently prepared atomic ensembles. The use of coherently prepared media brings the possibility of achieving a much larger cross-phase modulation than is possible using classical materials. This is particularly useful when trying to create large optical nonlinearities between low-intensity electromagnetic fields. Much of the current research into cross-phase modulation is directed towards realising potential applications in the emerging field of quantum information processing. Above all, the possibility of constructing an all-optical quantum computer has been at the heart of much research and controversy in the field. In this thesis the theory of steady-state, transient and pulsed cross-phase modulation is developed. Moreover, care has been taken to relate all research back to experimentally feasible situations. As such, the relevance of the theory is justified by consideration of the situation present in rubidium-87. Due to the close relationship between XPM in the N-configuration atom and electromagnetically induced transparency in the Lambda-atom, many similarities and insights act as link between these two fields. Indeed, it is frequently demonstrated that the key to understanding the various properties of XPM in the N-configuration atom is by comparison with the situation in the corresponding Lambda-atom equivalent.