This thesis identifies and examines factors that shape voters' choice in Maxixe district in order to understand how voters decide in general in Mozambique. It is a case study of Maxixe district, one of the fourteen districts of Inhambane Province in southern Mozambique, which is historically a stronghold for the ruling Frelimo party. It is an interesting region for study because it is an economic hub and a cosmopolitan town, with a multi-ethnic population comprising three ethnolinguistic groups, yet at times it has been assumed to be a homogeneous region. As such, one cannot rush to conclude that ethnicity plays a major role in politics and voting behaviour. Yet no studies on voting behaviour have been conducted in this region. The study is based on four theoretical frameworks commonly used in election studies, namely the sociological, socio-psychological, rational choice and the cognitive awareness approaches. Methodologically, it prioritises the social constructivism paradigm, case study research design and qualitative research approach. Findings confirm that ethnicity does not determine party choice or voting behaviour in Maxixe. Age forms an important cleavage among voters as the elderly always vote for Frelimo while younger voters are more independent. Party identification influences voting choice to some extent, but mainly for strategic purposes. While the economy determines voting behaviour to some extent, voters do not use their dissatisfaction to punish the incumbent ruling party and political sophistication does not influence voting. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Political Sciences / DPhil / Unrestricted

Date: 2023-05-31 Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr  Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University  Authors: Ahlqvist Malin, Fredmark Ida Xing and Pirani Shervin (93-03-11)          (96-06-05)        (98-07-02)                                           Title: Exploring sustainability performance in small and medium-sized enterprises from a triple bottom line perspective Supervisor:  Edward Gillmore  Keywords: TBL, Sustainability, Initiatives, Environmental performance, Economic performance Research questions:  RQ1: What are the characteristics of sustainable initiatives in SMEs? RQ2: How do the sustainability initiatives affect the economic performance and the environmental performance within SMEs? Purpose: This study aims to explore the characteristics of initiatives that an SME is undertaking regarding sustainability and how it affects their economic and environmental performance. Method: This study has an inductive approach and one case study. Four qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, and secondary data was collected. Conclusion: In relation to TBL, numerous environmental initiatives were detected, while fewer economic initiatives and social initiatives were detected. An inconsistency was found regarding the effect sustainability initiatives have on economic performance and environmental performance. If an SME wishes to operate sustainably it is suggested that emphasis should be directed towards the integration and improvement within areas of waste management, resource management, and optimization of transportation.

This thesis empirically studies the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax avoidance. Based on a sample of 3304 observations between 2002 and 2014, I find that the CSR score of companies is negatively related to their effective tax rate. This indicates that on average, responsible companies are more involved in tax avoidance activities compared to less responsible companies. This result is robust against different sets of control variables. The results of this thesis are contrary towards previous research, where most studies find a negative relation between CSR and tax avoidance. In addition, I examine how four dimensions of CSR are related to corporate tax avoidance and I find that economic performance and environmental performance are positive significant related towards tax avoidance. This indicates that shareholder and client loyalty, as well as resource and emission reduction, relate to a higher extent of corporate tax avoidance.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Student Number: 0308601G School of Civil Engineering Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / This research report focuses on the impact of environmental management systems (EMS) on the economic performance of business enterprises with respect to the three research variables, namely water, energy and raw materials. A systematic sampling technique with a random start and the K-Value sampling interval were employed to draw a sample size of 30 enterprises from a list of 240 EMS certified enterprises. However, the response rate ultimately turned out to be only 30 % of the sample size. The research discovered that EMS programmes that are practised by enterprises under study in South Africa are inefficient, as strategies adopted to cut down on the consumption of the research variables are inefficient. It has further been found that due to unavailability of data, business enterprises failed to consistently and convincingly provide data pertaining to the costs of EMS adoption. Inefficient strategies in cutting down consumption of research variables are concluded to have led to minimal savings and revenue accruing to the enterprises. This is observed to be a result of the following factors: not undertaking some research ahead of any action to shed light on the nature and magnitude of responsive measures required for specific problem areas; costly EMS technology and infrastructure; lack of innovativeness in exhausting the full potential value of the research variables; poor EMS practice etc. Failure to provide data by enterprises is observed to be a result of little value, which enterprises attached to information storage and documentation as well as environmental accounting system, yet they are such crucial components of EMS. This has therefore made impossible to weigh gains against costs to establish whether business enterprises are gaining or losing in their EMS projects. On the basis of the observed shortcomings, enterprises are advised to have in place a comprehensive EMS database and to conduct some research ahead of any responsive action. The South African government is recommended to intervene by providing an enabling environment for EMS by implementing EMS supporting policies and promoting awareness campaigns. Furthermore, research into the observed problem areas has been recommended in order to get to the bottom of EMS problems in South Africa.

Background: Over the years, businesses have come under the microscope as consumers and other stakeholders such as employees, environmentalist and journalists investigate any wrongdoings. Investors are also aware of the damages caused by organizations that are only concerned with profit maximization, and now they are diverging their investment to more sustainable companies. To overcome internal and external pressure, companies are accepting the responsibilities they have towards the society, environment, and shareholders. However, the journey of becoming responsible and environmentally sustainable is long and it often requires organizational change. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now known to most public and private firms. Over the decades, scholars have come up with various definitions for CSR which are often complex and diverse. Therefore, there is a need to understand how companies implement CSR rather than if they should implement it (Smith, 2003). The conceptualization of CSR, understanding what motivates towards CSR and how it is implemented within the organizations has attracted the attention of scholars (Maon, Lindgreen, & Swaen, 2010) Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess organisations journey to become sustainable companies using a developmental stage model, in this case the Consolidative model and to find empirical support the usefulness of this model as an assessment tool. Method: To achieve the purpose of this study, a qualitative method along with an abductive approach is used. Eight semi-structured interviews are used for collecting primary data while peer-reviewed articles and books are used to build the theoretical framework. Conclusion: Empirical findings support that the consolidative mode is useful in assessing the sustainability journey of organizations. No organization is found to be in the first three stages that are the dismissing, self-protecting, and compliance seeking stages. Pressure from stakeholders, personal values, beliefs and the desire to be competitive are what motivates organizations to work with CSR despite their small size.

It seems appropriate to compare countries with a similar historical background and a different but comparable level of economic performance in order to make conditional statements. Studies about political institutions and economic performance in Latin American countries were conducted principally in qualitative analyses. The main objective of this study was an attempt based on the political economy to answer the question if different political institutions can explain economic performance in a time series cross section regression analysis. Using 18 Latin American countries for the years 1975-2010 the result of this research permits the conclusion, that political institutions such as political regime, electoral system, federalism on municipal level, partly the ideological polarization degree of executive´s party and the parties in legislature and the stability of a political regime matter for economic performance. Nevertheless, leaping to conclusions about clear causality would be careless and precipitous as the problem of endogeneity of political institutions has not been properly resolved in this research. / Parece apropriado comparar países com contextos históricos parecidos e níveis de desempenho econômico diferentes mas comparáveis para poder fazer afirmações condicionais. Pesquisas sobre instituições políticas e desempenho econômico na América Latina foram conduzidas principalmente com metodologias qualitativas. O objetivo principal da presente dissertação foi uma tentativa de responder a questão se as instituições políticas podem influenciar o desempenho econômico nos países da America Latina numa regressão corte transversal de series temporais. Usando 18 países da America Latina para o período de 1975-2010 o resultado deste estudo permite a conclusão que instituições políticas como regime político, sistema eleitoral, federalismo no nível municipal, em parte a distância da ideologia partidária do presidente e dos partidos nas câmaras e da estabilidade do regime político são relevantes para o desempenho econômico. Entretanto, precipitar conclusões sobre uma clara causalidade seria descuidadoso como o problema da endogeneidade das instituições políticas não foi resolvida apropriadamente nesta pesquisa.

A relação entre educação e economia, tanto do ponto de vista teórico quanto na formulação de políticas públicas foi, em grande medida, entendida pelas ideias vindas da teoria do Capital Humano, nas Ciências Econômicas, e da teoria da Modernização, na Sociologia, em termos de oferta. Uma economia, para possuir alto desempenho econômico, deveria superar as deficiências educacionais de sua força de trabalho no sentido de aumentar a escolarização dos indivíduos. Atualmente esta relação linear entre os sistemas educacionais e a estrutura produtiva vem sendo questionada por não levar em conta aspectos que atuam como mediadores do efeito da educação na economia. Este trabalho busca a caracterizar alguns desses aspectos, ao analisar como a estrutura produtiva das regiões metropolitanas de São Paulo e de Belo Horizonte, em termos de setores de atividade econômica, absorvem a escolaridade. Dessa forma, este trabalho busca explorar aspectos da demanda por escolaridade por parte das economias metropolitanas em análise. Para tanto, foram usados os dados da Relação Anual de Informações Sociais (RAIS), bem como três formas de metodologia: análise do coeficiente de variação dos salários, análise de correspondência e regressão logística multinomial. / The relationship between education and the economy, both from a theoretical viewpoint and in the formulation of public policy, was largely understood by ideas from the theory of Human Capital in economics, and Modernization Theory in sociology, in terms of supply: an economy to have high economic performance should overcome educational deficiencies of its workforce in order to increase the enrollment of individuals. Currently this linear relationship between education systems and the productive structure is being challenged for not taking into account aspects that act as mediators of the effect of education on the economy. This dissertation seeks to characterize some of these aspects in analyzing how the productive structure of the metropolitan regions of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, in terms of sectors of economic activity, absorb schooling. Thus, this dissertation seeks to examine aspects of the demand for schooling by the metropolitan economies under study. For this, we used data from the Relação Anual de Informações Sociais (RAIS), as well as three types of methodology: analysis of the coefficient of variation of wages, correspondence analysis and multinomial logistic regression.

Com o objetivo de estudar o plantio mecânico da cana-de-açúcar avaliando o desempenho operacional e econômico de uma plantadora de cana, foram realizados ensaios padronizados em condições de campo na Cosan - Costa Pinto, município de Piracicaba, SP, entre outubro de 2005 e outubro de 2006. A variedade de cana foi a SP 80-3280 de 11 meses e primeiro corte e, sob as mesmas condições de campo foram efetuados o plantio mecânico e o convencional (utilizado como testemunha). A densidade de plantio foi de 8,4 e 11,1 t ha¹, para o plantio convencional e mecânico, respectivamente, sendo que o mecânico apresentou menor número de perfilhos e consequentemente um maior número de falhas. Falhas essas, que refletiram na produtividade agrícola, cujos resultados foram de 88,9 para o plantio convencional e de 77,4 t ha¹, para o mecânico. Quanto à avaliação de desempenho operacional, a plantadora Santal PCP2 operou em velocidade de plantio de 5,5 km h¹, exigindo esforço tratório médio de 3060 kgf, consumo efetivo de combustível de 37,80 L h¹ e Capacidade Efetiva de 1,64 ha h¹. Em termos de custos operacionais de plantio, foi, significativamente, mais vantajoso, com custo de R$ 77,60 ha¹, em comparação ao plantio convencional que apresentou valores de R$ 216,20 ha¹, o que representa uma redução da ordem de 64,1%, nos custos da operação, sem envolver custos anteriores (corte, carregamento e transporte de mudas até a área de plantio). Quanto aos aspectos agronômicos envolvidos, pode-se concluir que, os danos provocados pelo fracionamento dos colmos em rebolos, utilizados no plantio mecânico, reduz a quantidade de gemas viáveis, contribuindo para um menor perfilhamento, maior número de falha e menor produtividade apesar da maior densidade de mudas utilizada. / In order to study the mechanized planting of sugarcane and evaluate the operational and economic performance of the sugarcane planter, standardized field assays were conducted at Cosan - Costa Pinto, in Piracicaba, SP, between October 2005 and October 2006. The cane variety used was SP 80-3280 with first harvest at 11 months. Mechanized and conventional (used as the control) planting methods were performed under the same field conditions. The planting density was 8,4 e 11,1 ton ha¹, for the conventional and the mechanized plantings, respectively, with the mechanized planting resulting in a lower tiller stand and, consequently, a higher number of missing plants. Missing plant numbers were reflected in the crop productivity with yields of 88,9 and 77,4 t ha¹ for the conventional and the mechanized planting, respectively. The operational performance analysis demonstrated that the Santal PCP2 planter operated at 5,5 km h¹ during planting, requiring a mean tractor effort of 3060 kgf, with average fuel use of 37,8 L h¹ and effective capacity of 1,64 ha h¹. In relation to total operational cost, the mechanized planting was significantly advantageous in relation to the conventional planting with total cost of R$ 77,60 per ha compared to R$ 216,20 per ha for the conventional planting, a reduction of 64,1% in operational costs, without any consideration of preliminary costs such as sett cutting, loading and transport of the setts to the field. In relation to the agronomic aspects, the damage caused by the fractioning of the sugarcane stalks into setts, which were used for the mechanized planting, reduced the number if viable buds, and contributed to a lower number of tillers, greater number of missing plants, and a lower productivity despite a greater planting density.

Parking and parks are both crucial to downtown economic development. Many studies have shown that downtown parks significantly contribute to increasing surrounding property values and attract residents, businesses and investment. Meanwhile, sufficient available parking promotes accessibility to downtown that also contributes to increasing tax revenue for local government. However, both downtown parks and parking raise problems. Many downtown parks have become places for drug dealing, shooting and vandalism since the decline of downtowns in the 1960s. At the same time, residents and visitors alike oftentimes complain about the lack of parking while in fact parking spaces occupy a large amount of land in downtown. Parks and parking also compete for space in downtown where land value is higher than the rest of the city. To address these issues, several cities have begun to address the relationship between parking and parks by placing them in one place: park on the ground level and parking underneath. This typology is defined as a park-above-parking project in this research. However, this phenomenon has received little scholarly attention. To justify the existing situation of park-above-parking and to contemplate future projects, this research provides a spatial-based investigation to discuss the empirical relationships between social cultural and political-economic impacts, design quality, and related policy-making processes based on four cases. A longitudinal study that traces the direct and indirect impacts of park-above-parking projects was conducted for each case through both qualitative and quantitative methods. This research provides a set of methods for the measurement of contributions of park-above-parking downtown, connections between park quality, social use and adjacent economic growth, recommendations for land use planning policy-making and guidelines for the design of park-above-parking projects.