Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2006 / The study conducted was based on the political and administrative interface in the Department of Education in Limpopo. This provincial Department has experienced challenges that originated from the offices of both the Executive Authority and the Accounting officer. This grey area in the Department had almost paralysed the whole system and it became imperative that it be studied in an attempt to find possible solutions. An extensive scientific body of knowledge from different scholars and their findings contributed to a new direction recommended for consideration. The findings presented have the capacity to hamstring any organisation. The findings reveal, among others, that: the complementary bureaucratic model is threatened by time, and its challenges are enormous; there is little knowledge among politicians and administrators regarding interface matters; administrators do not have a global picture regarding the result of unethical conduct; more research on interface matters needs to be done and results published for the public to be educated while politicians and administrators should be continuously trained; the fluidity of the interface needs continuous focus to avoid plunging the department into an untenable situation.

Published Article / The South African public service has unfortunately rapidly gained a reputation for inefficiency, corruption and incompetence. Government has therefore introduced a variety of legislative measures to ensure that the public service would play a meaningful role in a well-functioning country, one that maximises its development potential and the welfare of its citizens. Examples of these measures are the Single Public Service (SPS) and the Local Government Turnaround Strategy (LGTAS), two seemingly contradictory measures to accomplish the above-mentioned objectives. Concerns that a SPS was a move towards recentralisation by central government were countered by the LGTAS to strengthen local government per se. It was found that both projects endeavour facilitative measures for improved coordination and integration of services in local government to provide efficient and effective services.

In the first paper, using a dataset of the records of Texas Real Estate Agents, I reexamine the findings of Hsieh and Moretti (2003) regarding the inefficiency of free entry in real estate industry: first, I point out one important source of misidentification in that paper's analysis of the relationship between home prices and the number of real estate agents in a city. This misidentification stems from not including the ratio of houses sold in a city to its labor force size as an explanatory variable. Failure to account for this variable will result in inflated coefficient for the effect of home prices on the percentage of real estate agents in a city's labor force. Second, I analyze the effect of home prices on productivity of real estate agents. Empirical evidence supports theory prediction of inverse relationship between home prices and productivity of its real estate agents (measured as the number of houses sold per agent) and the empirical results in Hsieh and Moretti (2003). Third, I investigate the relationship between the extra wages of real estate agents (defined as average earning net of agents' outside option) and home prices in a city. In support for free entry, I find no evidence of any such relationship. In theory, free entry potentially leads to social inefficiency. This paper finds strong empirical evidence consistent with excess entry into Texas Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry and studies the effects of heterogeneity and future uncertainty on such inefficiencies. I develop a dynamic model of entry and exit with heterogeneous agents and modify the predictions of the earlier literature. I show that the heterogeneity among (real estate) agents results in a weaker relationship between the real estate commission fees and the number of real estate agents. I also show that the models developed for static cases in the previous papers are special cases of the more general model in this paper. The model allows us to explain the lower business stealing effect compared to static and homogeneous models that is observed in the data. To address the issue of excess entry, I separate the business stealing effect from demand driven entry and find that on average 75 percent of entry is due to business stealing. To evaluate free entry, I control for agents' outside options and find that the extra wages of the real estate agents do not vary with housing prices. The objective of the third paper is to study the determinants of commission rates in the two-sided market of real estate brokerage industry and explain the emergence of the MLS and its impact on commission rates. In addition to their commission rates, real estate agencies decide on their MLS policies as well: they can either list the property with the MLS and share information about it, or not list the property with the MLS. If a property is listed with the MLS, all MLS subscribers can see the listing and send their potential buyers to see that property. Potential buyers can go to any agency to purchase such a property. If the property is \textit{not} listed with the MLS, to buy a house, a buyer must go to the same agency that the seller has signed up with. Since sellers pay the commission fees, and buyers no longer have to go to the same agency, with MLS listing, buyers choose the closest agency regardless of the commission rates charged by the agencies. Therefore, changes in the commission rates only change the affiliation of the sellers and not that of the buyers. This leads to a softer competition under MLS listing as agencies compete only in the seller side of the market. The softer competition and resulting higher commission rates are desirable to the agencies. They prefer the MLS listing outcome and given the optimal strategies after observing each other's listing decisions, agencies weakly prefer listing to no listing. I show that the one period game has two Nash Equilibria in which either both real estate agencies choose to list their houses with the MLS, or both decide not to list their houses with the MLS. The no listing equilibrium forces buyers to work through that agency's agents and effectively ties the both sides of the market. The higher commission rate equilibrium of the game allows buyers to choose either agency and reduces the competition to the sellers side. Softer competition in turn, results in higher equilibrium commission rates and higher profits along the equilibrium path. / text

It is already known that one can always find a set of measurements on any two-qubit entangled state that will lead to a violation of the CHSH inequality. We provide an explicit state in terms of the angle between Alice's choice of measurements and the angle between Bob's choice of measurements, such that the CHSH inequality is always violated provided Alice's or Bob's choice of inputs are not collinear. We prove that inequalities with a corresponding Bell operator written as a linear combination of tensor products of Pauli matrices, excluding the identity, will generate the most nonlocal correlations using maximally entangled states in our experiment. From this result and a proposition from Horodecki et. al., we are able to construct the state that generates these optimal correlations. To achieve this state in a lab, one party must rotate their qubit using the orthogonal operation we provide and also rotate their Bloch sphere such that all their measurements lie in the same plane. We provide a comprehensive study of how Bell inequalities change when experiments introduce error via imperfect detection efficiency. The original cases of perfect efficiency are covered first and then a more realistic approach, when inefficient detectors are used, will follow. It is shown that less entanglement is needed to demonstrate more nonlocality in some Clasure-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) experiments when detector inefficiency is introduced. An example of this is shown for any given specific set of measurements in the CHSH Bell experiment. This occurs when one party has a detector of efficiency for each choice of input and the other party makes projective measurements. The efficiency can be pushed down to fifty percent while still violating the CHSH inequality, and for the experimental set-up illustrated, there is more nonlocality with less entanglement. Furthermore, it is shown that if the first party has an imperfect detector for only one choice of inputs rather than two, the efficiency can be brought down arbitrarily close to zero percent while still violating the CHSH inequality. Historically, nonlocality and entanglement were viewed as two equivalent resources, but recently this equality has come under question; these results further support this fundamental difference. Further more, we introduce Mermin's game in the case of relaxed conditions. The original constraints were that when the detectors in separate labs of a two-qubit experiment are in the same setting, then the results should be the same. We require that the outcomes are the same at least part of the time, given by some epsilon variable. Initially, one could find a maximum violation of one-fourth by allowing to parties to share the singlet state and have measurement settings one-hundred and twenty degrees apart from one another. By allowing some epsilon error in the perfect correlations regime, one can find a maximum violation of minus one plus the square root of two using the singlet state and measurement inputs that achieve Tsirelson's bound for the CHSH experiment. The reason is that we show Mermin's inequality is technically the CHSH inequality "in disguise", but with using constraints the CHSH experiment does not use. We derive Mermin's inequality under new conditions and give the projective measurements needed to violate maximally.

A proposta deste trabalho é atribuir à arbitragem funcionalidades contratuais e institucionais que ultrapassam a simples solução de disputas privadas. Com base na literatura econômica e jurídica, constrói-se a previsão de arbitragem como uma cláusula contratual capaz de estimular a confiança, reduzir oportunismos e criar uma comunidade de interesses a favorecer o cumprimento das obrigações, especialmente em se tratando de contratos de natureza relacional. No âmbito institucional, a cláusula compromissória é tomada como instrumento apto a gerar maior coordenação social entre os indivíduos, com impactos positivos sobre o grau de investimentos realizados, a confiança entre os agentes envolvidos e a segurança jurídica. Para confirmação do argumento realiza-se estudo empírico na indústria de construção e infraestrutura, bem como estudo de caso a respeito de projeto de desenvolvimento estratégico denominado Cairu-2030. O objetivo é o confronto entre a prática da arbitragem e as hipóteses teóricas lançadas, para chegar-se a uma visão mais realista acerca do instituto da arbitragem. Com base nesse confronto defende-se a necessidade de refuncionalização do instituto, com resgate de sua ética de confiança e de uma ótica de aprendizado institucional. A refuncionalização permite que teoria e prática se alinhem, com prevalência de economias sobre as deseconomias da arbitragem. / The purpose of this work is to attribute to arbitration certain contractual and institutional functionalities that would allow the institute to go beyond a method of private dispute resolution. With grounds in the economic and legal literatures, the arbitration clause is construed as a contractual provision capable of stimulating trust, reducing opportunism and creating a community of interest favouring the compliance of obligations, particularly in the context of relational contracts. In the institutional perspective, the arbitration clause is seen as a provision that can cope with collective action dilemmas, with a positive impact in terms of investment, trust and legal certainty. To test the argument, the work develops an empirical test in the construction and infrastructure industry, as well as a case study in the strategic development plan named Cairu-2030. The intention is to confront the practice of arbitration vis-à-vis the theoretical hypothesis studied, in order to achieve a realistic perspective on arbitration. It is argued that arbitration needs to undergo a process of re-functionalization to recover its original ethics of trust and its perspective of institutional learning. The argument of re-functionalization is the way to align theory and practice of arbitration, so that the economies can prevail over the diseconomies of arbitration.

Purpose The purpose of the thesis is to identify problems cooperating departments suffer from, create solutions and discover ways to successfully implement the changes. A case study of Ekmans AB has been conducted to accomplish this. Background In today’s business world competition is fiercer than ever. New companies enter the market and new technologies and working methods are introduced which requires the companies to work proactivelyto foresee opportunities. But even if the companies are aware of all these external factors, they also need to look internally to see what they can improve and make more efficient in order to stay competitive. Therefore, it is important for companies to be ready to change both structure and culture to be more efficient. Method The method is based on a qualitative approach with semi-structuredi nterviews. A total of 20 interviews were conducted. The interviewees possess different positions within the company, ranging from the top management down through the organizational hierarchy. Conclusion The study shows that problems can arise from miscommunication, outdated ways of handling order receiving and a poorly chosen organizational structure. To solve these problems companies has to realize the importance of change. When modification the organizationa company has to take the organizational culture into consideration. It is important that the employees feel that they are a part of the change instead of just seeing it from sideline. Moreover, the management has to make sure they are thoroughly in their work regarding change; they have to follow up each alteration to make sure that it is actually implemented. Moreover, standardization is the key for organizations wishing improve and become more efficient. The result of the study showed that it is first when these criterions are fulfilled that the company can expect to successfully implement changes.

In this dissertation, I analyze the effects of competition in education markets. In my first essay, I analyze the effects of different concentration measures on school personnel salaries. I find evidence that principals have more bargaining power over their salaries than teachers in Washington that through rent-sharing, principals start getting positive returns from increasing concentration at lower levels of concentration than that of teachers. Moreover, I present that the pattern of teacher salaries versus concentration in Washington is similar to that in Texas, but the inflection point in Washington is at substantially lower levels of concentration-a finding which can be attributed to Washington's being a union state versus Texas's being a right-to-work-state. In my second essay, I examine the effects of various measures of competition on school district cost inefficiency in a stochastic frontier framework. My results show that cost frontier is U-shaped in Texas with large positive returns to the scale over a relatively big range and mild diseconomies of scale over an extended range. In addition, I find that school district cost inefficiency increases significantly when market concentration increases. Furthermore, I present the competitive effect/scale effect trade-off through a couple of simulation exercises. The findings from both of my studies show that the effects of competition are barely sensitive to measuring the competition with different sets of relevant competitors. On the other hand, sensitivity of the effects of competition to using different definitions of the education markets is significant. Yet, the range of these estimated effects is relatively small, and the sign and the significance of the effect of competition generally do not change when a meaningful definition of education markets is employed to measure concentration. Furthermore, I present that the concentration measures employed in my essays are endogenous. I control for the endogeneity with several instrumental variables including degrees of lagged educational outputs in the neighboring schools, lagged education market characteristics, and counts of streams. My results imply that the hypothesized effects of competition may be underestimated due to the endogeneity. While the plausibility of competitive effect's being underestimated bolsters the importance of the competitive effects I find, it also strengthens my criticism of using uni-dimensional concentration indices as indicators of competition in the education markets.

<p><strong>Purpose </strong></p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to identify problems cooperating departments suffer from, create solutions and discover ways to successfully implement the changes. A case study of Ekmans AB has been conducted to accomplish this.</p><p><strong>Background </strong></p><p>In today’s business world competition is fiercer than ever. New companies enter the market and new technologies and working methods are introduced which requires the companies to work proactivelyto foresee opportunities. But even if the companies are aware of all these external factors, they also need to look internally to see what they can improve and make more efficient in order to stay competitive. Therefore, it is important for companies to be ready to change both structure and culture to be more efficient.</p><p><strong>Method </strong></p><p>The method is based on a qualitative approach with semi-structuredi nterviews. A total of 20 interviews were conducted. The interviewees possess different positions within the company, ranging from the top management down through the organizational hierarchy.</p><p><strong>Conclusion </strong></p><p>The study shows that problems can arise from miscommunication, outdated ways of handling order receiving and a poorly chosen organizational structure. To solve these problems companies has to realize the importance of change. When modification the organizationa company has to take the organizational culture into consideration. It is important that the employees feel that they are a part of the change instead of just seeing it from sideline. Moreover, the management has to make sure they are thoroughly in their work regarding change; they have to follow up each alteration to make sure that it is actually implemented. Moreover, standardization is the key for organizations wishing improve and become more efficient. The result of the study showed that it is first when these criterions are fulfilled that the company can expect to successfully implement changes.</p>

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abstract: The construction industry in India suffers from major time and cost overruns. Data from government and industry reports suggest that projects suffer from 20 to 25 percent time and cost overruns. Waste of resources has been identified as a major source of inefficiency. Despite a substantial increase in the past few years, demand for professionals and contractors still exceeds supply by a large margin. The traditional methods adopted in the Indian construction industry may not suffice the needs of this dynamic environment, as they have produced large inefficiencies. Innovative ways of procurement and project management can satisfy the needs aspired to as well as bring added value. The problems faced by the Indian construction industry are very similar to those faced by other developing countries. The objective of this paper is to discuss and analyze the economic concerns, inefficiencies and investigate a model that both explains the Indian construction industry structure and provides a framework to improve efficiencies. The Best Value (BV) model is examined as an approach to be adopted in lieu of the traditional approach. This could result in efficient construction projects by minimizing cost overruns and delays, which until now have been a rarity. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Construction 2013