It has been difficult lately, in the wake of the global financial crisis, to open any given newspaper without finding proof of organizational decline – companies laying off personnel or closing down. The reasons for this action are of course many but the fact that it is never going to be easy to notice an individual and co-worker remains.   The purpose for this research was to; “explore how organisational downsize has been communicated, how the situation is perceived and how the change has affected subjective work motivation among employees and managers”, something which we approached by utilizing a qualitative case study through interviews and an abductive research approach.   The result indicates incongruent opinions between managers and workers as to what had been communicated as well as the extent to which sufficient information about the impending RIF had been provided. There was no sign of general attitude deterioration as a result of the reorganization but there was evidence of a slight decline in motivation for one of the respondents. As to the communication climate there was consensus that vertical communication could easily be undertaken, in either direction.       Keywords: notice, communication, downsize, management, RIF, motivation, trust.

Canada’s Patented Medicines (Notice Of Compliance) Regulations fail to achieve the intended purpose of balancing innovation with timely generic market entry. An examination of the inefficiencies created by the Canadian regulations reveals that key features of U.S. pharmaceutical law should be adopted to improve the disjointed regulatory system that impedes generic competition. Specifically, the regulations should be amended to consolidate multiple proceedings into one cause of action that evaluates patent validity. An economic incentive to challenge weak patents should also be introduced in Canada. These features encourage competition without deterring pharmaceutical research and development because only patents that are not truly inventive will be invalidated after a full inquiry. As such, the intellectual property laws will continue to satisfy Canada’s international intellectual property obligations and protect innovative medicines and allow recovery of costs and monopoly profits to new and useful pharmaceutical products.

Canada’s Patented Medicines (Notice Of Compliance) Regulations fail to achieve the intended purpose of balancing innovation with timely generic market entry. An examination of the inefficiencies created by the Canadian regulations reveals that key features of U.S. pharmaceutical law should be adopted to improve the disjointed regulatory system that impedes generic competition. Specifically, the regulations should be amended to consolidate multiple proceedings into one cause of action that evaluates patent validity. An economic incentive to challenge weak patents should also be introduced in Canada. These features encourage competition without deterring pharmaceutical research and development because only patents that are not truly inventive will be invalidated after a full inquiry. As such, the intellectual property laws will continue to satisfy Canada’s international intellectual property obligations and protect innovative medicines and allow recovery of costs and monopoly profits to new and useful pharmaceutical products.

A falta de qualidade das obras públicas no Brasil povoa os noticiários diários. Os exemplos são abundantes, atribuídos a contratos mal elaborados, falhas graves nos projetos ou mesmo à ausência desses, licitações frustradas, obras interrompidas e superfaturadas, desvios de recursos e corrupção. Tentar compreender melhor essa situação é a motivação desta dissertação, que discorre sobre a contratação pública de projetos de edificações e, para isso, estuda o projeto e sua encomenda. A licitação é um procedimento obrigatório para a celebração de qualquer contrato público. Entre outros requisitos, a lei de licitações exige que a proposta seja a “mais vantajosa” para a administração, algo que tem levado à adoção indiscriminada do critério do “menor preço”, sendo incoerente com a doutrina jurídica e contrariando as pesquisas científicas, que consideram o projeto relevante para a qualidade final da obra. O problema de pesquisa questiona exatamente por que a Administração Pública tem contratado por menor preço um serviço que deveria ser contratado por critérios técnicos e de qualidade? O objetivo da dissertação é propor uma explicação para essa situação a partir de revisão bibliográfica, análise da legislação, realização de pesquisa documental com editais de licitação, aplicação de questionários de opinião com arquitetos e outros atores, além de entrevista direta com o autor da lei de licitações. Finalmente, o trabalho comprova a relevância do projeto, mas também desvenda sua irrelevância identificando que o menor preço não é o único problema e, mesmo que “todos” afirmem ser contra o menor preço, o povo segue pagando caro por projetos baratos. / The qualityless of public works in Brazil is currently in the daily news. Examples of it are plentiful, attributed to poorly drafted contracts, serious failures or even absence of projects, frustrated bids, discontinued and overpriced works, waste of resources and corruption. The motivation of this dissertation is trying to better understand this situation, which focuses on the public contracting of building projects and, for this, studies the project itself and its order. Bidding is a mandatory procedure for obtaining any public contract. Among other requirements, the bidding law requires that the proposal be the "most advantageous" for the administration, which ledded to the indiscriminate adoption of the "lowest price" criteria, incoerent with the juridical doctrine and opposite to scientific research, which consider the project relevant to the final quality of the building work. The research problem questions why the Public Administration has contracted for a lower price a service that should be contracted by technical and quality criteria? The objective of the dissertation is to propose an explanation for this situation from a bibliographical review, an analysis of the legislation, a documental research on bid’s documents, an opinion questionaries applying to architects and other actors, as well as direct interview with the author of the bidding law. Finally, the research proves the relevance of the project, but also reveals its irrelevance by identifying that the lowest price is not the only problem, and even if "everyone" claims to be against the lowest price, people continue to pay expensive for cheap projects.

A falta de qualidade das obras públicas no Brasil povoa os noticiários diários. Os exemplos são abundantes, atribuídos a contratos mal elaborados, falhas graves nos projetos ou mesmo à ausência desses, licitações frustradas, obras interrompidas e superfaturadas, desvios de recursos e corrupção. Tentar compreender melhor essa situação é a motivação desta dissertação, que discorre sobre a contratação pública de projetos de edificações e, para isso, estuda o projeto e sua encomenda. A licitação é um procedimento obrigatório para a celebração de qualquer contrato público. Entre outros requisitos, a lei de licitações exige que a proposta seja a “mais vantajosa” para a administração, algo que tem levado à adoção indiscriminada do critério do “menor preço”, sendo incoerente com a doutrina jurídica e contrariando as pesquisas científicas, que consideram o projeto relevante para a qualidade final da obra. O problema de pesquisa questiona exatamente por que a Administração Pública tem contratado por menor preço um serviço que deveria ser contratado por critérios técnicos e de qualidade? O objetivo da dissertação é propor uma explicação para essa situação a partir de revisão bibliográfica, análise da legislação, realização de pesquisa documental com editais de licitação, aplicação de questionários de opinião com arquitetos e outros atores, além de entrevista direta com o autor da lei de licitações. Finalmente, o trabalho comprova a relevância do projeto, mas também desvenda sua irrelevância identificando que o menor preço não é o único problema e, mesmo que “todos” afirmem ser contra o menor preço, o povo segue pagando caro por projetos baratos. / The qualityless of public works in Brazil is currently in the daily news. Examples of it are plentiful, attributed to poorly drafted contracts, serious failures or even absence of projects, frustrated bids, discontinued and overpriced works, waste of resources and corruption. The motivation of this dissertation is trying to better understand this situation, which focuses on the public contracting of building projects and, for this, studies the project itself and its order. Bidding is a mandatory procedure for obtaining any public contract. Among other requirements, the bidding law requires that the proposal be the "most advantageous" for the administration, which ledded to the indiscriminate adoption of the "lowest price" criteria, incoerent with the juridical doctrine and opposite to scientific research, which consider the project relevant to the final quality of the building work. The research problem questions why the Public Administration has contracted for a lower price a service that should be contracted by technical and quality criteria? The objective of the dissertation is to propose an explanation for this situation from a bibliographical review, an analysis of the legislation, a documental research on bid’s documents, an opinion questionaries applying to architects and other actors, as well as direct interview with the author of the bidding law. Finally, the research proves the relevance of the project, but also reveals its irrelevance by identifying that the lowest price is not the only problem, and even if "everyone" claims to be against the lowest price, people continue to pay expensive for cheap projects.

Notice of termination of employment This thesis aims for closer analysis of current legislation of notice of termination of employment. The thesis also refers to other ways of termination of employment as it is important to put notice of termination into a broader context. Second aim of this thesis is to offer proposals of amendments de lege ferenda. These proposals should reflect the protective nature of labour law as well as endeavour to adjust labour law to modern needs of flexibility. The thesis consists of eight chapters. The first chapter introduces labour law in its basics and describes its relation to civil law from both historical and modern perspectives. Second chapter reveals and describes the structure of both national and international sources of labour law. Third chapter analyses basic principles that affect employment relationship and links them to basic principles of civil law. In fourth chapter, the thesis focuses on other forms of termination of employment in current legislation. Following four chapters are the core of this thesis. Fifth chapter describes current legislation of notice of termination of employment including notice of termination by both employee and by employer, all legal reasons from which employer can terminate an employment and any other possible limitations...

This dissertation addresses three questions about administrative rulemaking: • Do comments submitted on proposed rules vary in identifiable ways? • Do these differences directly relate to the likelihood that recommendations will be associated with changes to regulations? • Can these characteristics be incorporated into a model that accurately predicts whether or not suggestions will coincide with changes to administrative rules? Using data collected from the Commonwealth of Virginia's Regulatory Town Hall, I analyze 2,534 comments that address 67 regulations proposed by state agencies during an 11-year period. I find that submissions do differ in meaningful ways. I also find statistically significant evidence that those differences are related to the probability that a requested change coincides with a subsequent modification to a rule. The principal result of this research is a model that predicts with a high degree of accuracy the outcome of participants' recommendations to alter proposed regulations. I also demonstrate the implications of these results and how failure to account for these differences undermines the legitimacy of conclusions that can be drawn from studies of notice-and-comment rulemaking. The primary contribution of this dissertation is methodological, but the empirical evidence presented here also raises questions about the value of citizen participation in notice-and-comment rulemaking in its current form. As a result, it challenges contentions that participation contributes to the democratic legitimacy of bureaucracy, serves as a safeguard against the influences of organized interests, or improves the substantive quality of administrative decisions. / Ph. D.

Advance notice, a warning of an upcoming demand or transition, is a common antecedent intervention used to reduce problem behavior and to increase compliance in educational settings. However, research conducted in the past decade has failed to uphold the efficacy of advance notice with either typically developing or developmentally disabled children. This study analyzed the frequency of noncompliance and problem behavior associated with transitions in two preschool children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder by applying advance notice, guided compliance and social praise, and advance notice combined with guided compliance and social praise during consecutive treatment phases. Compliance increased for all participants during phases including an advance notice component; however, problem behaviors increased as well, suggesting that while advance notice may increase compliance for some learners, it may also occasion problem behaviors. / Applied Behavioral Analysis

The purpose of this final thesis is to provide the outline of the effective legal regulation of the lease of the property for the business purposes. After short introduction of the lease as a legal institute itself and its usage in business area of life, the thesis then concerns itself with the particular questions that are subject to legal regulation of the lease of the property for business purposes constituted mainly by the Civil Code. Amongst these questions the basic necessities of the lease agreement that are required by the law are described first, then the mutual rights and obligations of the contracting parties and finally the matters related to the termination of the lease.

To be able to provide data collecting services to customers, service provides are required by law to design privacy policies and present their content to users as privacy notices that informs the user on privacy consequences and demonstrate that an explicit informed consent of the user has been collected before processing of the data. However, despite the increase in data collection by services and hence increase of privacy impact, yet privacy notices do not implement proper mechanisms that can assure that data subjects are well informed and their consent are provided with comprehension. The root of this problem is the fact that typically only theoretical description of what consent is and what it involves is offered by existing literature but no “practical” design guides are available for decision makers and practitioners on how to effectively integrate a targeted consent level in privacy notices. This thesis work addresses the need for explicit integration of consent in privacy notice designs by presenting the Extended Privacy Notice Design Space (XPNDS) construct that guides on explicitly incorporating different levels of consent in privacy notices. This thesis uses theories of eye movement in reading and technical references from computer vision for comprehension and attention determination to prove the feasibility of integrating higher level of consent in the design space that may guide to assured informed consent. The construct can be used by managers to communicate, practitioners to design, and regulators to analyze informed consent incorporation in privacy notice designs. Unlike most works available in the literature on consent which only provide theoretical opinion of what informed consent is, this work cast the conceptual consent guidelines in to a practical privacy notice design space to provide an XPNDS that guides to the practicality of achieving assured informed consent in privacy notices. It is the hope of the author that the XPNDS will be useful to both practitioners and academicians in incorporating informed consent in privacy notice designs to an assured level. / <p>Validerat; 20160622 (global_studentproject_submitter)</p>