CSR has become a more frequent activity in the sport industry. Several sports organisations have adopted this socially acceptable concept, making it present during sporting events and matches. Today, CSR has been developed to a competitive advantage and those organisations who conduct their CSR activities might be able to obtain organisational goals outside the pitch. Therefore, it is important to understand and establish the underlying factors behind this adoption, so stakeholder can grasp the goals. With the support of Swedish sports organisations CSR the goal was to discover the influencing factors for membership-owned sports organisations adoption of CSR. This study used a qualitative, multiple case study approach to gather the information from the relevant sports organisations. Interviews were the main source of the empirical data collection. The results were identified via the stakeholder perspective, resource-based view and determinants of corporate social responsibility in professional sport. In conclusion the major findings illustrate that Swedish sports organisations are mainly influenced by internal factors in the adoption of CSR.

D.Phil. / In both developed and under-developed countries, family businesses are the most prevalent, best-performing and resilient expressions of applied entrepreneurship. Despite this, however, the general impression one gathers from both the academic and the popular literature is a negative one, suggesting that family businesses tend to be fragile, transient of nature, and prone to destructive, internal conflict. Consequently, the positive performances and valuable socio-economic contributions that family businesses do actually generate in global economies, are inadequately acknowledged and largely inconsistent with the negative images that prevail in the bulk of the literature on the subject. Mainstream family-business theory, known as the orthodox approach, regards the family and the business as separate entities. The current study is conducted in opposition to this view, preferring the heterodox approach, which acknowledges family and business as an interrelated, virtually indivisible unit of productive and profitable association between the two constituent parts. In successful family firms, the business and the family seem to be inseparable. This homogeneity is termed a "unified systemic" relationship, and the reciprocal inter-relationship between family and business is regarded by the "systems" school of thought as the leading factor contributing to the generally superior performance of family businesses. Central to the unified, systemic model is the concept of "familiness". This characteristic underpins the co-ordination of the family inter-action with the firm, leading to flexibility, resilience, sustainability and superior performance. The current study does not attempt to deny the difficulties that confront family businesses. This would be unreasonable in the light of an alleged 30-percent-onaverage generation-transition survival rate in family businesses. However, the study has chosen to focus on a more positive view of family-business relationships, acknowledging an inseparable association between the family and the business, and the pro-active management thereof. More specifically, this study investigates the role of familiness in the success and failure of family-business groups in South Africa. Because of the vastness of the field, the study does not attempt to include familybusiness groups on a global scale. For the purposes of the current study, familiness is investigated as the development of, and the relationships formed between, founder capital, family capital and generation capital, leading to family-business-capital-behaviour, as these concepts are defined in the study. To facilitate this investigation, a conceptual model, comprising fourteen different, developmental channels, was created. Collectively, the model represents familiness in all the different phases of growth and advancement of family-business groups (see Familiness Transmission of Capital Model, Figure 2.14, p. 86). In evaluating the model, semi-structured interviews were used to do a qualitative investigation of all fourteen proposed transmission channels. Eight of the most prominent and influential family-business groups in South Africa participated in the study. Family-business groups were specifically chosen for the current study because they are more complex than smaller family businesses and secondly, because it is virtually impossible to gain access to the family-business owners of multinational, multi-billion-rand enterprises. The sample of family-business groups selected for the current study had already achieved successful transitions through their second, third and fourth generations. The results of the current study indicate that the concept of familiness appears to play a vital role in the success or failure of generation-transmission in the eight prominent South African family-business groups investigated. More specifically, it would seem that the systemic inter-relatedness between the family and the business, through the concept of familiness, plays a pivotal role in the various transmission channels that lead not only to the advanced success of family businesses, but also to the successful transition of the business to the succeeding generations of the founding family. The findings of the current study endorse the heterodox view that the family and the business cannot be separated, but should rather be seen as an interactive system with unique, collectable resources. The findings respond to a need created, according to Bornheim (2000:163), by the principal deficiency in the family organisation literature, namely a theory that explains the developmental stages of each generation succession. ii The study concludes that family businesses seem to engender a "soul" into the functioning of such enterprises by means of service leadership in eight areas of operation, identified by means of a conditional matrix, namely: customer-care; social responsibility; culture; innovative behaviour; leadership-by-example; legacy of family ownership; passion for the family business; and the treatment of employees as if they are members of the family. The concept of familiness engendering a "soul" into a business, offers a possible explanation for the superior performance of family businesses when this is compared with the general performance of non-family businesses. Several recommendations and suggestions are offered for further research on the topic.

The state-owned enterprise is a type of a legal entity which is used in the Czech Republic as an alternative to founding of state-owned joint-stock companies. While the state-owned enterprise serves as a one of the possible ways of managing the state property, it is used to fulfil not only economical tasks, but also other kinds of state interest, such as social or security ones. The legal regulation of the state-owned enterprise recently undergone significant changes in reaction to the recodification of the civil law and the law of commercial corporations. The goal of this thesis called "State-owned enterprise and its property" is to analyse the legal regulation concerning the state-owned enterprise and the management of the state property performed by this legal entity in the context of other influential acts, to pinpoint the shortcomings and problems of the current legal regulation, to evaluate the nature of the state-owned enterprise as a legal entity, to determine the nature of the legal phenomenon of the right to manage the property of state and to evaluate the usefulness of the state-owned enterprise as a separate type of legal entity. This thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first two chapters deal with the development of the state-owned enterprise as a type of legal entity including...

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis examines the trajectories of agrarian change on community-owned commercial farms in the Levubu Valley in the northern part of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Levubu is a locality where fertile land was developed and made highly productive after state-led dispossession of African communities. White farmers were initially resettled on a state-run irrigation scheme, but later became independent large-scale commercial farmers linked to global agro-food markets. The thesis focusses on four Communal Property Associations (CPAs) that acquired ownership of farms in Levubu. Government’s post-apartheid land restitution programme required the CPAs to enter into ‘strategic partnership’ agreements with agribusiness companies. Resettlement of beneficiaries on these farms was ruled out in an attempt to sustain existing production systems and levels of employment. After these partnerships collapsed, CPAs have attempted to run the farms themselves, through operating companies employing professional farm managers. Using key concepts from agrarian political economy, the thesis seeks to understand the dynamics of production and social reproduction on the farms and the political tensions that have arisen since restitution occurred. It also explores how this form of land restitution has impacted on the livelihoods of farmworkers. The study combines intensive (or qualitative) research methods, involving indepth interviews, focus groups and direct observations, and extensive (or quantitative) approaches, mainly in the form of a farmworker household survey undertaken in two communities. This research design has allowed for ‘retrospective’ analysis of changes over time to be complemented by ‘circumspective’ analysis of the relations and dynamics of property, production and power on community-owned farms in Levubu. The main findings of the study are that neither joint venture companies nor community-owned farming enterprises have been able to distribute dividend payments to claimant community members as yet. Rather, when profits have been realised they have largely been invested back into productive enterprises. Few other benefits have been received either, other than the preferential employment of some claimant farmworkers on the farms, a small number as managers or supervisors. Although additional jobs were created in the initial stages of restitution, these enterprises have struggled to maintain employment levels. Poor management decisions have meant that increased labour costs have not been accompanied by increases in productivity and output. Severe tensions and conflicts have arisen within CPAs, manifested in different forms of identity politics and competing ‘modes of belonging’. Tensions in communityowned large-scale farming enterprises are explained by the contradictory unity of capital and labour within community-owned enterprises, with difficult choices to be made between enhancing social reproduction or ensuring accumulation and profitability. These combine with complex processes of identification in socio-political struggles around access to and control of key resources. These findings suggest that policy makers should re-examine assumptions in relation to community-owned farming enterprises and explore mechanisms through which individual beneficiary households can realise more significant benefits. One policy option might be to seek the complementarity of large-scale commercial farming and smallholder farming systems, both on land restored to CPAs through restitution and in communal areas.

Magister Legum - LLM / Corporate governance reform is an important aspect of broader reforms aimed at securing an environment attractive to both domestic and foreign investors and that enhances the benefits of investment to society. Of particular relevance is the relation between corporate governance practices and the increasingly international character of investment. If a country decides to reap the full benefits of the global capital market, and if it decides to attract long-term patient capital, good corporate governance arrangements must be credible, well understood across borders and adhere to internationally accepted principles. Equally important is the underlying importance of institution building for developing countries. In most cases poverty goes hand in hand with the lack of proper institutions, a vicious circle of mismanagement, inefficiencies, expropriation and corruption. The lack of properly functioning State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) as institutions or corporations, impacts directly on growth by limiting the availability of debt and equity investment. It also impacts on the distribution of income within a society. With more transparency and accountability the directors and executives will have less of an opportunity to fatten their bank accounts at the expense of all the other stakeholders and the society as a whole. The review of corporate governance reforms done in this research includes statutory reforms, development of codes of conduct and best practice, and institutional reforms will give a better evaluation of South Africa‘s corporate governance reforms within its own SOEs structures that will be judged against internationally accepted standards to consider the best interests of South Africa and its citizens. The positive and negative consequences that can stem from strengthening corporate governance regulations and assist in determining the best possible model for South African SOEs will form part of the recommendations of this research.

Magister Economicae - MEcon / China has embarked on a wide range of economic reforms in the past thirty years. One of the major reforms was to restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into public listed companies (PLCs) to improve the performance and quality of corporate governance of SOEs. However, the unique phenomenon of China’s equity market is that the state continues to hold a controlling stake in PLCs with less than 40% of shares tradable in the stock market. This seriously affects the performance and quality of corporate governance of China’s PLCs. This mini-thesis investigates the effects of split-share structure reform on SOEs in China, with particular focus on an analysis of the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance of listed companies. By using a sample of the top 50 companies based on the ranking of the 2004 Fortune top 100 PLCs, a negative correlation was found between the state ownership structure and firm performance of China PLCs before the announcement of split-share structure reform. However, by using the same samples and techniques, the analysis shows that the improvement in the diversified ownership structure had a positive impact on firm performance in China PLCs after the reform.

The question of loyalty in autocratic regimes has drawn a sustained scholarly interest, especially with the resilience of many of these regimes over most of world history and over the past few decades in particular. Autocratic leaders need to secure the support of their militaries to survive in office and to minimize the risk of a coup. Among the commonly employed mechanisms in this regard is the extension of extra-budgetary financial rewards, including ‘Military-Owned Businesses (MOBs).’ Nevertheless, under the increasingly significant threat of an uprising from below, military defection remains the key for the success of the revolution. The question then becomes: under what conditions would a military defect from an autocratic ruling alliance? Although many answers have been proposed to solve this puzzle, an increasing number of cases are proving them insufficient. Alternatively, this project presents one novel answer to this question, which is: militaries are “defection-proofed” in the face of mass uprisings when they develop financial dependency on the regime. By contrast, when the management of the extra-budgetary resource for the military, i.e. MOBs, becomes the exclusive domain of the military and independent from the regime, the military is expected to defect. This proposed hypothesis represents a contribution to the democratization literature, both its installation, i.e. underlining a ‘pro-democracy’ capacity of the military in removing the dictator, as well as its consolidation, i.e. handling the legacy of the autocratic regime after the transition. This hypothesis is tested comparatively against the cases of mass protests in China (1989), Indonesia (1998), Thailand (2006), Iran (2009), and Egypt (2011). This comparative analysis represents another contribution of this study, bringing together a diverse array of cases unexpected to have much in common. Analysis draws on a mix of both primary resources collected from the field along with secondary materials. The comparisons are made considering the type of civil-military relations in each case, the size and type of financial rewards controlled by the military, and their effect, if any, on its decision to repress or defect based on the interaction between the military and the dictator.

The purpose of this multi-case study research was to determine variables that affect The Perceived Success of Fair Family Employee Compensation in South African family businesses. Five propositions: Human Capital, Outside Advice, Succession Planning, Fairness and Family Harmony were tested and as a result, Human Capital, Fairness and Family Harmony were deduced to have a positive influence, while Outside Advice and Succession Planning had a non-significant influence. The present research effort begun with an in-depth literature review on family business and the variables: Human Capital, Outside Advice, Succession Planning, Fairness, Family Harmony and Fair Family Employee Compensation, followed by a qualitative explanatory multi-case study research design using embedded units of analysis and provided a valuable insight into compensation issues regarding family businesses in South Africa. Replication logic was used to generalise the results and it was recommended that the preliminary theory regarding Outside Advice and Succession Planning be revised and tested with another set of cases, while the results indicated that Human Capital, Fairness and Family Harmony could be generalised to the broader theory.

The aim of the study was to understand whether family businesses and non-family business differ from one another regarding green business and environmental issues. Green business issues are of global importance for the continued existence of business within the world. Businesses do not exist in isolation but within the context of the environment within which they function. Business has an impact on the environment and the environment has an impact on business. Furthermore, family businesses constitute a large part of the world economy and estimates range from 60-90 percent of GDP contributed by family businesses. In the South African context family businesses also form a significant part of the business environment. A literature study was conducted. The study identified five factors and considered each of these factors in the study. The five factors are: Green Business; Values; Stewardship; Succession; and, Stakeholders. In addition to a literature, primary research was conducted and data were collected by means of a questionnaire that collected data on the factors identified as well as some biographical information, including race, age and the sectors in which the respondents operated. The study’s findings correspond with the literature study, although no clear difference was found between family business and non-family business relating to green business and environmental issues. Family businesses do however believe that they are stewards of the environment and need to care for the environment.

Family businesses are prevalent in South Africa and throughout the world. Succession is one of the largest challenges facing family businesses. It has been estimated that only one third of family businesses survive to the second generation. This study attempts to determine what the main features are to promote successful family business succession and continuity. The family chosen for this research is the Venter family. The research has scaled the various influencing variables from the literature review into the following focus areas: relationships, conflict, vision, effective succession characteristics and continuity. The findings reflect many instances found in the literature, some are: individuals can manage themselves and have relationships with others; have the ability to resolve conflicts; have mutual support and trust; there is respect between the founder and successor; the business vision is clear; communication is open and clear and decisions are based on expertise and knowledge. Many other aspects are highlighted in the research that follows. In addition, the study attempts to identify the generational effects, the major characteristics of the family owned succession process and the views of the predecessors on the succession process and the post succession period.