Thesis (MBA.) --University of Limpopo, 2017 / This study drew attention to the influential role the transformational leadership constructs can play in increasing women representation in decision making structures of the Department of Social Development (DSD). The DSD’s Sekhukhune District in Limpopo Province was used as an area of study. The aim of the study was to investigate the significance of transformational leadership in pursuing gender parity in the DSD’s Sekhukhune District. The study followed an exploratory research design and implemented a qualitative methodology. A total of 10 DSD managers were targeted. Furthermore, a purposive sampling was used and interviews were conducted as the method of data collection. The data collected had been analysed thematically. The results revealed that although there have been improvements of more appointed women managers within the organisation. There were still more women managers than men managers within the organisation. However, most men occupy senior management positions while most women occupy the lower managerial positions. Most managers were not inspired to perform more than they were expected giving the reason that, they lack resources and their efforts often go unrecognised. Most managers found political appointment discouraging towards fair promotions. Nevertheless, there were enough women who possess required leadership skills. Conversely, there were no programmes that support women participation and empowerment in issues relating to gender parity. Leadership training, transformational leadership, provision of resources and salary acceleration were common suggestions to pursue gender parity. The study recommends that the DSD Sekhukhune District leadership should adopt and implement transformational leadership, change political appointment, appoint leaders with relevant qualifications, establishing a functional gender mainstreaming office within the DSD Sekhukhune District, adequate budgetary support and specialised training of staff shall assist in closing the gender parity gap.

Thesis (MBA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / This study is an investigation into the significance of transformational leadership and its effect in pursuing gender parity in organisations. The study looked into the processes that are in place and which are aimed at pursuing gender parity at Capricorn District Municipality. It further contended that issues pertaining to gender parity cannot be studied outside the confines of transformation in the organisations. Tyson (2015) argues that transformation in relation to gender parity will take several decades before its fruits are evident in organisations. Therefore, this implies that processes and practices related to transformation, have to be carefully monitored so as to achieve the desired gender parity results. Gender parity and transformational processes will have to be incorporated into policies of various organisations. Transformation has to be owned by the leadership of the organisations; it should not be perceived as a compliance mechanisms. Gender parity in many organisations continues to be one of the issues that everyone knows about, but does little to implement. Key findings in this research suggest that Capricorn District Municipality is faced with some challenges that stems from inadequate communication, mentorship programme as well as training and development with regard to processes and policies pertaining to gender parity. Majority of respondent cited no knowledge of such processes and policies within the organization. The following recommendations were drawn from the study: Strategies that will alleviate the challenges includes, change management, HR management, communication plan and leadership commitment, will have to be put in place to address some of the challenges Key words; gender parity, equality, equity, leadership, transformation, empowerment.

The UCNA Experiment at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is the first measurement of the β-decay asymmetry parameter A0 using polarized ultracold neutrons (UCN). A0 , which represents the parity-violating angular correlation between the direction of the initial neutron spin and the emitted decay electron’s momentum, determines λ = gA /gV , the ratio of the weak axial-vector and vector coupling constants. A high-precision determination of λ is important for weak interaction physics, and when combined with the neutron lifetime it permits an extraction of the CKM matrix element Vud solely from neutron decay. At LANSCE, UCN are produced in a pulsed, spallation driven solid deuterium source and then polarized via transport through a 7 T magnetic field. Their spins can then be flipped via transport through an Adiabatic Fast Passage spin flipper located in a low-field-gradient 1 T field region prior to transport to a decay storage volume situated within a 1 T solenoidal spectrometer. Electron detector packages located at each end of the spectrometer provide for the measurement of decay electrons. Previous UCNA results (based on data collected in 2010 and earlier) were limited by systematic uncertainties, in particular those from the UCN polarization, calibration of the electron energy, electron backscattering, and angular acceptance of events. This dissertation will present a background of neutron decay, an overview of the UCNA Experiment, followed by a detailed report on the entire analysis process for data acquired during run periods in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes provide excellent error correction performance and can approach the channel capacity, but their performance degrades significantly in the presence of burst noise. Bursts of errors occur in many common channels, including the magnetic recording and the wireless communications channels. Strategies such as interleaving have been developed to help compensate for bursts errors. These techniques do not exploit the correlations that can exist between the noise variance on observations in and out of the bursts. These differences can be exploited in calculations of prior probabilities to improve accuracy of soft information that is sent to the LDPC decoder. Effects of using different noise variances in the calculation of prior probabilities are investigated. Using the true variance of each observation improves performance. A novel burst detector utilizing the forward/backward algorithm is developed to determine the state of each observation, allowing the correct variance to be selected for each. Comparisons between this approach and existing techniques demonstrate improved performance. The approach is generalized and potential future research is discussed.

This study theorizes the origins and history of the professional female playwright and director from the Restoration period to the present day through the stage history of Behn's most popular play, The Rover. Part one is comprised of two chapters: the first in this section argues the importance of appreciating Behn's proto-directorial function in the Restoration theatre and her significance to the history of feminism and women in professional theatre; the second chapter in this section examines the implications of casting practices and venue changes to eighteenth-century revivals of Behn's canon with a particular eye towards what a contemporary director can glean from 18th century revivals. Part II draws on archival research and personal interviews with directors, actors, and dramaturges to examine the historical significance of two particular twentieth-century, woman-directed revivals of The Rover: the 1989 revival at the Goodman directed by Kyle Donnelly and the 1994 revival at the Guthrie directed by Joanne Akalaitis. This study argues the synergistic impact at the time of woman-directed revivals of the most popular play by the first professional female playwright to the emergence of the professional woman director in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Part III consists of three chapters that examine woman-directed revivals of The Rover against the backdrop of theatre practice and sexual politics in the 2000s: one chapter analyzes cross-gender revivals of The Rover by Queen's Company in Brooklyn, NY (2001) and Woman's Will in San Francisco (2003); the next chapter examines a 2011 site-specific, panoramic production of The Rover at the World Financial Center directed by Karin Coonrod for New York Classical Theatre; the final chapter in this section analyzes a 2013 gender parodic production that I directed for Thinking Cap Theatre in Fort Lauderdale. This study argues for the importance of contemporary archiving and revival activism to historicizing the concept of the glass curtain and the gender parity movement in professional theatre and to improving the rate of employment of female directors and playwrights.

This thesis explored the measurement of performance of New Zealand tertiary education institutions (TEIs) and the demand for their services. This involved analysing the research performance of New Zealand universities, analysing the productive efficiency of New Zealand TEIs and examining the choice of provider by bachelor’s degree starters. Bibliometric data was used to measure the research productivity of New Zealand universities. This showed that following a fall during the early 2000s, the research productivity of New Zealand universities increased following the introduction of the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF). A multi-dimensional analysis of university research performance between 2000 and 2005 showed that no individual university was top in all four of the performance measures assessed. The overall performance of three universities, Massey University, Lincoln University and Auckland University of Technology, were noticeably below that of the other five universities. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was then applied to input and output data of New Zealand TEIs to analyse their productive efficiency. In 2006, polytechnics that had: low levels of bachelor’s degree provision, were not regionally based, had a high proportion of subcontracting and were larger institutions, achieved higher levels of pure technical efficiency. The analysis showed that several polytechnics could improve their technical efficiency by reducing their scale of operations. In polytechnics, higher technical efficiency was associated with better financial performance. A number of technically efficient polytechnics struggled financially, indicating that the overall efficiency of the polytechnic sector was not high, or the funding model they operate under is not appropriate. The analysis also showed that decreasing bachelor’s degree provision, poor financial performance in the previous year, an increase in provision of community education, was associated with higher growth in total factor productivity between 1996 and 2006. The application of DEA to Australasian university data between 1997 and 2005 showed that New Zealand universities performed relatively well in terms of relative pure technical efficiency, compared with their Australian counterparts. However, the total factor productivity of New Zealand universities increased at a lower rate, on average, than that of the Australian Group of Eight and newer Australian universities. The application of DEA to a dataset of the participating TEIs in the PBRF showed that polytechnics had lower technical efficiency, on average, than other TEIs. The choices of bachelor’s degree starters in 2006 were analysed for evidence of a lack of parity of esteem between university and polytechnic degrees. The results showed that a lack of parity of esteem between polytechnic and university degrees may be influencing student choices. Students from higher deciles schools, with higher secondary school qualifications, Asians, students who travel for study, were all more likely to enrol in a university to start a bachelor’s degree. There was less clear cut evidence of a lack of parity of esteem between selected groupings of New Zealand universities. However, there did appear to be a lack of parity of esteem between the four older metropolitan universities and the two newest universities, with signs the former were held in higher esteem.

<p>Essay 1 - To evaluate measures of expectations I examine and compare some of the most common methods for capturing expectations: the futures method which utilizes financial market prices, the VAR forecast method, and the survey method. I study average expectations on the Federal funds rate target, and the main findings can be summarized as follows: i) the survey measure and the futures measure are highly correlated; the correlation coefficient is 0.81 which indicates that the measures capture the same phenomenon, ii) the survey measure consistently overestimates the realized changes in the interest rate, iii) the VAR forecast method shows little resemblance with the other methods.</p><p>Essay 2 - This paper takes a critical look at available proxies of uncertainty. Two questions are addressed: (i) How do we evaluate these proxies given that subjective uncertainty is inherently unobservable? (ii) Is there such a thing as a general macroeconomic uncertainty? Using correlations, some narrative evidence and a factor analysis, we find that disagreement and stock market volatility proxies seem to be valid measures of uncertainty whereas probability forecast measures are not. This result is reinforced when we use our proxies in standard macroeconomic applications where uncertainty is supposed to be of importance. Uncertainty is positively correlated with the absolute value of the GDP-gap.</p><p>Essay 3 - The co-movements of exchange rates and interest rates as the economy responds to shocks is a potential source of deviations from uncovered interest rate parity. This paper investigates whether an open economy macro model with endogenous monetary policy is capable of explaining the exchange rate risk premium puzzle. When the central bank is engaged in interest rate smoothing, a negative relationship between exchange rate changes and interest differentials emerge for realistic parameter values without assuming an extremely large and variable risk premium as done in previous studies.</p><p>Essay 4 - This paper shows how market expectations as a function of the forecasting horizon can be constructed and used to analyse issues like how far in advance monetary policy actions are anticipated and how the market’s understanding of monetary policy has developed over time. On average about half of a monetary policy action is anticipated one month before a policy meeting. The share of fully anticipated FOMC policy decisions increase from less than 10% at the two-month horizon, to about 70% at the one-day horizon. The market ability to predict policy has improved substantially after 1999 as the fraction of fully anticipated meetings has quadrupled at the monthly horizon. This improvement can be described as an effect of increased central bank transparency.</p>

This study investigated the association between family socioeconomic status, family race/ethnicity, quality of services and the impact of those services on the family for families who had participated in a northeastern state's IDEA, Part C Early Intervention Program. Data for this study came from 1,108 families who responded to a survey distributed by the state's Early Intervention Program. The survey contained two Rasch-based measurement scales designed to yield measures of family perceptions of the quality of early intervention services they had received and the impact of those services on their family. Results of the study indicated that measures of quality of services were significantly and positively related to family outcomes. However, neither family race/ethnicity nor socioeconomic status was associated with quality of services. Results related to the strong association between quality of services and positive family outcomes are interpreted in light of previous research on the outcomes of family-centered care models. Results related to the parity of service quality across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups are interpreted in relation to two important characteristics of high-quality programs: cultural competency and service coordination.

We give a formula for the η-invariant of odd order operators on even-dimensional manifolds, and for even order operators on odd-dimensional manifolds. Geometric second order operators are found with nontrivial η-invariants. This solves a problem posed by P. Gilkey.

Essay 1 - To evaluate measures of expectations I examine and compare some of the most common methods for capturing expectations: the futures method which utilizes financial market prices, the VAR forecast method, and the survey method. I study average expectations on the Federal funds rate target, and the main findings can be summarized as follows: i) the survey measure and the futures measure are highly correlated; the correlation coefficient is 0.81 which indicates that the measures capture the same phenomenon, ii) the survey measure consistently overestimates the realized changes in the interest rate, iii) the VAR forecast method shows little resemblance with the other methods. Essay 2 - This paper takes a critical look at available proxies of uncertainty. Two questions are addressed: (i) How do we evaluate these proxies given that subjective uncertainty is inherently unobservable? (ii) Is there such a thing as a general macroeconomic uncertainty? Using correlations, some narrative evidence and a factor analysis, we find that disagreement and stock market volatility proxies seem to be valid measures of uncertainty whereas probability forecast measures are not. This result is reinforced when we use our proxies in standard macroeconomic applications where uncertainty is supposed to be of importance. Uncertainty is positively correlated with the absolute value of the GDP-gap. Essay 3 - The co-movements of exchange rates and interest rates as the economy responds to shocks is a potential source of deviations from uncovered interest rate parity. This paper investigates whether an open economy macro model with endogenous monetary policy is capable of explaining the exchange rate risk premium puzzle. When the central bank is engaged in interest rate smoothing, a negative relationship between exchange rate changes and interest differentials emerge for realistic parameter values without assuming an extremely large and variable risk premium as done in previous studies. Essay 4 - This paper shows how market expectations as a function of the forecasting horizon can be constructed and used to analyse issues like how far in advance monetary policy actions are anticipated and how the market’s understanding of monetary policy has developed over time. On average about half of a monetary policy action is anticipated one month before a policy meeting. The share of fully anticipated FOMC policy decisions increase from less than 10% at the two-month horizon, to about 70% at the one-day horizon. The market ability to predict policy has improved substantially after 1999 as the fraction of fully anticipated meetings has quadrupled at the monthly horizon. This improvement can be described as an effect of increased central bank transparency.