Aujourd’hui en raison de l'augmentation rapide de la demande de transparence dans les rapports d'entreprise, les rapports de développement durable (reporting RSE) deviennent de plus en plus fréquents, et constituent un domaine important de la théorie moderne de la recherche sur les entreprises. Par conséquent, la loi française vient obliger les entreprises à inclure dans leur rapport annuel des informations sur les préoccupations environnementales et sociales. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier, l'impact de la divulgation de la RSE des sociétés cotées au CAC 40 à la Bourse de Paris (Euronext), sur la performance financière de ces entreprises. Pour cela, un état de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises et du reporting social est tout d'abord présenté, grâce à la méthode d'analyse de contenu, sur la base des lignes directrices du GRI en matière de rapports de durabilité (GRI-G3.1). Puis, la performance financière est mesurée par des mesures comptables (ROA) et des mesures du marché (TBQ), qui proviennent de la base de données Datastream. Ces données quantitatives sont utilisées dans le modèle de régression des données de panel pour tester l'impact du reporting social sur le rendement des actifs (ROA) et la valeur du marché, comme le Q de Tobin (TBQ), sur une période de 4 ans de 2011 à 2014. Les résultats de l'étude montrent que la tendance en matière de responsabilité sociale des entreprises a augmenté tout au long de la période, notamment dans la divulgation sur les pratiques en matière d'emploi et d'environnement, qui sont les deux éléments les plus largement divulgués. Alors que les résultats de l'analyse empirique indiquent que cette relation entre divulgation RSE et performance financière est mixte pour toutes les entreprises y compris les secteurs industriels et non industriels. La contribution de ce travail à la littérature RSE est l'élucidation de l'impact temporel de la divulgation des informations environnementales et sociales sur la valeur de l'entreprise. / At present, due to the rapid growth in the demand for transparency in corporate reporting, sustainability reporting (CSR reports) is becoming increasingly frequent and an important topic of modern corporate research theory. French law currently obliges companies to include information on environmental and social concerns in their annual activity reports.The objective of this thesis is to study the impact of the disclosure of CSR of CAC 40 listed companies on the Paris Stock Exchange (Euronext), on the corporate financial performance. In order to this, a statement on corporate social responsibility and social reporting is first presented using the content analysis method based on the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (GRI-G3.1). Then, financial performance is measured by accounting measures (ROA) and market measures (TBQ) obtained from the Datastream database. These quantitative data were used in a panel data regression model to test the impact of social reporting on the return on assets (ROA) and market value such as Tobin's Q (TBQ) over a period of 4 years, from 2011 to 2014.The results of the study show that the trend in corporate social responsibility increased throughout the period, particularly regarding the disclosure of employment practices and the environment, which are the two most widely disclosed elements. The results of the empirical analysis indicate that this mixed relationship between CSR disclosure and financial performance exists for all companies whether industrial or non-industrial. This work contributes to the literature on CSR by elucidating the temporal impact of the disclosure of environmental and social information on corporate value.

Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur le reporting financier. L'objectif principal du premier chapitre est de comprendre le rôle de la comptabilité à la juste valeur, en tenant compte de la possibilité pour les banques d'utiliser leur information privée (reporting de niveau 3) pour calculer les justes valeurs. À savoir, j'analyse un modèle de réglementation prudentielle pour faire la lumière sur les incitations des banques à utiliser les rapports de niveau 3. J'introduis des mesures comptables en tant qu'intrants primaires dans les exigences de fonds propres établies par un organisme de réglementation afin de répartir efficacement les droits de contrôle au sein d'une banque et de fournir une discipline de gestion. Mon analyse des externalités de reporting de niveau 3 met en évidence un arbitrage intéressant entre la transparence et la stabilité financière. D'une part, les rapports de niveau 3 réduisent la capacité des parties prenantes d'une banque à extraire des informations des états financiers de banques similaires. D'un autre côté, les rapports de niveau 3 réduisent le risque systémique causé par la comptabilisation à la valeur de marché. En outre, la manipulation rend le signalement de niveau 3 moins souhaitable, ce qui peut à son tour augmenter le risque systémique. Le deuxième chapitre de cette thèse est co-écrit avec Jeremy Bertomeu de l'Université de Californie à San Diego et Haresh Sapra de l'Université de Chicago. Dans ce chapitre, nous abordons la question du système optimal de provisionnement des pertes sur prêts pour les banques. En particulier, nous développons d'abord un cadre pour étudier comment la mesure comptable et la réglementation prudentielle interagissent pour affecter les incitations d'une banque à obtenir un crédit. Notre résultat principal est que le système de mesure comptable et l'effet de levier bancaire sont des outils politiques qui devraient être utilisés en parallèle, générant plus de valeur que les systèmes reposant soit sur la réglementation comptable, soit sur la réglementation prudentielle. Ensuite, nous utilisons nos résultats pour faire la lumière sur le débat actuel sur le modèle approprié de provisionnement des pertes sur prêts pour les banques. Nous montrons que si les banques prennent des risques excessifs dans le cadre d'un modèle de pertes encourues, un modèle de pertes attendues peut entraîner des liquidations excessives. Le troisième chapitre de cette thèse s'éloigne des rapports financiers pour les banques afin de se concentrer sur l'analyse des incitations des auditeurs à fournir une qualité d'audit élevée. En particulier, j'essaie de comprendre l'impact de la fourniture de services autres que d'audit (NAS) sur les incitations des sociétés d'audit, afin de conclure sur la meilleure façon de réguler cette industrie. Je crois qu'une meilleure compréhension des incitations des auditeurs est nécessaire pour concevoir de meilleures réglementations. À cette fin, je développe un cadre qui fournit de nouvelles perspectives sur les effets incitatifs des NAS sur les auditeurs. Je montre qu'il peut être optimal pour les investisseurs d'une entreprise cliente de laisser l'auditeur externe fournir des NAS en raison d'une externalité d'incitation. En effet, la possibilité de fournir des NAS en cas de détection d'anomalies financières augmente les incitations de l'auditeur à exercer un effort d'audit. Cependant, en dépit de cette externalité positive, la fourniture de NAS peut diminuer la qualité perçue de l'audit, ce qui peut à son tour rendre la fourniture de NAS par les auditeurs indésirables. Ainsi, mon analyse révèle un arbitrage intéressant pour les régulateurs entre l'effet d'incitation positif et la diminution de la qualité de l'audit. L'élimination de la restriction actuelle sur les honoraires d'audit conditionnels peut compenser cette baisse ex post de la qualité de l'audit tout en préservant les incitations ex ante. / This thesis focuses on financial reporting. The main objective of the first chapter is to understand the role of fair value accounting, taking into account the possibility for banks to use their private information (Level 3 reporting) to compute fair values. Namely, I analyze a model of prudential regulation to shed some light on banks' incentives to use Level 3 reporting. I bring in accounting measures as the primary inputs into capital requirements set by a regulator to efficiently allocate control rights within a bank and to provide managerial discipline. My analysis of the Level 3 reporting externalities highlights an interesting tradeoff between transparency and financial stability. On the one hand, Level 3 reporting reduces the ability for a bank's stakeholders to extract information from financial statements of similar banks. On the other hand, Level 3 reporting decreases systemic risk caused by mark-to-market accounting. Further, manipulation makes Level 3 reporting less desirable, which may in turn increase systemic risk. I believe that the framework of this chapter offers other opportunities to study the real-effects of fair value accounting that have not yet been explored. The second chapter of this thesis is co-authored with Jeremy Bertomeu of the University of California San Diego and Haresh Sapra of the University of Chicago. In this chapter, we tackle the question of the optimal loan loss provisioning system for banks. In particular, we develop first a framework to study how accounting measurement and prudential regulation interact to affect a bank's incentives to originate credit. Our main result is that the accounting measurement system and bank leverage are policy tools that should be used in tandem, generating more value than systems that rely either on accounting regulation or on prudential regulation. Then, we use our results to shed some light on the current debate on the appropriate loan loss provisioning model for banks. We show that while banks engage in excessive risk-taking under an incurred loss model, an expected loss model can lead to excessive liquidations. The third chapter of this thesis moves away from financial reporting for banks to focus on the analysis of auditors' incentives to deliver high audit quality. In particular, I try to understand the impact of the provision of non-audit services (NAS) on audit firms' incentives, in order to conclude on the best way to regulate this industry. I believe that a better understanding of auditors' incentives is necessary to design better regulations. To that end, I develop a framework that provides new insights into the incentive effects of NAS on auditors. I show that it can be optimal for the investors of a client firm to let the external auditor provide NAS because of an incentive externality. Indeed, the possibility of providing NAS contingent on detecting financial misstatements increases the auditor's incentives to exert audit effort. However, despite this positive externality, the provision of NAS may decrease perceived audit quality, which may in turn render the provision of NAS by auditors undesirable. Thus, my analysis uncovers an interesting tradeoff for regulators between the positive incentive effect and the decrease in audit quality. Removing the current restriction on contingent audit fees may offset this ex post decrease in audit quality while preserving the ex ante incentives.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1946. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 199)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-149). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This study is a description of newsgathering practices and how newspaper reporters produce news accounts in the city hall setting, as directly experienced in a participant-observation research situation with city hall reporters. Classical concerns with news have assumed news to be stories selected from and reporting the "objective reality of social facts" (Durkheim, 1938) occurring "out there" in the world as intrinsically "newsworthy" independent of their telling as "news". However, within a new stance taken toward the news by a number of scholars, city hall news is focused on here as the practical accomplishment of reporters' routine newsgathering practices. A central concern is to learn and describe how city hall reporters organize their observations and background knowledge of civic business so as to produce "city hall news". Another major focus is to describe and attend to my own observational situation within my account as the medium through which an ethnographic account of city hall news account-making is accomplished. By attending to my ongoing learning process, this thesis is an exercise in exploring my direct experience of this news-gathering setting as a means of discovering what it is to observe an occasion so as to produce an account of it. The conceptual framework of the "co-observational situation" is introduced for portraying the organization of my research experience as a co-observer, having access to accomplish concurrent observations of city hall occasions with newsgather-ing reporters. Statements expressed by reporters as adequate and reasonable explanations of their newsgathering work are presented as the "data" for this account, along with field-noted and tape-recorded observations made while accompanying my chief reporter-informant. As a co-observer of city hall business occasions with reporters I could see only part of the process of how news-gathering is done. Chapter 3 describes how I learned what there is to observe happening in city council meetings as regular news-gathering occasions. It is discovered that not everything reported as "news" about a council meeting or topic of decision-making can be observable within the time boundaries of the meeting occasion itself. Other routine occasions of newsgathering such as committee meetings and mayor's press conferences are observed as previewing developing newsworthy topics of civic business. Reporters are found to have a sense of knowing what to look for as "the story of the day". What becomes told as the "newsworthy" item of civic business discussed in a city council meeting 'today' is not necessarily found or initiated as a "newsworthy" topic solely within the occasion of that meeting. Instead that topic of "newsworthy11 civic business is often worked up as "news" in earlier and later newsgathering situations available to the city hall reporter. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

The pathology report is a key document that contains critical information for the proper diagnosis and prognosis of a patient. It is used to communicate key pathologic findings to users of the pathology report: oncologists who will use this document to base treatment options and cancer registries that use key attributes of cancer cases for surveillance and research purposes. The synoptic report can provide a standard format that contains key information consistency for users of the report. The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) was the first to adopt this innovative method of pathology reporting within British Columbia. A mixed methods research study design using both qualitative and quantitative techniques to evaluate a synoptic reporting system’s impact on pathology reporting was used in this study. The impact of synoptic reporting was evaluated based on the utilization of the synoptic summaries and the perceived effect on the quality and processes of pathology reporting from the perspectives of pathology reporting stakeholders. Pathology reports obtained from VIHA and British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA) databases were audited to obtain information on the amount of synoptic summaries included in pathology reports and whether this inclusion was associated with any pre-defined variables. Pathology reporting stakeholders’ perceptions data was obtained by a self-administered web survey distributed to VIHA pathologists, Victoria location British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA-VICC) oncologists and BCCA Cancer Registry management. Out of the reports generated by VIHA pathologists, only 3.5% (593/17430) of them contained a synoptic summary, 5.4% (590/10990) when only considering the pathology reports that were associated to a CAP checklist and activated within the system. According to the VIHA database, it was determined that 16.2% (2819/17430) cases were malignant suggesting that inclusion of synoptic summaries is not being done for the vast majority of malignant cases contrary to expectations. This was further confirmed by the BCCA audit, which contained primarily malignant cases but also had additional non-malignant (benign) cases requested by the BCCA. The BCCA audit revealed that 18.6% (58/312) reports included a synoptic summary, 19.7% (58/294) when only considering the pathology reports that were associated to a CAP checklist and were activated within the system. Differences with the synoptic summary inclusion were found in: individual pathologists, procedures performed, sites of report generation, tumor groups, tumor types, and malignancy status of the specimens. Variation was observed in the perceptions surrounding the quality of the pathology report. Pathologists’ responses were highly variable to the majority of questions in all categories, demonstrating the polarizing views within the community. Pathologists overall had a more favorable opinion of the current pathology report (including synoptic summary) generated, where users (oncologists and registry) had a more favorable opinion of the perceived impact of synoptic summaries on pathology reports and a more favorable opinion regarding improvements that could be made in pathology reporting. While VIHA has taken a significant step forward, being the first health authority in British Columbia to implement synoptic reporting (synoptic summaries), further improvements can be made to better enhance the adoption. / Graduate / 0571 / 0769 / bornfurtado@gmail.com

Samhällets ökande medvetenhet om klimatförändringar, naturkatastrofer och miljösamhällsfrågor har medfört att det idag ställs större krav på att företag ska ta ett socialt ansvar. Genom att upprätta en hållbarhetsrapport kan företag visa på att de tar ett samhällsansvar och på ett lättare sätt kommunicera ut sitt sociala- och miljömässiga arbete till sina intressenter. I samband med att allt fler företag väljer att hållbarhetsrapportera så stärks också kraven på att rapporterna bör vara trovärdiga och tillförlitliga. Företag kan öka hållbarhetsrapportens trovärdighet och tillförlitlighet genom att anlita en externt oberoende part som granskar och bestyrker rapporten. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för vad företag väljer att redovisa för hållbarhetsindikatorer utifrån GRIs riktlinjer samt hur revisorer och andra granskare går tillväga för att bestyrka redovisningen av dessa indikatorer. Denna undersökning gjordes utifrån en kvalitativ forskningsmetod som grundade sig på två delar. För att svara på studiens syfte utfördes dels en dokumentstudie om hållbarhetsindikatorer samt intervjuer om bestyrkande där fokus legat på revisorer och andra professionella bestyrkare. Teorin inleddes sedan med en allmän- och teoretisk referensram. I den allmänna referensramen redogjordes det för allmän bakgrundsfakta och i den teoretiska referensramen presenterades olika teorier som var av betydelse för det empiriska resultatet. Studiens resultat visade att företag ofta väljer att hållbarhetsrapportera då de känner påtryckningar från intressenterna att ta ett större samhällsansvar samt för att vinna legitimitet från samhället. Det framgick även att hållbarhetsrapporten bidrar till en mer heltäckande bild av hur företaget arbetar inom sociala, miljömässiga samt ekonomiska områden. En anledning till att företag väljer att anlita en externt oberoende part till att bestyrka sin hållbarhetsrapport är för att säkerställa hållbarhetsinformationen samt öka trovärdigheten och tillförlitligheten. Studien bygger på en deduktiv ansats och avslutas med en empiri- och analys del samt en fördjupad analys där teorin kopplas ihop med det empiriska materialet för att se hur dessa stämmer överens med varandra. Avslutningsvis diskuteras studiens resultat samt svaret på dess syfte. / Society’s increasing awareness of climate change, natural disasters and environment-society issues has led to higher demands when it comes to companies taking social responsibility. By drawing up a sustainability report companies can show that they are taking social responsibility and can more easily communicate their social and environmental work to its stakeholders. As more and more companies choose to report on sustainability the requirements of the reports being credible and reliable are increased. Companies can increase the credibility and reliability of the sustainability report by engaging an external and independent party to review and certify the report. The aim of the study is to increase understanding of what companies chooses to report on sustainability indicators based on GRIs guidelines and also how accountants and other surveyors proceed to authenticate them. The survey was carried out using a qualitative research method based on two parts. In order to answer the aim of the study a document study of sustainability indicators as well as interviews regarding assurances were conducted, where focus has been on accountants and other professional vindicators. The theory was initiated with a general and a theoretical framework. In the general frame of reference the general background facts were accounted for and in the theoretical frame of reference different theories relevant to the empirical results were presented. The results of the study showed that companies often choose to report on sustainability when pressured by stakeholders to take greater social responsibility as well as to gain legitimacy from society. The results also showed that the sustainability report contributes to a more comprehensive picture of how the company works in the social, environmental and economic areas. One reason that companies choose to engage an external independent party to certify its sustainability report is to ensure the sustainability information as well as to increase the credibility and reliability. The study is based on a deductive approach and ends with an empiric and analysis part as well as a deeper analysis where the theory is linked to the empirical material in order to see how these two correlate. Finally the result of the study and the answer to its purpose are discussed.

This master’s thesis deals with a questions about reporting of the selected firm. The first part includes the theoretical knowledge about reporting. The second part focuses on the analysis of the reporting of the selected firm. In the last part of my master‘s thesis, I will bring practical modifications for the reporting of the selected firm in order to improve its efficiency and its benefits.

Radiographers and other healthcare professionals are becoming increasingly involved in radiological reporting, for instance plain radiographs, mammography and ultrasound. Systematic reviews of research evidence can help to assimilate a knowledge base by ordering and evaluating the available evidence on the reporting accuracy of different professional groups. This article reviews the biases that can undermine the results of plain ¿lm reading performance studies. These biases are subdivided into three categories. The ¿rst category refers to the selection of subjects, including both ¿lms and professionals, and covers the validity of generalizing results beyond the study population. The other two categories are concerned with study design and the interpretation both of ¿lms and of reports and the effect on study validity. An understanding of these biases is essential when designing such studies and when interpreting the results of existing studies.

The thesis attempts to develop the field of audience research, by adapting recently developed theoretical approaches to an empirical study of the television audience. The thesis begins by examining two general theoretical areas that provide a framework for the research - semiology and theories of ideology. The work of Louis Aithusser is analysed in a movement towards a semiological theory of ideology. The thesis then examines work on the media that has developed out of this broad tradition - notably cultural studies, textual analysis, discourse analysis and the semiotics of film and T. V. Detailed attention is paid to the theory of encoding and decoding, and, in particular, the work of David Morley. The objective of this examination is to set up the encoding/decoding model within a semiological framework for use in practical research on the T. V. audience. The audience research itself is based upon an exhaustive analysis of fifty in-depth interviews with viewers following a screening of a pre-recorded News at Ten. The aim of the research was not to investigate the views of the fifty decoders, but to establish how and why readings of television programmes are constructed - the process of decoding. The research is presented in three stages. The readings of one item (about British Leyland) are scrutinised in order to establish an appropriate set of variables for understanding the decoding process. These variables are then used to systematically analyse the readings of another single item (about troubles in the West Bank). The points raised during this analysis are then developed in relation to readings of the whole programme. The research reveals a number of problems in the form and character of television news. The thesis therefore ends with a set of recommendations for overcoming these problems.