Research questions: Do surprising disclosures of earnings per share determine price reactions in the corresponding direction as the aspect of the surprise?Is the effect of quarterly reports detectable in the stock price immediately following the date of information disclosure? Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the connection between stock prices and quarterly reports among the 30 most actively traded stocks on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Method: The study was conducted with a deductive approach based on previous research and theories to answer the research questions. Stock data from the 30 most actively traded stocks on the Stockholm Stock Exchange was collected and compared with quarterly reports from the corresponding companies. Conclusion: The research findings confirm corresponding direction between stock price reactions and the aspect of earnings per share surprise. A connection between quarterly reports and stock price was discovered immediately following the date of information disclosure. However, the evidence was unable to be proven statistically and could therefore not be generalized. / Forskningsfrågor: Leder oförväntad EPS (vinst per aktie) till avvikelser i aktiekursen i motsvarande riktning?Är effekten av kvartalsrapporter möjlig att upptäcka i aktiepriset omedelbart efter offentliggörandet av rapporten? Syfte: Syftet med studien är att studera sambandet mellan aktiepriser och kvartalsrapporter hos börsnoterade företag vars aktier tillhör de 30 mest omsatta på Stockholmsbörsen. Metod: Studien grundas på ett deduktivt tillvägagångssätt som baseras på tidigare forskning och teorier i syfte att besvara forskningsfrågorna. Aktiedata från de 30 mest omsatta aktierna på Stockholmsbörsen insamlades och jämfördes med kvartalsrapporter för dem motsvarande företagen. Slutsats: Studien bevisar att oförväntad EPS leder till avvikelser i aktiekursen i motsvarande riktning. Ett samband mellan kvartalsrapporter och aktiepriser upptäcktes omedelbart efter offentliggörandet av rapporten som dock var ej statistiskt signifikant och därmed inte generaliserbar.

Prophetic reports, constituting the second foundational source of the Islamic Weltanschauung, have been categorised in terms of their authenticity. The current work explores reports occurring in single transmission chains that are corroborated in word or meaning by other similarly narrated reports whose source at the level of Prophet Muhammad's companions could either be the same or different. Rules pertaining to this field have been amalgamated for the first time to simplify their application. Appropriated practical examples have been given to illustrate harmony between theory and praxis. Concentration has been restricted to a corroboration of reports by other transmission chains. An examination of the latter falls outside the scope of this investigation. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Islamic Studies)

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:35:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Joao_Luis_Priori_Porto.pdf: 700948 bytes, checksum: 320e3f05c7ba8e849823f10635ca8cb1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-26 / The objective of this research was to verify the level of disclosure of the risks associated with climate change in the reports of companies of the corporate sustainability index stock (ISE) of (BM&FBOVESPA). To acomplish this objective a content analysis was performed in the Environmental or Sustainability Reports, Financial Statements, and in the Management Report of the year 2008, from companies that have remained members of ISE, for three consecutive years, in the period from 2006 to 2008. The level of disclosure was assessed on the basis of the types and characteristics of disclosure: (declarative, quantitative, monetary , monetary and quantitative). Understanding that is relevant not only to investigate the level of risk disclosure, other specific objectives were established related to risk management, mitigating actions and opportunities related to climate change disclosure. The results showed that in the sustainability reports, for the period under examination and, in the set of categories analysed, a total of 228 disclosures for a total maximum possible of 322, i.e. 65%. In the Management Report this percentage is reduced to 27% and in the explanatory notes to 6%. In the Sustainability reports, of 14 companies analysed, 4 have a disclosure index above 80%, 7 companies showed indexes between 50 and 80% and 3 between 30 to 48%. The category with the largest index of disclosure was the strategic analysis of climatic risks whose index reached 84%, the ISO 14000 certification subcategory was disclosed in 100% of the companies. Although most of the information disclosed be as declarative type, the category Mitigating Actions presented the largest monetary quantitative information index, the subcategory Environmental Investments had its values available for 100% of the companies. It was also found in the category Opportunities, a companies' concern to disseminate information on new products (57%), alternative energy sources (86%) and information about ecoefficiency (100%). / A presente pesquisa teve como objetivo verificar o n??vel de divulga????o dos riscos associados ??s mudan??as clim??ticas nos relat??rios das empresas integrantes do ??ndice de Sustentabilidade Empresarial (ISE) da Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias e Futuros do Estado de S??o Paulo (BM&FBOVESPA). Nesse sentido, foram analisados os relat??rios ambientais ou de sustentabilidade, as demonstra????es cont??beis e os relat??rios da administra????o, do ano de 2008, das empresas que permaneceram integrantes do ISE, por tr??s anos consecutivos, no per??odo de 2006 a 2008. O n??vel de divulga????o foi avaliado com base nos tipos ou caracter??sticas da informa????o (declarativa, quantitativa n??o monet??ria, quantitativa monet??ria, quantitativa monet??ria e n??o monet??ria). Considerando relevante n??o somente investigar o n??vel da divulga????o dos riscos, foram estabelecidos objetivos espec??ficos relacionados ?? divulga????o da gest??o dos riscos, das a????es mitigadoras e das oportunidades relacionadas ?? mudan??a clim??tica. Os resultados demonstram que, nos relat??rios de sustentabilidade, no per??odo analisado e, no conjunto das categorias analisadas, o n??mero total evidenciado foi de 228 divulga????es para um total m??ximo poss??vel de 322, ou seja, 65%. No relat??rio da administra????o, esse percentual se reduz para 27% e nas notas explicativas para 6%. Nos relat??rios de sustentabilidade, das 14 empresas analisadas, 4 apresentaram ??ndice de divulga????o acima de 80%; 7 empresas apresentaram ??ndices entre 50 e 80% e 3 entre 30 a 48%. A categoria com maior ??ndice de divulga????o foi a de an??lise estrat??gica dos riscos clim??ticos, cujo ??ndice atingiu 84%, destacando-se a subcategoria certifica????o ISO 14000 divulgado em 100% das empresas. Embora a maior parte das informa????es divulgadas seja do tipo declarativa, a categoria a????es mitigadoras apresentou o maior ??ndice de informa????es quantitativo monet??rio, sendo que a subcategoria investimentos ambientais teve seus valores divulgados em 100% das empresas. Constatou-se, tamb??m, na categoria oportunidades, uma preocupa????o, por parte das empresas, em divulgar informa????es sobre novos produtos (57%), fontes alternativas de energia (86%) e informa????es sobre ecoefici??ncia (100%).

Li Xue. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-38). / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Prophetic reports, constituting the second foundational source of the Islamic Weltanschauung, have been categorised in terms of their authenticity. The current work explores reports occurring in single transmission chains that are corroborated in word or meaning by other similarly narrated reports whose source at the level of Prophet Muhammad's companions could either be the same or different. Rules pertaining to this field have been amalgamated for the first time to simplify their application. Appropriated practical examples have been given to illustrate harmony between theory and praxis. Concentration has been restricted to a corroboration of reports by other transmission chains. An examination of the latter falls outside the scope of this investigation. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Islamic Studies)

Trouble and bug reports are essential in software maintenance and for identifying faults—a challenging and time-consuming task. In cases when the fault and reports are similar or identical to previous and already resolved ones, the effort can be reduced significantly making the prospect of automatically detecting duplicates very compelling. In this work, common methods and techniques in the literature are evaluated and compared on domain-specific and multimodal trouble reports from Ericsson software. The number of samples is few, which is a case not so well-studied in the area. On this basis, both traditional and more recent techniques based on deep learning are considered with the goal of accurately detecting duplicates. Firstly, the more traditional approach based on natural language processing and machine learning is evaluated using different vectorization techniques and similarity measures adapted and customized to the domain-specific trouble reports. The multimodality and many fields of the trouble reports call for a wide range of techniques, including term frequency-inverse document frequency, BM25, and latent semantic analysis. A pipeline processing each data field of the trouble reports independently and automatically weighing the importance of each data field is proposed. The best performing model achieves a recall rate of 89% for a duplicate candidate list size of 10. Further, obtaining knowledge on which types of data are most important for duplicate detection is explored through what is known as Shapley values. Results indicate that utilizing all types of data indeed improve performance, and that date and code parameters are strong indicators. Secondly, a Siamese network based on Transformer-encoders is evaluated on data fields believed to have some underlying representation of the semantic meaning or sequentially important information, which a deep model can capture. To alleviate the issues when having few samples, pre-training through automatic data labeling is studied. Results show an increase in performance compared to not pre-training the Siamese network. However, compared to the more traditional model it performs on par, indicating that traditional models may perform equally well when having few samples besides also being simpler, more robust, and faster. / Buggrapporter är kritiska för underhåll av mjukvara och för att identifiera fel — en utmanande och tidskrävande uppgift. I de fall då felet och rapporterna liknar eller är identiska med tidigare och redan lösta ärenden, kan tiden som krävs minskas avsevärt, vilket gör automatiskt detektering av dubbletter mycket önskvärd. I detta arbete utvärderas och jämförs vanliga metoder och tekniker i litteraturen på domänspecifika och multimodala buggrapporter från Ericssons mjukvara. Antalet tillgängliga träningsexempel är få, vilket inte är ett så välstuderat fall. Utifrån detta utvärderas både traditionella samt nyare tekniker baserade på djupinlärning med målet att detektera dubbletter så bra som möjligt. Först utvärderas det mer traditionella tillvägagångssättet baserat på naturlig språkbearbetning och maskininlärning med hjälp av olika vektoriseringstekniker och likhetsmått specialanpassade till buggrapporterna. Multimodaliteten och de många datafälten i buggrapporterna kräver en rad av tekniker, så som termfrekvens-invers dokumentfrekvens, BM25 och latent semantisk analys. I detta arbete föreslås en modell som behandlar varje datafält i buggrapporterna separat och automatiskt sammanväger varje datafälts betydelse. Den bäst presterande modellen uppnår en återkallningsfrekvens på 89% för en lista med 10 dubblettkandidater. Vidare undersöks vilka datafält som är mest viktiga för dubblettdetektering genom Shapley-värden. Resultaten tyder på att utnyttja alla tillgängliga datafält förbättrar prestandan, och att datum och kodparametrar är starka indikatorer. Sedan utvärderas ett siamesiskt nätverk baserat på Transformator-kodare på datafält som tros ha en underliggande representation av semantisk betydelse eller sekventiellt viktig information, vilket en djup modell kan utnyttja. För att lindra de problem som uppstår med få träningssexempel, studeras det hur den djupa modellen kan förtränas genom automatisk datamärkning. Resultaten visar på en ökning i prestanda jämfört med att inte förträna det siamesiska nätverket. Men jämfört med den mer traditionella modellen presterar den likvärdigt, vilket indikerar att mer traditionella modeller kan prestera lika bra när antalet träningsexempel är få, förutom att också vara enklare, mer robusta, och snabbare.

This dissertation reflects the results of a study during which the 2006 annual reports of the top-40 JSE listed companies, were assessed for their disclosure of the required corporate governance statements. Content analysis was used to identify the information. The results obtained indicate that the majority of the JSE's top-40 listed companies adhere to good corporate governance disclosure practices. However, there are areas in which the non-disclosure of information was prevalent. These include the disclosure of information on the selection of external auditors and whistle blowing. Future research, employing sources such as SENS announcements, press releases, trading updates, cautionary announcements and websites together with annual reports should be conducted. / Financial Accounting / M.Com. (Accounting)

The focus of this research was on the Management of Whistle-Blowing at the University of South Africa (UNISA). This study investigated the perception of UNISA staff on the issue of whistle-blowing. Using a quantitative approach, a questionnaire was used to obtain relevant information from permanent employees of UNISA, at all campuses and regions, regarding the issue of whistle-blowing. This study highlights the attitudes and opinions of permanent employees of UNISA regarding the issue of whistle-blowing, and whether or not these attitude and opinions can influence the effectiveness of whistle-blowing, as a crime and unethical conduct deterrent and detection mechanism. Several issues were investigated in this study, as whistle-blowing if implemented and managed correctly, can be a valuable source of intelligence on crime and unethical conduct in the workplace. / CRIMINOLOGY / MA (POLICE SCIENCE)

The purpose of this study was to critically analyse the evidence-based revelations from the South African Office of the Auditor-General on the records management challenges being encountered in the local government sector. The aim of the study was the analysis of available evidence and the proposal of solutions for collaborative planning and implementation. The lack of strategic planning in ensuring the accessibility of authentic information sources required during auditing remains unchallenged by the South African public archivists and records managers. These audit reports are required to demonstrate governance, transparency and accountability. This information held in the records of local government is also required to satisfy service delivery and plan development ventures. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United Nations formulated an ambitious agenda to eradicate world poverty by 2025. Eight millennium development goals were identified that would provide impoverished communities with better access to basic services and conditions spurring sustainable development. Governance-based criteria were identified as barometers to gauge transparency, accountability, respect for the rule of law and citizens’ rights. Consolidated audited reports from 2000 to 2013 were scrutinised to unravel the conundrums relating to governance, transparency and the management of public sector information sources. According to the 2013 report, only 5% of the local government sector managed to attain clean audits. Related evidence revealed in the unclean audit reports and media narratives related to service delivery and community protests. The approach used for the study was the qualitative methodology, regarded as an appropriate method for the archival discipline. This research method allowed for the incorporation of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields of interest. The case study method design enabled the focus of the study to be on local governments and six selected community development ventures in different areas of South Africa. The latter method enabled information collection from records officials and persons involved with socio-economic development projects. Sound interventions are needed to ensure evidence-based governance. This, in turn, would create favourable conditions for development endeavours in post-apartheid South Africa. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

The overall purpose of this study is to establish whether auditors in South Africa also fail to issue the appropriate audit opinion on the going concern assumption underlying financial statements the reasons for auditors' failure to issue the appropriate audit opinion on the going concern assumption The hypotheses of this study are tested by examining professional auditing standards and secondary data on the going concern assumption conducting an empirical study of listed industrial compames whose listings were terminated because of financial failure This study provides evidence that auditors in South Africa fail to Issue the appropriate audit opinion on the going concern assumption advances specific reasons for this failure / Auditing / M. Comm. (Auditing)