A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the Degree: Master of Commerce School of Accountancy 2015 / This thesis examines the functioning of the Financial Investigations Panel (FRIP) as a mechanism of accountability in the South African financial reporting environment. Detailed interviews with a sample of technical experts are used to reveal the significant source of coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphic pressure the FRIP is able to exert, acting on the organisations themselves, as well as on the individual preparers and their auditors. This thesis provides the first account of how the FRIP is capable of exerting institutional isomorphic pressure on organisations, those charged with governance, individual preparers and external auditors. In doing so the research contributes to the limited body of interpretive corporate governance research in South Africa, offers evidence in support of the JSE’s decision to establish a proactive monitoring review and, finally, offers support to the fact that South African corporate reporting requirements can be enforced and are not just symbolic. / MT2017

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A research report submitted by in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce University of the Witwatersrand September 2017 / The World Wide Web has developed rapidly over the past few years. It has provided a user-friendly platform for companies to disclose their financial information. However, as this disclosure is largely voluntary, the question arises as to what drives companies to disclose their information on their websites voluntarily. Prior research in developed countries tests the influence of certain company characteristics on internet financial reporting. This research report tries to shed light on the determinants of internet financial reporting in the South African context. 80 companies which are listed on the JSE were selected, and the characteristics of each company’s website was thoroughly inspected against an internet financial reporting checklist. Based on the results of the checklist, each company`s website was given a score. This internet financial reporting score was considered as the dependent variable. Six company characteristics were used as independent variables to explain the internet financial reporting score. These were: company size, profitability, block ownership, systematic risk, dual-listing and SRI rating. It was found that company size, dual-listing and SRI rating has a correlation with a company’s likelihood of reporting their financial results online. On the other hand, no correlation was found between profitability, block ownership or systematic risk and a company’s internet financial reporting score. This research was limited to 80 companies listed on the JSE, and was based as a point in time study. Future research can be extended to a larger sample over various stock exchanges, and also over a period of time to consider the trends in disclosure. This study contributes to international literature on the topic and also initiates this field of research in South Africa. This research is intended to assist companies in their voluntary disclosure practices and at the same time assists regulators in considering the need for regulating internet reporting practices. / MT 2018

According binding legislation, explanatory reports attached to legislatorybills is integral part of legislative process in the Czech republic for a long time, dramatically exceeding duration of autonomic Czech state. However, law sciences aren't interested in them a lot, equally to whole legislative process. Unfortunately, most of legislative actors do the same. At first, this thesis briefly discribes legislation related to explanatory reports. It considers both efficient legislation and valid legislation with efficiency planed from 1st January 2000, but also legislation in Legislative government guideline, which is binding only for legistatory bill submitted by government. Coming out from assumption, that writing explanatory report isn't the purpose by itself, the thesis define several functions, whitch explanatory reports should fulfill. Only in comparison with to these fuctions, we could say how explanatory report should like and eventually how it definitely souldn't. Base on these defined functions, the most common lacks of explanatory notes, which makes fullfiling the function more difficult or even impossible. These lacks is presented at real documents (bills) from legislative process - passed bills, rejected bills and also bill going through the various parts of legislative process right now...

A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo investigar como a palavra paz é entendida, em termos de conceito, pelo Conselho de Segurança da Organização das Nações Unidas. Para tanto, são analisados trinta e sete relatórios oficiais produzidos pelo Conselho de Segurança, no período de agosto de 1994 a junho de 2009, acerca das missões de paz realizadas em trinta e uma regiões/países que apresentavam ameaça à paz e à segurança internacionais durante aquele período. De acordo com a Conselheira Gilda Santos Neves, chefe da Divisão das Nações Unidas do Ministério das Relações Exteriores, em seu texto O Brasil e a Criação da Comissão para a Consolidação da Paz (2008), a paz é algo que se consolida e não se constrói. Tal posição norteia a presente pesquisa, uma vez que o objetivo aqui é mapear as expressões linguísticas realizadas através da palavra paz. As bases teóricas desta pesquisa encontram-se fundamentadas na teoria da metáfora cognitiva, de Lakoff e Johnson (1980), bem como no estudo de Deignan (2005) em seu livro intitulado Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, que visa a fornecer os benefícios que a abordagem cognitiva de metáforas pode obter através da análise de corpora digitalizados. Após compilar os relatórios do Conselho de Segurança e prepará-los para serem lidos pelo programa computacional WordSmith Tools 3.0, foram extraídas todas as ocorrências da palavra paz dos referidos relatórios. Das 686 ocorrências geradas, foram deixadas para análise somente aquelas com sentido metafórico e, no total, nove esquemas conceptuais foram construídos. A pesquisa feita sugere que, para o Conselho de Segurança, a paz é algo profundamente desejado tanto pela população das zonas de conflito quanto pela comunidade internacional. No entanto, a paz não é facilmente construída ou estabelecida. Alcançar a paz implica seguir um processo com diferentes etapas, ou seja, com início, meio e fim, bem como superar obstáculos e retrocessos que surgem no meio do caminho. Para tanto, diversos investimentos têm de ser feitos por todos aqueles envolvidos e realmente interessados na paz mundial. Por fim, vê-se que a visão da Conselheira Gilda Santos Neves, de acordo com as metáforas aqui analisadas, está correta, já que, conforme apontam os resultados do presente estudo, o conceito de paz, para o Conselho de Segurança, não é o de algo a ser construído do zero / The present research aims at investigating how the word peace is understood, in terms of meaning, by the Security Council of the United Nations. In order to do so, thirty seven official reports written by the Security Council, from August 1994 to June 2009, about the peace missions in thirty one areas/countries which presented threat to international peace and to international security during that period are analyzed. According to the Counselour Gilda Santos Neves, Head of UN Division, Ministry of External Relations, in her book O Brasil e a Criação da Comissão para a Consolidação da Paz (2008), peace is something which is consolidated, not built. This statement guides the present research, as the aim here is to map the linguistic expressions realized through the word peace. This research draws on the theory of the cognitive metaphor, by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), as well as the study proposed by Deignan (2005) in her book entitled Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, which aims at providing the benefits the cognitive metaphor approach can obtain through the analysis of digitalized corpora. After compiling the reports of the Security Council and preparing them to be read by the software used, all the occurrences of the word peace were extracted. From 686 occurrences found, only the ones with metaphorical meanings were taken into consideration and nine conceptual metaphors were created altogether. The research suggests that, for the Security Council, peace is deeply desired not only by the population of the conflict zones but also by the international community. In spite of this fact, peace is not easily built or established. Achieving peace implies following a process with different phases, as well as overcoming obstacles and drawbacks which appear in the middle of the course. Therefore, several investments must be made by everyone involved and interested in global peace. Finally, it can be concluded that, according to the metaphors analysed here, the point of view of the Counselor Gilda Santos Neves is right, as the results of this study show that the concept of peace, for the Security Council, is not of something which must be built from its very beginning

The thesis deals with the topic of terminal value assessment in DCF models. Examining ten different techniques, the parameters behind, and the possible perils, its aim is to formulate the best practice for terminal value estimation. Afterwards, eleven of real business valuations are analyzed with the previously formulated best practice serving as a benchmark. Where possible, the impact of departures from the best practice on the estimated business value is quantified. The analysis confirms the hypothesis that practical terminal value assessments often diverge substantially from the best practice, which has a material impact on the resulting business value estimate.

The purpose of financial reporting is to provide information that is useful for decision making. Recently, however, there has been a systematic decline in the usefulness of such information. Indeed, the current reporting model seems to be no longer sufficient mainly due to the fact that it ignores many of the nonfinancial intangible factors which are increasingly becoming important in determining corporate value and performance. That is, there is a need for the traditional reporting model to be modified or at least broadened to reflect Intangible Assets (IA) in order to enhance the usefulness of information being provided to different stakeholders. In the absence of mandatory reporting requirements, one alternative way of disseminating information regarding IA is to engage in voluntary disclosure practices. It has also been suggested that companies which would benefit the most from such practice are those originating from emerging economies looking to expand into international markets. While there exists an array of empirical studies which have examined the voluntary disclosure practices of corporations from developed economies, less considered are the reporting practices of emerging market companies regarding their IA. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of the top 200 emerging market companies regarding the variety, nature and extent of IA and to consider some of the factors that may be associated with the level of such disclosure. Using a disclosure index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard??? (Lev, 2001), narrative sections of the 2002 annual reports of the top 200 emerging market companies are analysed. The findings indicate that emerging market companies engage in voluntary disclosure practices in order to disseminate different varieties of mainly quantitative IA information to their global stakeholders. Further, the variety and the extent of IA disclosure are associated with corporate specific factors such as leverage, adoption of IFRS/US GAAP, industry type, and price to book ratio. Contrary to the existing literature on voluntary disclosure, however, firm size and ownership concentration are not found to be associated with the IA disclosure level. Country specific factors such as the level of risks associated with economic policy and legal system are also found to be significantly associated with the IA voluntary disclosure level.

<p>The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between non-audited and audited sustainability reports and in that way indicate the significance of auditing to the contents of a sustainability report. The study was delimited to include three companies that create sustainability reports according to GRI guidelines, and also have changed from non-audited to audited reports.</p><p>The study is an exploratory study where we started from companies that follow GRI's standard and who have changed from being non-assured to assured and certified. In order to examine any differences we have started out from corporate sustainability reports and with the basis of these latter gather those changes which may have occurred during the changeover. We therefore chose to conduct a literature review on each company's non-audited sustainability reports and compare them with each company's audited and certified sustainability reports. Furthermore our study has been made on the basis of an assessment model based on the concepts of materiality, completeness and comparability.</p><p>The study showed that the audited sustainability reports in all companies were more focused and more detailed about the aspects GRI established for the performance indicators. The study also revealed that the audited sustainability report in one of the studied companies had more neutral image on managing and supporting the positive qualities that exist in the waste products and wastes. The study also showed that the audited sustainability report of another of the studied companies, unlike the non-audited, contained information about problems and indirect effects of the business. In further another company appeared to increase the comparability of the audited sustainability report. The summary conclusion of the study was that the differences that emerged between the non-audited and the audited sustainability reports showed that the audit had significance for the contents in the sustainability report regarding to materiality and partly for the completeness and comparability.</p>

This study of the use of e-portfolios by organizations, including businesses, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and other communities of individuals joined together to accomplish a goal discovers that e-portfolios are robust tools for extensible authentication of group endeavor. The article examines the ways these organizations are currently appropriating the advantages of e-portfolios and some of the directions in which best practice appears to be headed. It discusses three directions related to the use of e-portfolios. First it observes the use of e-portfolio methodology to present an inside look at organizations to the outside world through reports to investment and support communities, for auditing purposes, for presenting evidence-based competencies, for marketing, and for honoring excellence. Second it observes the ways that organizations use e-portfolios to engender good decision-making as they receive information from outside sources such as prospective employees and prospective vendors or partners to inform inside operations. Third it observes the impact of e-portfolios when used internally by organizations and businesses as a framework that allows for new levels of management and internal communication.

This study uses discourse analysis to investigate and compare the coverage of America in two Chinese official newspapers, the Chinese language People’s Daily and the English language China Daily in January in 1989, 1999, and 2009. This study compares the two newspapers in four aspects of the texts: topic selection, headline design, writing tactics, and visual components use, to find any differences in reporting tactics according to their different readerships. People’s Daily employed a constant editorial preference for political content and a provocative reporting tactics. Meanwhile, China Daily used a more global editorial approach. Its content and its reports were increasingly consistent with Western journalism criteria: accurate, brief, and clear.