A contingency framework of enterprise governance in the UK: A value-based management approach

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Corporate governance (CG) has recently received much attention because of the wave of financial scandals in the early 2000s and the more recent global financial crisis. CG reforms, including laws, codes and listing rules have been established to protect shareholders’ rights and restore investors’ confidence in the capital market. These reforms have largely contributed to the evolution of internal and external governance mechanisms that are aimed at mitigating agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. However, overemphasis has been placed on the monitoring and control dimensions of governance, which may hinder entrepreneurial activities, obscure business prosperity and contribute to a narrow perspective on CG. It has been argued that there is a need to broaden CG beyond compliance (conformance) to a set of rules and laws, to include the performance aspects of governance that focus on strategy and value creation. In other words, governance should not only focus on monitoring managerial performance to ensure accountability to shareholders, but also on mechanisms that motivate management to optimise shareholders’ wealth. Enterprise governance (EG) framework has been introduced to keep the balance between the conformance and performance dimensions of governance. However, few studies address the possible tension between conformance and performance. Moreover, there is no agreement among these studies on the relationship between conformance and performance in the governance context. Arguably, Value-based Management (VBM) is an appropriate approach to address the issue of EG. VBM adopts value creation as an overall objective, develops a strategy that contributes to value creation and integrates it into decision-making. In this way, VBM can act as an effective mechanism for motivating management to maximise shareholder wealth, which works in parallel with other CG mechanisms, to mitigate agency conflicts resulting from the separation between ownership and management. This study aims to develop a contingency framework of EG through operationalising the conformance using CG and performance using corporate entrepreneurship (CE). This framework examines the inter-relationships between VBM, compliance with the Combined Code on Corporate Governance (CCCG), CE and the ultimate effect on organisational performance. More specifically, the study empirically examines the effect of compliance with the CCCG on CE, and whether VBM can achieve a balance between compliance with the CCCG and CE, should a conflict exist. The study also examines whether a fit between contingency variables (company size, agency conflicts, uncertainty, strategy and decentralisation), VBM, compliance with the CCCG codes and CE is associated with organisational performance. To achieve the aim of this study a cross-sectional survey, based on a questionnaire, is conducted to identify the level of VBM implementation, contextual and organisational factors in the large and medium quoted companies in the UK. The questionnaire targets the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in these companies as key informants. In addition, a content analysis of the annual reports of the sampled companies is undertaken to measure the level of compliance with the CCCG. Financial data (e.g. organisational performance) have been obtained from the DataStream, Fame and Thomson One Banker databases. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) is adopted for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The results suggest that VBM implementation is positively associated with agency conflicts, low cost strategies and decentralisation. Compliance with the CCCG is positively associated with agency conflicts and company size. CE is positively associated with company size, uncertainty and differentiation strategies. In addition, the fit between compliance with the CCCG and contingency factors significantly predicts the marketbased performance. The fit between CE and the contingency factors significantly predict the perceived performance. However, the results regarding the effect of VBM on organisational performance are mixed. While VBM has no significant direct effect on the market-based performance, VBM has indirect positive effect on the market-based performance acting through compliance with the CCCG as an intervening variable. VBM is significantly associated with compliance with the CCCG but not with CE. No evidence is found for negative association between compliance with the CCCG and CE. The results support a large number of the proposed relationships between the contingency factors, VBM, compliance with the CCCG and CE. The results also suggest that using both compliance with the CCCG and CE as intervening variables in the relationship between VBM and organisational performance contributes to explaining the mixed results in the VBM literature. In terms of the EG framework, VBM does not keep a balance between conformance and performance. VBM emphasises the compliance with the CCCG (conformance) at the expense of CE (performance). The results did not provide significant evidence of a conflict between compliance with the CCCG and CE, the area which lacks empirical evidence. This study contributes to the literature at different levels. At the theoretical level, this study develops a theoretical model that links a performance management system (PMS), i.e. VBM, to CG practices and CE. This model attempts to bridge the gap between different disciplines, including management accounting, CG and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, combining both the contingency theory and the agency theory lenses contributes to the development of a comprehensive model of EG. At the methodological level, unlike previous studies, this study measures VBM practices on a continuum, rather than categories. Multiple data collection methods are used, and a powerful statistical technique (PLS-SEM) is adopted for data analysis. At the empirical level, the study is conducted in the UK. Though it is different from the US in many aspects, very few studies have been conducted in this context in many research areas such as VBM, CG and CE.This study is supported by the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education and the Egyptian Cultural Bureau in London

Bregman Voronoi Diagrams: Properties, Algorithms and Applications

The Voronoi diagram of a finite set of objects is a fundamental geometric structure that subdivides the embedding space into regions, each region consisting of the points that are closer to a given object than to the others. We may define many variants of Voronoi diagrams depending on the class of objects, the distance functions and the embedding space. In this paper, we investigate a framework for defining and building Voronoi diagrams for a broad class of distance functions called Bregman divergences. Bregman divergences include not only the traditional (squared) Euclidean distance but also various divergence measures based on entropic functions. Accordingly, Bregman Voronoi diagrams allow to define information-theoretic Voronoi diagrams in statistical parametric spaces based on the relative entropy of distributions. We define several types of Bregman diagrams, establish correspondences between those diagrams (using the Legendre transformation), and show how to compute them efficiently. We also introduce extensions of these diagrams, e.g. k-order and k-bag Bregman Voronoi diagrams, and introduce Bregman triangulations of a set of points and their connexion with Bregman Voronoi diagrams. We show that these triangulations capture many of the properties of the celebrated Delaunay triangulation. Finally, we give some applications of Bregman Voronoi diagrams which are of interest in the context of computational geometry and machine learning.Comment: Extend the proceedings abstract of SODA 2007 (46 pages, 15 figures

Espaços públicos de lazer em Florianópolis/SC: análise de praças e parques da bacia hidrográfica do Itacorubi

O município de Florianópolis tem apresentado um elevado crescimento demográfico desde 1970. Nos últimos 45 anos, sua população passou de cerca de 150.000 para 470.000 habitantes. A Bacia do Itacorubi, onde se localizam os bairros do Itacorubi, do Santa Mônica, do Córrego Grande, do Pantanal e da Trindade também acompanhou este crescimento, e concentra atualmente cerca de 55.000 moradores. Nesta região existem 28espaços públicos de lazer, incluindo parques, praças e áreas verdes de lazer, e excluindo os canteiros do sistema viário. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi constituir um banco de dados sobre estes espaços utilizando o sistema de informações geográficas (SIG), incluindo variáveis como forma, funções, área, limites, dentre outras. O método está dividido em três partes: estabelecimento das variáveis de investigação, levantamento de dados in loco, a partir da técnica da observação sistemática e tratamento de dados e armazenados em SIG. Como resultado tem-se o banco de dados e o detalhamento dos procedimentos em uma das praças analisadas (Praça Jardim Albatroz). Numa pesquisa futura, pretende-se identificar quais as correlações entre as diversas variáveis mais importantes, como base para a elaboração de um conjunto de diretrizes projetuais.The city of Florianopolis has presented a high demographic growth since 1970. Over the past 45 years, its population has increased from around 150,000 to 470,000 inhabitants. The Itacorubi River Basin, where the districts of Itacorubi, Santa Mônica, Córrego Grande, Pantanal, and Trindade are located, have also followed this tendency, concentrating currently around 55,000 residents. In this region, there are 28 recreational public spaces, including parks, squares, and green areas, but notflowerbeds and lawns. The objective of this research is to create a database on these areas using a geographic information system (GIS) software, including variables such as form, functions, equipments, area,date of creation, among others.The method is divided into three parts: establishment of research variables, on-site data collection, from the systematic observation technique and data processing and storage in GIS. As a result, this paper presents the database and the details of procedures of the analyzed venue (JardimAlbatroz Square). In a following research, it is expected to identify the most important correlations amongthe variables, as a basis for a set of projective guidelines

Legislació històrica de la família catalana medieval i moderna

This article aims to demonstrate the legal importance of some documents that constitute an important part of heritage archives, including marriage contracts which in medieval and modern times have served to justify certain rights and ownership in families. These are the outstanding documents regarding the history of certain families, as well as the history of many legal principles and formulas in Catalan family and inheritance law and, through these formulas, the evolution of its family system and society. The article presents how the most important legal aspects of Catalan marriage contracts evolved from the early Middle Ages to the enactment of the Decret de la Nova Planta, highlighting key moments in the history of the creation of Catalan civil law.L'objectiu d'aquest article és demostrar la importància jurídica d'alguns documents que constitueixen una part important dels arxius patrimonials, entre aquests els capítols matrimonials, que des de les èpoques medieval i moderna han servit per a justificar uns determinats drets i títols de les cases. Representen el document estel·lar de la història de les cases, la història de molts principis i fórmules jurídiques del dret català familiar i successori –i a través d'aquestes fórmules l'evolució del seu sistema familiar i de la seva societat. L'article ofereix l'evolució històrica de les figures jurídiques més importants dels capítols matrimonials catalans des de l'època alt medieval fins al Decret de la Nova Planta, i busca els moments destacats de la història de la creació del dret civil català

O desempenho acadêmico e o fenômeno da evasão em cursos de graduação da área da saúde

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Ceilândia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências e Tecnologias em Saúde, 2016.O presente estudo tem como tema central o fenômeno da evasão e a variável desempenho acadêmico nos cursos de graduação da Universidade de Brasília Campus Ceilândia – UnB/ Ceilândia. Objetivo: Analisar o fenômeno da evasão em cinco cursos de graduação da área da saúde da UnB/Ceilândia, no período de 2008/2 a 2014/2 e implementar estratégia de intervenção para melhoria do desempenho acadêmico em quatro disciplinas iniciais do módulo modo de vida nos dois semestres de 2015. Método: O estudo é exploratório e descritivo, com delineamento de estudo de caso de natureza qualitativa, sobre evasão nos cursos - Enfermagem, Farmácia, Terapia Ocupacional, Saúde Coletiva e Fisioterapia, desta instituição, no período de 2008/2 a 2014/2, por meio de entrevista e a realização de minicurso para alunos monitores das disciplinas: Do Átomo a Vida; Da Célula aos Sistemas; Biofísica e Química Inorgânica Aplicada a Farmácia em 2015/1 e 2015/2. Resultados: Perfil do aluno, que evade dessa universidade, é do sexo feminino na faixa etária de 16 aos 20 anos tendo como principais causas de saída o abandono do ensino superior 25%; a mudança de curso 24%; ou, o desempenho acadêmico 16%. A taxa de evasão nos semestres de 2013/1 a 2014/2 foram 65,7%, 53,4%, 56% e 27,9%, respectivamente. Em relação à intervenção no sistema de monitoria das disciplinas: nos dois semestres de 2015, verificou-se aumento de 31% nas participações nessa atividade de um semestre para outro, e mais de 70% dos alunos obtiveram desempenho satisfatório. Conclusão: Os elementos evidenciados aqui sinalizam para a necessidade dos gestores institucionais aperfeiçoarem o sistema de monitoria de torná-lo mais atrativo principalmente para os alunos com baixo desempenho acadêmico, e assim tentar reduzir a evasão por baixo desempenho acadêmico.This study is focused on the dropout phenomenon and the variable academic performance in undergraduate courses at the University of Brasilia Ceilandia Campus - UNB / Ceilândia. Objective: To analyze the dropout phenomenon in five undergraduate courses in the health area, UNB / Ceilandia, from 2008/2 to 2014/2 and implement intervention strategies to improve the academic performance in the first four disciplines of living module in two semesters of 2015. Method: The study is exploratory and descriptive, study design case of a qualitative nature, about evasion in courses - Nursing, Pharmacy, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Public Health, this institution, from 2008 / 2 to 2014/2, and a short course for monitors students from disciplines from Atom Life; Cell to systems; Biophysics and Chemistry Applied Inorganic Pharmacy in 2015/1 and 2. Results: Student profile, which evades the university, are women aged 16 to 20 years and the main output causes the abandonment of higher education 25%; course change to 24%; or academic performance 16%. The dropout rates in the half of 2013/1 to 2014/2 were 65.7%, 53.4%, 56% and 27.9%, respectively. Regarding the intervention of the subjects monitoring system: in two half of 2015, 31% increase was found in the participation in this activity from one half to another, and more than 70% of students achieved satisfactory performance. Conclusion: The elements identified here point to the need for institutional managers hone the monitoring system to make it more attractive especially for students with low academic performance, so try and reduce dropout by low academic performance

Approximating Nearest Neighbor Distances

Several researchers proposed using non-Euclidean metrics on point sets in Euclidean space for clustering noisy data. Almost always, a distance function is desired that recognizes the closeness of the points in the same cluster, even if the Euclidean cluster diameter is large. Therefore, it is preferred to assign smaller costs to the paths that stay close to the input points. In this paper, we consider the most natural metric with this property, which we call the nearest neighbor metric. Given a point set P and a path $\gamma$, our metric charges each point of $\gamma$ with its distance to P. The total charge along $\gamma$ determines its nearest neighbor length, which is formally defined as the integral of the distance to the input points along the curve. We describe a $(3+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm and a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm to compute the nearest neighbor metric. Both approximation algorithms work in near-linear time. The former uses shortest paths on a sparse graph using only the input points. The latter uses a sparse sample of the ambient space, to find good approximate geodesic paths.Comment: corrected author nam

Les visites pastorals a Catalunya durant l'època moderna : mètodes de control sobre la parròquia, el clergat i la població

Les visites pastorals catalanes de l'època moderna esdevenen una poderosa arma de confessionalització. El seu objectiu serà múltiple i divers, en evolució constant, adaptant-se als canvis: la instauració d'un ordre social (amb l'Església i l'Estat a dalt de tot), l'establiment d'una religió homogènia i unitària, el control sobre la població i el coneixement del territori.Las visitas pastorales de la época moderna se convierten en una poderosa arma de confesionalización. Su objetivo será múltiple y diverso, en constante evolución, adaptándose a los cambios: la instauración de un orden social (donde la Iglesia y el Estado permanecen en la cima), el establecimiento de una religión homogénea y unitaria, el control sobre la población y el conocimiento del territorio.The Catalan modern pastoral visits had become a powerful instrument of confessionalisation. The objective will be multiple and diverse, immerse in a constant evolution and it takes part of the changes: the instauration of a social order (where the Church and the State remain at the top), the establishment of a Catholic religion in a homogeneous and united way, the control over the population, and the knowledge of the territory

Evaluating patterns of national and international collaboration in Cuban science using bibliometric tools

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that collaboration was a key characteristic of Cuban science to maintain their scientific capacity during a period of economic restrictions and an important feature of Cuban science policy and practice for the benefit of society. Design/methodology/approach -- Collaboration was studied through Cuban scientific publications listed in PubMed for the period 1990-2010. The search was carried out using the advanced search engine of PubMed indicating oCubaW in the affiliation field. To identify participating institutions a second search was performed to find the affiliations of all authors per article through the link to the electronic journal. A data set was created to identify institutional publication patterns for the surveyed period. Institutions were classified in three categories according to their scientific production as Central, Middle or Distal: the pattern of collaboration between these categories was analysed. Findings -- Results indicate that collaboration between scientifically advanced institutions (Central) and a wide range of national institutions is a consequence of the social character of science in Cuba in which cooperation prevails. Although this finding comes from a limited field of biomedical science it is likely to reflect Cuban science policy in general. Originality/value -- Using bibliometric tools the study suggests that Cuban science policy and practice ensure the application of science for social needs by harnessing human resources through national and international collaboration, building in this way stronger scientific capacity

A contingency framework of enterprise governance in the UK : a value-based management approach

Corporate governance (CG) has recently received much attention because of the wave of financial scandals in the early 2000s and the more recent global financial crisis. CG reforms, including laws, codes and listing rules have been established to protect shareholders’ rights and restore investors’ confidence in the capital market. These reforms have largely contributed to the evolution of internal and external governance mechanisms that are aimed at mitigating agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. However, overemphasis has been placed on the monitoring and control dimensions of governance, which may hinder entrepreneurial activities, obscure business prosperity and contribute to a narrow perspective on CG. It has been argued that there is a need to broaden CG beyond compliance (conformance) to a set of rules and laws, to include the performance aspects of governance that focus on strategy and value creation. In other words, governance should not only focus on monitoring managerial performance to ensure accountability to shareholders, but also on mechanisms that motivate management to optimise shareholders’ wealth. Enterprise governance (EG) framework has been introduced to keep the balance between the conformance and performance dimensions of governance. However, few studies address the possible tension between conformance and performance. Moreover, there is no agreement among these studies on the relationship between conformance and performance in the governance context. Arguably, Value-based Management (VBM) is an appropriate approach to address the issue of EG. VBM adopts value creation as an overall objective, develops a strategy that contributes to value creation and integrates it into decision-making. In this way, VBM can act as an effective mechanism for motivating management to maximise shareholder wealth, which works in parallel with other CG mechanisms, to mitigate agency conflicts resulting from the separation between ownership and management. This study aims to develop a contingency framework of EG through operationalising the conformance using CG and performance using corporate entrepreneurship (CE). This framework examines the inter-relationships between VBM, compliance with the Combined Code on Corporate Governance (CCCG), CE and the ultimate effect on organisational performance. More specifically, the study empirically examines the effect of compliance with the CCCG on CE, and whether VBM can achieve a balance between compliance with the CCCG and CE, should a conflict exist. The study also examines whether a fit between contingency variables (company size, agency conflicts, uncertainty, strategy and decentralisation), VBM, compliance with the CCCG codes and CE is associated with organisational performance. To achieve the aim of this study a cross-sectional survey, based on a questionnaire, is conducted to identify the level of VBM implementation, contextual and organisational factors in the large and medium quoted companies in the UK. The questionnaire targets the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in these companies as key informants. In addition, a content analysis of the annual reports of the sampled companies is undertaken to measure the level of compliance with the CCCG. Financial data (e.g. organisational performance) have been obtained from the DataStream, Fame and Thomson One Banker databases. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) is adopted for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The results suggest that VBM implementation is positively associated with agency conflicts, low cost strategies and decentralisation. Compliance with the CCCG is positively associated with agency conflicts and company size. CE is positively associated with company size, uncertainty and differentiation strategies. In addition, the fit between compliance with the CCCG and contingency factors significantly predicts the marketbased performance. The fit between CE and the contingency factors significantly predict the perceived performance. However, the results regarding the effect of VBM on organisational performance are mixed. While VBM has no significant direct effect on the market-based performance, VBM has indirect positive effect on the market-based performance acting through compliance with the CCCG as an intervening variable. VBM is significantly associated with compliance with the CCCG but not with CE. No evidence is found for negative association between compliance with the CCCG and CE. The results support a large number of the proposed relationships between the contingency factors, VBM, compliance with the CCCG and CE. The results also suggest that using both compliance with the CCCG and CE as intervening variables in the relationship between VBM and organisational performance contributes to explaining the mixed results in the VBM literature. In terms of the EG framework, VBM does not keep a balance between conformance and performance. VBM emphasises the compliance with the CCCG (conformance) at the expense of CE (performance). The results did not provide significant evidence of a conflict between compliance with the CCCG and CE, the area which lacks empirical evidence. This study contributes to the literature at different levels. At the theoretical level, this study develops a theoretical model that links a performance management system (PMS), i.e. VBM, to CG practices and CE. This model attempts to bridge the gap between different disciplines, including management accounting, CG and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, combining both the contingency theory and the agency theory lenses contributes to the development of a comprehensive model of EG. At the methodological level, unlike previous studies, this study measures VBM practices on a continuum, rather than categories. Multiple data collection methods are used, and a powerful statistical technique (PLS-SEM) is adopted for data analysis. At the empirical level, the study is conducted in the UK. Though it is different from the US in many aspects, very few studies have been conducted in this context in many research areas such as VBM, CG and CE.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEgyptian Ministry of Higher Education : Egyptian Cultural Bureau in LondonGBUnited Kingdo

Acceleration and Parallelization of ZENO/Walk-on-Spheres

AbstractThis paper describes our on-going work to accelerate ZENO, a software tool based on Monte Carlo methods (MCMs), used for computing material properties at nanoscale. ZENO employs three main algorithms: (1) Walk on Spheres (WoS), (2) interior sampling, and (3) surface sampling. We have accelerated the first two algorithms. For the sake of brevity, the paper will discuss our work on the first one only as it is the most commonly used and the acceleration techniques were similar in both cases.WoS is a Brownian motion MCM for solving a class of partial differential equations (PDEs). It provides a stochastic solution to a PDE by estimating the probability that a random walk, which started at infinity, will hit the surface of the material under consideration. WoS is highly effective when the problem's geometry is additive, as this greatly reduces the number of walk steps needed to achieve accurate results. The walks start on the surface of an enclosing sphere and can make much larger jumps than in a direct simulation of Brownian motion. Our current implementation represents the molecular structure of nanomaterials as a union of possibly overlapping spheres. The core processing bottleneck in WoS is a Computational Geometry one, as the algorithm repeatedly determines the distance from query point to the material surface in each step of the random walk.In this paper, we present results from benchmarking spatial data structures, including several open-source implementations of k-D trees, for accelerating WoS algorithmically. The paper also presents results from our multicore and cluster parallel implementation to show that it exhibits linear strong scaling with the number of cores and compute nodes; this implementation delivers up to 4 orders of magnitude speedup compared to the original FORTRAN code when run on 8 nodes (each with dual 6-core Intel Xeon CPUs) with 24 threads per node