Today, firms are essential to the development and protection of Human Rights, and are expected to act as necessary partners to governments and international organizations in their promotion and respect. Nevertheless, corporations are not legally compelled to act under guidelines of the United Nations (UN) HR framework. This in turn, alongside globalization, has created a governance gap in enabling a permissive environment for wrongful acts by companies without proper sanctioning or reparation.The main objectives of the Business and HR predicament lie in tackling these deficiencies in the global order. Although CSR policies are supposedly adopted in a voluntary manner, the reality is private businesses are in the centre of a “System of CSR Promotion and Advocacy”, determined by a number of drivers, pressures and incentives, shaped by diverse sources and actors.Hence, the business case for CSR differs between developed countries and emerging economies. The drivers of CSR engagement are one of the key elements that differentiate emerging economies from the developing world. Given that literature on business and HR has focused mostly on finding ways to strengthen regulatory schemes in the developed world, this research aims to shed light on why indigenous third world country corporations uptake CSR policies in a voluntary manner.

This thesis explores the effect of disclosure on risk management policies. Following recent theory on risk management, with market imperfections, risk management creates value by reducing the volatility of the cash flows. Those risk policies are conditioned by actual disclosure rules that reduce information asymmetry between managers and shareholders, providing a comprehensive view of the firm.However, disclosure gives different accounting choices, hence affecting the decision-making process of managers. The purpose of this thesis is to establish if managers adapt their actual risk policy to disclosure rules. Specifically, we discuss how managers make decisions regarding exchange rate risk in forecasted transactions. In addition, we discuss how hedging affects valuation by using an investor perspective. This is done through the analysis of the automotive industry in Sweden, Germany and France and the considerations of analysts and auditors.We found that risk management policies are affected by accounting rules and that analysts are aware of those effects but have problems to measure them. However, not enough evidence was found to prove that managers try to avoid the volatility the fair value option brings when hedging a forecasted flow.

This thesis begins with a description of the social, political and natural phenomena related with the human settlements at the slopes of the Galeras Volcano. Subsequently, a stateof-the-art is provided in order to understand the relevance of addressing the underlying confl ict at this point in time, from a regional planning perspective.Based on this preliminary analysis, a hypothesis regarding regional development as a risk management strategy for the community at the Galeras region is provided. With reference to this hypothesis, the general approach of this Master’s thesis is outlined by, integrating concepts of participation, risk management, regional planning and urban design. The regional strategy compresses several urban and regional projects at lower scales.These provide both safety in case of volcanic eruptions, and growth opportunities for the urban communities settled on this territory. Specifically, a set of four premises will be the core of the decisions: Land has a social value higher than its economic value; Life preservation is a shared goal for all parts involved; there is a local culture that has evolved in this specific territory and needs to be preserved; and there is a constitutional and democratic framework that can provide useful tools for this specific case.From these premises, two regional conclusions are key outcomes of this thesis: A preliminary risk analysis as a proposed further step from the current Volcanic Threat Map (INGEOMINAS 1997) and a regional development strategy for the Galeras Region (Pasto, Nariño and Florida).

Microbial pollution of water is one of the principal causes of life-threatening diarrheal diseases in the developing world. Ultraviolet (UV) light is increasingly recognized as a viable alternative for the disinfection of drinking water and wastewater in developed countries, but its feasibility in low-income areas has to be assessed further.The rural community of Cerro Grande, in Bolivia, has been hit by outbreaks of gastrointestinal diseases, so two UV-based disinfection systems were implemented there. One of them was a fabricated unit, with materials available locally, whereas the other was a commercially-available unit.The fabricated unit was validated following USEPA procedures and was modeled using computational fluid dynamics. It was observed that a UV-based disinfection system can be sustainable for as few as 20 users, and even for 48 users in areas with poor feed water quality and lacking an electrical grid and distribution network, with a monthly cost of US$2.

The excavation for the 53-story reinforced concrete One Museum Park West building (OMPW) in Chicago was constructed using combined support systems. The building was supported by caissons and a perimeter wall formed by secant piles which transitioned to tangent piles below the bottom of the cut. After installing the perimeter wall and deep foundations for the building, the excavation for the reinforced concrete central core was supported by a circular cofferdam made of sheet piles and steel ring beams. This excavation was made using conventional bottom-up excavation techniques. The excavation for the rest of the building was made using a top-down method and was laterally braced with reinforced concrete floor slabs structurally connected to the secant pile walls and the reinforced concrete core. Field performance data during construction of the OMPW basements were collected with settlement points, inclinometers and strain gages installed in the concrete basement slabs.Significant settlements were observed adjacent to the excavation during wall and deep foundation installation, central core construction and top-down excavation. The influence of concrete material time-dependence of the floor slabs on the performance during top-down excavation is evaluated and a method for the separation of temperature-related strains from the excavation-induced strains in the concrete is described. The construction of the basements is simulated with a 3D numerical structural model to study the influence of the concrete material time-dependence of the floor slabs in the excavation-induced movements resulting from top-down construction. Computed strains in the floor slabs are compared with the observed performance data collected from the strain gages.For use in numerical simulation of the entire excavation process, hypoplasticity constitutive parameters for clays (HC model) at the element test level were calibrated with tests conducted on high quality block samples obtained from the excavation of Block 37 project in Chicago. They included oedometer tests, bender element measurements, and triaxial tests following different stress probes, and were further refined with seismic cone penetration results.  The entire OMPW excavation is simulated with the calibrated parameters with a fully coupled-flow deformation, three-dimensional finite element model. Influence of the construction of secant pile walls, concrete material time-dependence, and nonlinear concrete behavior of the perimeter pile walls on the performance of the OMPW excavation is determined. Conclusions about top-down construction are drawn in light of the measured and simulated performance of the OMPW excavation.

The pedagogy of the birds’ is a cultural initiative, consisting of four creative collaborative actions, which seeks to develop conversations between the inhabitants of Brisas del Volador, a whole community living in extreme poverty in the south part of Bogotá, the Colombian capital, and [with] the society in which they live; with the intention of questioning and reconstructing the individual and collective identity they have lost because of the social problems they have faced, which has led them to a complete invisibility and exclusion of society.A series of events around talking, eating, walking, and unlearning are proposed as possible ways to provide the tools for the self-valorization of these people within the dynamics of the city, as political and social beings able to make real changes in the community. The whole initiative seeks to create a form of resistance to the label these people have, and empower them to potentialize their abilities, because they deserve to be seen by the rest of us and they are as precious as we all are, and they have to get aware of it.

The main Topic of this dissertation is to critically analyze the obligations of States’ parties to the TRIPS Agreement in relation to the extent of protection that they are bound to confer on first and second medical use patents. In this sense, the Viagra case illustrates the tensions between the national pharmaceutical industries of the States members of the Andean Community and a leading pharmaceutical company like Pfizer. The dissertation pretends to demonstrate that the decisions taken by the authorities in the Andean Region were consistent with the international minimum standards of IPRs as embodied in the TRIPS Agreement.The Viagra case is the most important series of administrative and judicial decisions concerning first and second use patents in the Andean region. It is composed of the administrative rulings of the member States national authorities of the Andean Community, by the administrative rulings of the Andean Community Secretariat and by the judicial decisions of the Andean Tribunal of Justice. This case was elected as the topic of the dissertation because it doesn’t follow the international trend to expand the levels of patent protection, which has occurred in two ways. First, the scope of patentable subject- matter has been given an inclusive interpretation. Secondly, the restrictions on patentability have been narrowly interpreted.

The communications services market is undergoing a transition as the growing interconnection of providers is diminishing the importance of coverage as a differentiator, and shifting the focus to the value-added service portfolio and customer experience. At the same time, new options are emerging to deliver optimized technologies for the IT service management framework within the internet sphere. Orange Business Services, communications service provider, develops and understands together with Accenture consultants, both clients needs and customer experience strategies for deploying an improved management service portal. The process to enable this competitive strategy for OBS includes the research of new tends in technology, the comprehension of customers expectations and needs, and the introduction of the evolutions that competitors are implementing within the market.

Concessional agreements have been to many developing countries the keystone to reach development. Since the middle twentieth century up to now roads, water - wastewater systems, electricity’s generation and distribution have been operated under arrangements that foster the private sector participation. Concessional agreements seem to be an advantageous feature of project finance for a country as a whole and perhaps that is why governments have mostly opted for this option. The foregoing sum up to developing world problems, as lack of own recourses to build, operate or maintain infrastructure and inexperience of public sector in these affairs, have arisen the utilization of concessional agreements.Developing countries use to follow the models pre-established by developed countries embracing either slightly or substantial changes in the schemes. Concessions have not been the exception. The questions then, rise from two sides. From the developed countries view it is appropriate to inquire: Did concessional agreements contributed to third world countries development? Are they still been utilized? If so, what made them work? What failed? On the other hand we should ask ourselves: Have developing countries followed carefully the third world concessional schemes? Have they settled new schemes? What were developing countries’ purposes when establishing concessional agreement schemes as public policies? Have those schemes worked or not? What is the landscape in a developed country such as Germmany and in a developing country such as Colombia?A concessional agreement as a project finance´s feature depends heavily on its preparation. Structuring phase plays a major role to reach success. Project finance is a matter of risk. Implementation of concessional agreements is as well a matter of risk. Parties assume their own project responsibility and therefore they relay in the project risks allocation. Risks allocation is the first mitigation measure. A proper structuration supposes an accurate allocation of risks and a better performance of each party. This research as of an appraisal between the role of infrastructure concessions in developed and developing countries, and has as a purpose to make a comparison between both schemes regarding the management of infrastructure concessions in their structuring phase paying special attention in the risks allocation and mitigation. The foregoing study would focus in Germany and Colombia´s scenarios principally, but using as reference other cases in specific issues, if necessary.

Due to the continue trend of technology for circuit scaling; optimal sizes for transistors and cables are needed, this scaling comes along with power increase and undesired cross talk effects between the wires which might affect the signal itself. A trade-off curve between power, area and delay is required so that a tuned solution for a specific problem might be found. Here, an approach based on the dominant time constant optimization technique for modelling of the delay is investigated for an initial square topology with uniform wire and repeater sizing based on convex optimization and Linear Matrix Inequalities. Results with optimal buffer insertion across the bus are also investigated.