“Service” Municipal Administration as Part of the Development of Youth Entrepreneurship in Russia

The study offers a development of the social technologies of “service” municipal administration. The consumers’ opinions should be taken into consideration when determining the nomenclature and standards of their provision, which include the quality parameters that the consumers consider important. In addition, “service” relations imply the assessment of consumer satisfaction with the services and the correction of services based on the results of the assessment. Since this interaction implies communication between the municipal administration body and service users, it is necessary to focus on communicative technologies that are capable of providing a full cycle of service development and improvement for young entrepreneurs. Communications should help determine the expectations associated with a service, raise awareness thereof, and involve young people in the decisions related to the provision of services.     

Are sponsors blamed for edging off? Consumer reactions to sponsorship terminations

Firms regularly terminate sponsorships, even without publicly known misconduct by the sponsee such as athlete doping. Consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations by firms have not been studied despite being a regular occurrence. Using a set of experimental studies, this paper analyzes consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations (i.e., early and non-renewal) that were not caused by a sponsee’s misconduct, the underlying process that causes the reactions, and the role of several moderating factors (trust, power balance, and locus of control). Our findings reveal that sponsorship terminations have a negative effect on sponsors’ brand images—particularly early terminations that occur before the end of a contract—because consumers perceive these sponsorship terminations as unfair. The results also suggest that a termination is particularly harmful for the sponsor’s perceived fairness if the sponsor is powerful and if the termination decision is under the sponsor’s control. Further, the termination effect is particularly strong for firms that consumers trust.     

Penalized empirical likelihood inference for sparse additive hazards regression with a diverging number of covariates

High-dimensional sparse modeling with censored survival data is of great practical importance, as exemplified by applications in high-throughput genomic data analysis. In this paper, we propose a class of regularization methods, integrating both the penalized empirical likelihood and pseudoscore approaches, for variable selection and estimation in sparse and high-dimensional additive hazards regression models. When the number of covariates grows with the sample size, we establish asymptotic properties of the resulting estimator and the oracle property of the proposed method. It is shown that the proposed estimator is more efficient than that obtained from the non-concave penalized likelihood approach in the literature. Based on a penalized empirical likelihood ratio statistic, we further develop a nonparametric likelihood approach for testing the linear hypothesis of regression coefficients and constructing confidence regions consequently. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology and also two real data sets are analyzed.     

Volunteer Engagement: Exploring the Distinction Between Job and Organizational Engagement

Retaining engaged volunteers is crucial to many non-profit organizations. However, research on volunteer engagement is limited, and the distinction between job and organizational engagement in volunteers remains to be investigated. In this paper, we examine both organizational- and job-level engagement, and specifically, whether perceived organizational support would enhance volunteer engagement and associated attitudes. We surveyed 221 volunteers, and asked them about their perceptions of organizational support; their engagement with their volunteer job and the organization they volunteer for; satisfaction; commitment; and turnover intentions. Both organizational and job engagements had significant relationships with the attitudinal variables. However, we found that organizational rather than job engagement mediated the relationship between organizational support and volunteer satisfaction and commitment. While organizational engagement correlated with turnover intentions, neither job nor organizational engagement mediated the relationship between support and the intent to leave. Our findings advance the research on volunteer engagement, and highlight the importance of organizational engagement for this important, but too often overlooked, workforce.     

Exploratory Study on Drug Users’ Perspectives on Quality of Life: More than Health-Related Quality of Life?

In drug treatment outcome literature, a focus on objective and socially desirable indicators of change (e.g. no drug use) has predominated, while outcome indicators that are important for drug users themselves (e.g. quality of life, satisfaction with treatment) have largely been neglected. Nonetheless, Quality of Life (QoL) has become an important concept to evaluate effectiveness of treatment in mental health care research and disability studies. Given the almost exclusive focus on Health-related Quality of Life (HRQOL) in substance abuse research and the neglect of clients’ perspectives in this field, we explore in this study the concept of QoL as perceived by drug users. Focus group discussions (n = 9) were organised in various treatment settings and community services for drug users in the region of Ghent, Belgium to identify important dimensions of QoL and their interpretation by drug users. Data were clustered and analysed based on the theoretical framework of Robert Schalock (Quality of life. Volume 1: Conceptualization and measurement, 1996). The domains ‘personal relationships’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘self-determination’ were discussed most frequently by the participants. They stressed the importance of a supportive social network in particular. It can be concluded that QoL is not primarily associated by drug users with health and it involves much more than the aspects typically represented in measures of HRQOL.     

我国食品安全监管体制研究——兼评我国《食品安全法》

我国食品安全监管的主要问题表现为行政监管组织法体系不健全、监管主体过多、行政监管权分配不合理以及对监管主体缺乏有力的责任约束机制。2009年2月通过的《食品安全法》并没有改变分段监管的模式，食品安全委员会权限设置不明确，影响监管力度。结合我国国情，要完善安全监管行政组织法体系、推行渐进式统一模式，将各个环节的监管职权逐步整合于食品药品监督管理局，加大食品安全委员会的职权，增强其协调权威性，并不断加强监管机构的监管责任，建立权责一致的行政和司法责任追究制度：     

“多元一体”格局下我国濒危语言的保护与对策

濒危语言保护是当前我国急需面对的一个难题。伴随着语言的消失,我国民族文化多样性也会遭到破坏,中华民族"多元一体"格局体系也会受冲击,可能从而引发一系列的民族问题。本文主要通过对中华民族"多元一体"格局与濒危语言关系的论述引发人们对濒危语言的关注,并尝试结合我国当前的实际,提出适合我国语言保护的一些对策。     

论湖北咨议局从主张立宪到参与武昌首义的转变

湖北咨议局是试图推行资产阶级君主立宪政体下的一个省级地方议会的预备机构,却在资产阶级宪政请愿运动中一再受挫,由绝望毅然转向革命,在武昌首义中推波助澜.湖北咨议局立场的转变对于武昌首义成果的巩固与扩大乃至对于辛亥革命在全国的深入发展起到了非常重要的组织和促进作用.     

Internationalization and Performance of Firms in China: Moderating Effects of Governance Structure and the Degree of Centralized Control

This study proposes necessary modifications to the existing internationalization–performance relationship to meet the idiosyncrasies of China-specific contexts. We first hypothesize an S-shaped internationalization–performance relationship as the baseline and then investigate the moderating effects of a firm's governance structure and the degree of centralized government control on the relationship between its internationalization and performance. The results, based on a longitudinal sample of manufacturing firms in China for the 2001–2007 period, indicate that (1) the S-shaped internationalization–performance relationship holds for firms in China; (2) the governance structure moderates the internationalization–performance relationship such that increased profitability through internationalization is more likely for modernized firms than for their conventional local counterparts; and (3) the degree of centralized control moderates the internationalization–performance relationship such that increased profitability through internationalization is more likely for firms affiliated with higher level governments than for those affiliated with lower-level governments.