Differences between paid and unpaid social services for beneficiaries

In many Western welfare states, social work services that have traditionally been provided by paid employees are being replaced by family support, community support, informal networks, and volunteering. For the field of social work, it is relevant to know what it matters to beneficiaries whether services are provided by volunteers or by paid employees. The central question of this article is therefore as follows: What are the differences between unpaid and paid social services for beneficiaries? The article is based on literature review and focus groups. Our results suggest that beneficiaries do experience some differences regarding the advantages of volunteer services for beneficiaries that can be summarized in three propositions: (1) services provided by volunteers are more relational than are services provided by paid employees, and they are therefore perceived as more equal, flexible and sincere. (2) The effects of volunteer services for beneficiaries are not exclusively positive. (3) Although particular tasks may appear to be interchangeable to some extent, the relative advantages of a given task depend upon whether it is performed by a paid worker or by a volunteer. Additional research is needed in order to provide further validation.     

论生产力价值标准的具体化进程——生产力·“三个有利于”·“三个代表”

生产力是衡量社会进步的基本价值标准.但是由于对生产力基本价值标准存在着一些错误理解,对我国社会主义现代化建设产生了不良影响.邓小平同志针对这些问题,提出了"三个有利于"标准,这一理论是生产力价值标准在中国社会主义社会发展过程中的理论展开.江泽民同志进一步提出了"三个代表"的思想,具体提出了在中国社会主义社会建设中,衡量社会不同领域发展与进步程度的基本价值标准体系.江泽民同志这一思想是以生产力为价值基础、以"三个有利于"为价值导向的中国社会主义社会经济、政治和文化系统的价值理想的现实实现.     

美国企业年金"三驾马车"监管体制的运行与协调

美国对企业年金的监管实行的是"分权式"监管体制,这是在企业年金发展过程中制度长期选择的结果.本文通过对美国企业年金监管体制运行和协调的分析,发现该体制具有四个重要特点:一是监管机构设置健全,运行机制可靠,部门之间监管责任清晰,避免了监管真空的出现.二是监管部门之间加强合作,提高监管效率,避免了监管责任的重叠.三是监管机构的地位和出发点不同,增强了对计划参与者和受益人的保护程度.四是给予劳工部可以随时干预任何对企业年金计划参与者权益方面造成重大影响的事件的特殊权力,保证了监管体制的平稳运行.     

Benefactors and Beneficiaries: The Effects of Giving and Receiving on Cost‐Coalitional Problems

Motivated by supply chain collaborations in practice, we introduce a class of cost‐coalitional problems, which are based on a priori information about the cost faced by each agent in each set that it could belong to. Our focus is on problems with decreasingly monotonic coalitional costs. In this class of problems, we study the effects of giving and receiving when there exist players whose participation in an alliance always contributes to the savings of all alliance members (we refer to these players as benefactors), and there also exist players whose cost decreases in such an alliance (we call them beneficiaries). We use linear and quadratic norm cost games to analyze the role played by benefactors and beneficiaries in achieving stability of different cooperating alliances. We consider different notions of stability (the core and the bargaining set) and provide conditions for stability of an all‐inclusive alliance of agents which leads to minimum value of total cost incurred by all agents.     

哲学视域下城市交通发展的新理念

城市交通问题在一定程度上制约和障碍了城市经济发展、社会可持续发展、城市文化繁荣,然而当前的研究成果对于解决中国城市交通中存在的技术异化问题存在一定的局限性。从哲学角度出发,提出了当下城市交通发展所需的新理念:关注最少受惠者出行利益,城市交通发展应当是符合每一位城市居民的出行利益,尤其是城市中弱势或困难个人和群体的出行利益,即最少受惠者的利益;坚持程序正义原则,现实生活中大家的关注点已经由实体正义过渡到程序正义,城市交通中任何一项制度和规范的制定、执行必须符合程序正义;坚持以建构主义为前提的进化理性主义,建构理性主义则处于优先地位,进化理性主义应该占据主要地位;坚持公共理性原则,通过合理的制度供给、合程序的制度运行,达到个体理性与公共理性相统一的目标。     

生育保险受益者待遇及其优化策略

生育保险法是生育补偿社会化的需要。生育保险受益者待遇主要包括生育医疗费用和生育津贴。从全国范围来看,生育保险受益者待遇落实效果不是很理想,且呈现出地区不平衡,受益者待遇在生育保险法实施过程中被人为降低。从地区范围来看,生育保险待遇水平和生育保险受益率偏低。提升生育保险受益者待遇,应该提高受益者待遇享受标准,改进受益者待遇支付方式,扩大生育保险基金筹资渠道,控制和节约生育基金开支。     

From Consultation to Participation

Empirical research in the literature on accountability of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) toward their beneficiaries is scarce, and the available studies have a number of limitations. Our study attempts to overcome some of them and focuses on one specific component of accountability toward beneficiaries: beneficiary impact on organizational decision making and output. Data were collected by surveying general managers of 790 Belgian NPOs in fourteen industries. Results show that most NPOs implement some mechanisms to involve beneficiaries and their representatives in organizational policy making, mechanisms that vary between and within industries. Despite the existence of such mechanisms, their perceived association with impact on policy making and associated potential organizational effects is weak, though positive.     

Reframing the benefits and beneficiaries of public benefits programs

This article uses current research to demonstrate that in addition to the direct benefits received by recipients of four main types of public benefit programs—cash assistance, public health insurance, food assistance, and public housing—non-recipients receive a variety of indirect economic and noneconomic benefits. Non-recipients include individuals, families, organizations, businesses, neighborhoods, and the general public. The review indicates that public benefits programs can indirectly benefit non-recipients economically by increasing economic security; stimulating local, state, and national economies; increasing employment and other measures of economic well-being; generating tax revenues; and providing cost savings. In addition, we determined two main types of indirect noneconomic benefits: enhancing neighborhood quality and the intrinsic rewards gained from fulfilling humanitarian and related values. We then summarize the results of these studies and make suggestions for future research. Finally, based on the reviewed research, we identify methods to reframe negative perceptions of government spending on public benefits programs. By reframing the benefits and beneficiaries of these programs, social workers, professional organizations, lobbyists, politicians, and elected officials can increase societal and political support for public benefits programs.     

Beneficiaries’ participation in development organizations through local partners: A case study in Southern Africa

In a case study of one European non‐governmental organization (NGO) (data obtained from 10 staff members in Europe and Southern Africa, and 19 representatives of local partner organizations) we investigate whether the involvement of the partners in local and ‘northern’ policy‐making affects their perception of the governance quality of their organizations and that of the European donor organization, as well as the perception of the NGO's staff members. The answer is positive as to the local organizations, but local partners (as representatives of the eventual beneficiaries) are hardly involved in decision‐making at donor level. Finally, the presence of specific participation mechanisms seems to be more affected by beneficiary country factors than by activity‐related influences.     

Back to Basics

Nonprofits are under increased accountability pressures to demonstrate their effectiveness. Output measurement (how much is produced) is disregarded as simplistic. Emphasis is made instead on measuring outcomes (changes in the lives of beneficiaries) or impacts (effects developed relative to the mission of the nonprofit, or the overall public good), and a growing portion of organizations state that they measure these effects. However, we question the assumption that outputs such as the number of beneficiaries served are being adequately measured. We first review existing research gaps on results measurement practices and discuss the main types of obstacles to the quality and utility of evaluation data. In this context, we argue for the need to reground nonprofit evaluation in the profound knowledge available about beneficiary populations. We discuss the potential and limitations of reach, a basic output indicator that is defined as the number of individuals directly affected by a nonprofit, and explore the organizational drivers of reach measurement. Evidence from 2,229 nonprofits shows they still lack adequate data on the beneficiaries they serve, face relevant conceptual and practical hurdles when trying to identify them, and are significantly influenced by organizational factors in their capacity to track them. Our research not only shows that nonprofits fail to adequately measure outputs, but also that measuring the number of beneficiaries served and how they are served is not as straightforward as outcome and impact advocates suggest. Practitioners and funders are reminded of the need to place beneficiaries at the core of their evaluation efforts.