Gender Differences in the Educational Expectations of Urban,Low-Income African American Youth: The Role of Parents and the School

This study examined how youths’ gender is related to the educational expectations of urban, low-income African American youth, their parents, and their teachers. As predicted, African American boys (ages 9–16) reported lower expectations for future educational attainment than did their female counterparts. Parents and teachers also reported lower expectations for African American boys (ages 6–16) than for girls. These findings held even when controlling for academic achievement. Contrary to predictions, the magnitude of the difference in expectations for males vs. females did not increase as a function of youths’ age. In keeping with our hypotheses, parental expectations fully mediated the relation between youths’ gender and youths’ expectations. Finally, certain school-based factors (i.e., positive teacher expectations and positive youth perceptions of the school environment) appeared to protect youths’ expectations from the deleterious impact of low parental expectations.

Reduced payer's liability for unauthorized payment transactions under the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2)

In 2015, the European legislator enacted the second Payment Services Directive, which, among other things, determines the payer's liability for unauthorized payment transactions. This paper will show that PSD2 has widened its scope and further reduces the payer's liability for unauthorized transactions, for example by making it impossible to hold the payer liable in case no strong customer authentication has been applied, by requiring supporting evidence to prove the payer's fraud or gross negligence and by applying the same rules when unauthorized transactions are initiated through a payment initiation service.     

Expectations from Administrative Reforms: An Attempt to Implement the Balanced Scorecard in a Public Sector Organization

The aim of this case study is to explore what actors in a Swedish municipality expect from a new administrative reform (i.e., an attempt to implement the Balanced Scorecard). The findings show that the expectations on changes are highest among the politicians, moderate among the administrators, and lowest among the operative employees. The differences can be explained by the way the reform is anticipated to favor or disfavor the actors, who in turn are influenced by the actors' past experiences. Most of the expressed expectations concern expectations of the outcome of the administrative reform, but some concern expectations on the reform itself.     

Postal Service Reforms in Solomon Islands of the South Pacific: Evaluating Consequences for Public Service Delivery and Customer Satisfaction

The changing environment of the postal sector over the last decade has increased the urgency for governments worldwide to re-examine regulations governing how their public postal administrations operate. The need to increase service efficiency and quality is a critical strategic focus, given the increasing technological competition, rising operational costs, and changing customers' needs and expectations. There are many success stories, particularly from developed countries, highlighting improved service quality following corporatization of their public postal administration. This particular study revealed that reforms of the Solomon Islands postal service have had some positive influence on the level of customer satisfaction.     

Formation of procedural beliefs about legal arenas: Do people generalize from loosely related past legal experiences?

Few studies have addressed how people develop beliefs about legal authorities' neutrality and fairness. Using a cross-sectional survey of taxpayers (N = 147), this study examines the sources and processes underlying the formation of these beliefs. Controlling for significant contributions of media stories about audits and past audit experiences, past loosely related negative legal events (traffic court) also shape perceptions that tax auditors are more biased and unfair. Information about police officers exchanged in conversations also creates perceptions that tax auditors are more biased. These generalization effects occur only when people do not have prior direct experience with tax auditors. For taxpayers with prior audit experience, positive experiences are related to more positive perceptions of auditors and media stories about tax audits produce more negative perceptions. The findings suggest that positive and negative past experiences shape beliefs only when they disconfirm prior perceptions based on imagination or indirect sources. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Crisis leadership and non‐communication: Marcos of the philippines

For all of their centralized power and undisputed authority, even crisis leaders are susceptible to breakdowns in political communication. This is particularly significant when martial rule or a state of emergency—most effective when of short duration— becomes open‐ended; the sense of urgency no longer prevails.

In the initial stage of proclaiming a constitutional emergency it is perhaps easiest to create an atmosphere of crisis and to promote a collective sense of danger. A climate of national fear and insecurity, in turn, enables the constitutional dictator to mobilize broad support even for draconian measures imposed at the expense of individual freedoms. With the prolongation of the emergency, however, and the institutionalization of crisis government, certain immunities to authoritarianism do begin to surface. As suggested by periods of prolonged emergency rule in India and South Korea, the leader becomes remote and isolated; he or she no longer feels quite so compelled to communicate; domestic opposition increases.

The experience of President Marcos and the Philippines since 1972 illustrates some of the political dynamics of the modern, permanent “emergency state.” What has happened to the New Society program of reforms should help in understanding the critical link of communication between leaders and their followers under conditions of either real or manipulative domestic political stress.     

A Miserable Little Compromise? Exploring Liberal Democrat Fortunes in the UK Coalition

At the half way point of the UK coalition government attention is turning towards the general election, with both parties beginning to contemplate their electoral strategies. This article explores the predicament faced by the Liberal Democrats who, unlike their coalition partners the Conservatives, saw a dramatic decline in support soon after entering government. By exploring a collapse in trust, an apparent identity crisis, and the party's questionable influence, this article seeks to explain the Liberal Democrats' current polling situation and highlight the serious barriers to retaining, yet alone extending their constituency of voters at the 2015 general election.     

Failure of auditors: The lack of compliance for business combinations in China

This empirical study investigates the compliance of 344 Chinese listed companies with the Accounting Standard for Enterprises No. 20‐Business Combination, a mandatory reporting standard applicable to companies involved in business combinations. China has recently reformed its auditing sector, enabling private firms to provide auditing services. The results of the study show a low level of compliance by Chinese listed companies. While companies audited by Chinese domestic auditors have significantly lower compliance than companies audited by Big Four auditors on supplementary disclosure that is mandatory under the Chinese accounting standards, compliance remains low even after companies receive unqualified reports from these international auditors. There appears to be a lack of commitment, and possibly expertise, among Big Four auditors, in fully applying the reporting requirements of the business combination standard in a Chinese setting. This raises concerns about the independence of Chinese auditing in disclosing reliable information about business combinations. Broader theoretical contributions of the paper go beyond the Chinese context by problematizing whether well‐resourced international auditors uphold internationally expected standards or succumb to local non‐compliant practices.     

Human Resources in Public Administration in the Czech Republic

This paper informs about results of a research taking place within an internal grant of College of Polytechnics Jihlava, which is aimed at examining the efficiency in public administration from the point of view of the office workers. The research is divided into three stages which were proceeding gradually in large organisations of public administration carrying out self-government as well as state government in figurative effect. The research took place in the form of questionnaires, which were given to randomly chosen workers of the offices, and these anonymously answered 60 questions were divided into six topics： human resources, organizational capital, information capital, customer capital, performance measuring, and innovation capital. The respondents assessed the situation in the office using their own judgement. The aim of this paper is to inform about the results of this research especially from the point of view of human capital, organizational capital, and social capital in organisations of public administration.     

论加强消费者权益的倾斜保护

《中华人民共和国消费者权益保护法》（以下简称《消法》）自颁布以采,其运行的社会经济环境已经发生了巨大的变化,消费者弱势地位更加明显,维权难度日益增加。《消法》需要在倾斜保护的立法理念基础上进一步加强对消费者合法权益的保障,通过增加消费者的权利和完善鉴定机构等途径提高消费者维权能力。