Antecedents of Psychological Empowerment: A Study of Greek Employees in Municipalities

ABSTRACT

Psychological empowerment has received a burgeoning attention among scholars and practitioners in the last decades. However, little is known about its antecedents in the public sector, and even more in municipalities. The present study attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship of leader-member exchange (LMX), role conflict and role ambiguity with employees’ psychological empowerment. Data were collected from 210 administrative employees of nine Greek municipalities. Results supported our hypotheses that these three factors constitute important antecedents of such employees’ psychological empowerment. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.     

Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government

ABSTRACT

In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical research has largely concentrated on waste disposal in developed countries. The present paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships by comparing their impact on costs with ‘stand-alone’ provision in a range of non-waste local services. In contrast to the bulk of existing studies, our analysis takes place in a developing country context by examining Brazilian local government over the period 2013/15. We found that – on the whole – cooperative provision is less expensive than the ‘stand-alone’ provision for the services studied. Our results can be explained by the size and composition of the population, together with the politics for cooperation.     

Weight of authorship evidence with multiple categories of stylometric features: A multinomial-based discrete model

This study empirically demonstrates the efficacy of a two-level Dirichlet-multinomial statistical model (the Multinomial system) for computing likelihood ratios (LR) for linguistic, textual evidence with multiple stylometric feature types with discrete values. The LRs are calculated separately for each feature type, namely, word, character and part of speech N-grams (N = 1,2,3), which are combined as overall LRs through logistic regression fusion. The Multinomial system’s performance is compared with that of a previously proposed system with the cosine distance (the Cosine system) using the same data (i.e., documents collated from 2160 authors). The experimental results show that: (1) the Multinomial system outperforms the Cosine system with the fused feature types by a log-LR cost of ca. 0.01 ～ 0.05 bits; and (2) the Multinomial system is more advantageous in performance with longer documents than the Cosine system. Although the Cosine system is more robust overall against the sampling variability arising from the number of authors included in the reference and calibration databases, the Multinomial system can achieve reasonable stability in performance; for example, the standard deviation value of the log-LR cost becomes lower than 0.01 (10 random samplings of authors for the reference and calibration databases) with 60 or more authors in each database.     

‘A second wife is not really a wife’: polygyny,gender relations and economic realities in Tajikistan

While polygyny in Tajikistan existed before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has been a phenomenon of growing importance since Independence, it is still forbidden by law. To understand this renewal, I do not look at polygyny as a sign of religiousness, but as a form of patriarchal bargain in which women (who often experienced former matrimonial disjuncture) may have a greater power of decision in the spousal relations. I will explore women's points of view, from which polygyny is a strategy to accessing the symbolic and material resources they lack. I then explore the conditions to which becoming a second wife is possible: women's own resources, be they material, symbolic, familial, appear as of crucial importance in this accession to the status of being married anew.     

国家赔偿费用支付方式存在的问题及解决办法

我国现行国家赔偿法对国家赔偿费用支付方式的规定,在落实中存在若干问题。建议从以下几个方面对其予以完善：一是建立统一的国家赔偿基金;二是由申请人直接向国家赔偿基金管理部门申请赔偿;三是建立公正合理的国家赔偿评估机制;四是限制国家赔偿基金管理部门的审查权。     

成本收益理论：腐败与反腐败的机理

腐败者在进行腐败前大都要对自己的行为所可能带来的收益与可能带来的损失进行比较和衡量,即考虑通过腐败究竟能取得什么样的收益和付出什么样的代价？这就是收益与成本的关系。对于每一个“理性的经济人”来说,只有当腐败收益大于腐败成本时,权力拥有者才会铤而走险并运用其手中的权力实施腐败行为;反腐败同样存在成本与效益的问题。腐败的成本收益和反腐败的成本收益,两者有所区别同时也相互依存,腐败者的收益往往包含于反腐败所能得到的收益中,而反腐败成本的提高往往为了提高腐败者的成本。因此想有效的控制或遏制腐败,就应当从提升腐败成本和降低腐败收益,甚至从减少反腐败成本等方面进行全方位的制度性建设。     

捍卫的代价——臧克家与当代文学权威话语

“第一次文代会”不容置疑地确立了毛泽东文学思想在新中国文学中的权威地位,并让入明显感受到解放区的文学权威话语对来自国统区作家的压力。正是这一历史背景,促使“出身”于国统区的臧克家选择了积极认同根据权威文学话语建构的当代文学规范,以马克思主义、列宁主义、毛泽东思想的阶级论,历史唯物主义、辩证法、革命功利主义美学的观念,重绘了中国新诗史的政治地图,加入了崇奉文化领导权的行列。感恩心理是他笃信革命伦理,坚决捍卫革命文学规范的动力源之一。     

纠纷成本与诉讼效益分析

本文试图用经济学的基本理论和方法对纠纷的成本与诉讼效益做一分析。纠纷妨碍了交易和效益 ,增加了成本。在诉讼中和通过诉讼 ,做到尽量避免纠纷对收益的不利影响 ,努力减少纠纷成本 ,并影响和减少纠纷的数量 ,这就是诉讼之效益。     

The rise and fall of spin: changes of fashion in the presentation of UK politics

Spin is the current dominant form of political presentation in the UK. Politics and presentation are inseparable and before the 1980s, political presenters were less aggressive towards and more respectful of journalists as watchdogs of politics. Labour introduced spin as a defensive response to editorial hostility but since New Labour came to terms with Thatcherism, spin has been used for the offensive promotion of policy. Changes in journalism, particularly a blurring treatment of fact and opinion, were an incubatory environment for spin. Moreover, the term became part of lay language and its vocabulary is deployed as a scrutiny of politicians via ridicule and satire. Conceptually, ‘spin’ can be characterised as an exchange or contest between information and publicity, with contingencies influencing where any presentation lies on that continuum. Wherever it falls, spin demeans elected politicians and tends to reduce their status to celebrities. That reduction is a cost too high for privileging presentation over policy and ought to be reversed. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

关于公安院校教育成本问题的探讨

在我国经济高速发展的今天,高等教育作为国家的一种投资,相关各方都迫切需要进行成本核算。但是我国的公安院校还是执行事业单位的会计核算制度、接受财政的预算管理,在观念上、会计理论上、会计制度和会计核算上,都存在一定的问题,需要在观念的转变上、会计理论上、会计制度和会计核算上以及过渡期配套工作上突破原来的管理瓶颈,以期实现我国公安院校健康有序的发展。