Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria,England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

The recent economic and fiscal crisis provides an opportunity for learning lessons of general and practical relevance about how governments face shocks affecting their financial conditions. This article draws on the resilience concept to investigate the organizational capacities that are deployed and/or built by local governments (LGs) to respond to such shocks, looking at their combinations and interactions with environmental conditions. The article presents the results of a multiple‐case analysis of 12 European LGs across Austria, Italy and England. The analysis allows us to highlight and operationalize different patterns of financial resilience, that is, self‐regulation, constrained or reactive adaptation, contented or powerless fatalism, that are the result of the interaction and development over time of different internal and external dimensions.     

Plurality versus proportional representation: An analysis of Sicilian elections

The competing merits of plurality and proportional representation have intrigued political economists and political scientists for quite some time. Of primary interest is whether one or the other system is better in serving the interests of the electorate. Since theoreticians are unable to unambiguously determine the answer to this question, the issue must ultimately be decided empirically. We use data from Sicilian elections, where the system was recently altered towards the system of plurality. We are able to demonstrate that the proportional representation system engenders greater information among voters and elicits greater commitment from them than plurality. We are also able to show that in larger towns increased information causes a more dispersed vote under a proportional representation system; further, this result does not hold under plurality. This may have some implications for the size of positional rents reaped by political parties under the two electoral systems.     

Linking Organizational Climate to Work Engagement: A Study in the Healthcare Sector

Using a two-level structural equation approach, this article investigates the links between organizational climate and work engagement in a sample of public hospitals in Italy. Drawing from the Job Demands-Resources model, the model posits a positive association between work engagement and a climate promoting worker’s autonomy, empowerment, and well-being, whereas it suggests that a climate based on efficiency and goal attainment is not favorable for engagement. Results support the hypotheses and suggest that performance based models implemented in recent years as part of public sector reforms are not conducive to engaged workers. Implications for research on work engagement in the public sector and for public management are drawn.     

Entrepreneurial performance of principal investigators and country culture: relations and influences

The paper focuses on the role of a country’s culture in influencing the entrepreneurial attitudes of Principal Investigators, in shaping their ability to combine knowledge theory and business practice, in determining their capacity to strengthen the cooperation between the two domains of research and business, and in supporting research spin-off creation in entrepreneurial universities. To make Principal Investigators’ orientation match Entrepreneurial Universities’ goals of the marketing of innovation and entrepreneurship is not an easy task. A research-oriented approach, rather than an explorative entrepreneurial orientation, is still predominant in Principal Investigators. Among the factors influencing the strategic orientation towards entrepreneurship of Principal Investigators, the paper argues that the country’s culture could be key. Evaluating the influence of the entrepreneurial culture on a Principal Investigator’s activity is critical in predicting his performance and comparing it with that of Principal Investigators in other countries.     

Decomposing Human Blood: Canine Detection Odor Signature and Volatile Organic Compounds

The admissibility of human “odor mortis” discrimination in courts depends on the lack of comprehension of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during the human decay process and of the lack in standardized procedures in training cadaver dogs. Blood was collected from four young people who died from traffic accidents and analyzed using HS‐SPME/GC‐MS at different decompositional stages. Two dogs, professionally trained, were tested to exactly locate blood samples, for each time point of the experiment. We found a long list of VOCs which varied from fresh to decomposed blood samples, showing differences in specific compounds. Dog performance showed a positive predictive value between 98.96% and 100% for DOG A, and between 99.47% and 100% for DOG B. Our findings demonstrated that decomposing human blood is a good source of VOCs and a good target for canine training.     

Automatic cost-of-living adjustments and the structural federal budget deficit

The mounting budget deficit is both economically and politically in supportable Projections of the unified federal budget deficit and the structural unified federal budget deficit and the structural deficit and the structural deficit converge in the next few years, indicating that nearly all of the deficit is the result of policy choices.

Efforts to significantly reduce the deficit must focus on the largest componenet of federal spending, entitlements such as social security, federal retirements, and medicare. Entitlements account for 45 percent of federal spending. About two-thirds of the growth in these programs arises from automatic cost of living adjustments (COLAs). Each one percent COLA increase adds $23 billion to the deficit over the next two decades.

It is debated whether COLA restraint should be included in deficit reduction efforts. Advocatesargue that COLAs are a major cause of deficits , tha trestraint is fair after a decade in which benefits grewfaster than in flation and wages, and that restraint improves the solvency of major programs. COLA restraint also reduces the deficit quickly, spread s the burden of deficit reduction over a very large group, and allows nominal benefits to remain at current levels, or even to grow, albeit more slowly. Opponents of restraint argue that COLAs are a fundamental program feature, that COLAs are needed to maintain beneficiaries purchasing power, and that recipients would experience economic hardship if COLAS were reduced.

Common approaches to restrain COLAs emphasize either short-term budget savings or long-term program reform. Past successful efforts to restrain COLAs have been related to ensuring program solvency or ensuring equal treatment of individuals in different programs.Proposals to slow COLA growth to achieve budgetary savings haven ot been successful.

Three types of COLA options seem viable under current economic and political conditions: A one-year COLA freeze, a cap on the COLA at two-thirds the rate of

inflation, and a cap on the COLA at two percentage points less than the rate of inflation. The one-year COLA freeze reduces the deficit most quickly, but produces less savings in the long-run than the other options.

A major attraction of formula reductions in the COLA is that the concept may be extended to other areas of the federal budget and greatly reduce the federal deficit. A plan to limit growth to two percentage points less than in flation on COLAs, other entitlements,national defense, discretionary domestic programs, and income tax indexing would reduce the deficit by one-half by 1990. An overall budget reduction plan based on CCLA restraint may be the only approach left for policy-makers who have exhausted other approaches to reducing the deficit.     

Evaluating and comparing entrepreneurial ecosystems using SMAA and SMAA-S

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a set of interdependent and coordinated factors in a territory enabling entrepreneurship. To date,...     

“There Is Something in That Water”: Race,Nationalism, and Legal Violence

This article analyzes the issue of water contamination in Kashechewan, Ontario, Canada. Through an inquiry into the way in which water contamination in one Aboriginal community was handled by the local and federal governments, this article examines processes of ongoing colonialism in Canada. Drawing on an array of sources, this article explores three features pertinent to this water crisis: historical forms of legal violence, symbolic forms of representation concerning the relationship between nationalism and the governance of race in liberal democracies, and the importance of the case study approach when examining legalized forms of violence. By examining connections between race, nationalism, and legal violence, this article explores the ways in which biopolitical forms of racial governance require an analysis that links legal violence and structural violence to historical and symbolic forms of representation.