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Party System Formation in Kazakhstan. Between Formal and Informal Politics by Rico Isaacs, 2011, London and New York: Routledge.
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The use of personal connections to gain preferential access to goods and services and circumvent formal procedures exists in all countries to varying degrees. In this paper, the aim is to evaluate critically the continuing widespread positive depiction of this practice as a form of friendly help. Studying the health services sector in the city of Mykolayiv in Ukraine, this practice known as blat, widely used in Soviet societies to gain access to goods and services, is shown to persist in post-Soviet market societies but to have transformed. Those possessing connections and access to health services now increasingly view such access-assets as commodities to sell rather than provide them as non-monetised friendly favours. The outcome is a call for blat to be re-theorised more negatively as an exemplar of the darker side of social capital, and for a policy shift from doing nothing to seeking its eradication.
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Mobilising flat-owners into renovating residential blocks in post-socialist countries has been a complicated process. Evidence from Estonia show that the success of collective renewal strategies depends not only on economic issues but also on ways investments are organised and, significantly, the relationship of trust between different actors. The paper aims at conceptualising the issue of institutional trust upon the experience of urban housing renewal in Estonia. It is contended that trust is crucial for the joint decision-making in a block as well as for facilitating negotiations between flat-owners associations, local municipalities and market actors. The paper draws on three qualitative studies conducted in Estonia during the 2000s which allow asserting that trust towards new strategies of housing renewal can be achieved and maintained by ‘best practices’, which by concentrating expert knowledge also denote direct communication between experts and flat-owners. While it is important to raise the residents’ technical knowledgeability, it is indispensable to develop abilities to manage and communicate the renovation process between different parties. The public sector is conceived to be a central actor in sustaining trust between actors who have no previous positive experience from collective residential strategies
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The purpose of the current paper is to test whether value similarity may foster social trust in society and whether people have higher levels of social trust when they emphasise the same values that prevail in their country. The relationship between social trust and human values was examined in a sample of 51,308 people across 29 European countries using data from the European Social Survey round 6. Results suggest that value similarity is more important in generating individual level social trust in countries where the overall levels of social trust are higher. There is a stronger positive relationship between value similarity and social trust in Scandinavian countries, which have high social trust levels, while in countries with a low level of social trust, congruity of the personal value structure with the country level value structure tends to decrease the individuals trustfulness
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One of the most acute problems in the healthcare industry – the problem of the quality of medical services. In this area, there is no established definition of medical services or approaches to quality management. The aim of the article is to analyze the existing definitions of “quality of medical services,” as well as development approach to managing medical organization. At the same time the management of the medical organization should be focused on ensuring the quality as the most important criterion for the organization. Methodology of the study is based on analysis and grouping of existing definitions of medical services, the factorial approach to evaluating the quality and organization of the process approach to management of the medical organization. Noting the versatility and diversity concepts of quality of care the authors suggest grouping of direct and indirect factors affecting the quality of medical services. However, it is important, according to the authors, to move from functional management to management based on the process approach, which provides better control over the processes of customer service. Is given process model of quality management of health services and highlights the main groups of processes in the medical organization.
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Foresight – that is systematic, in-depth analyses of social, technological, economic, environmental and political development trends in order to anticipate their impact on organisation, sector or a region in a long term perspective supports taking effective strategic and operational decisions at different organisational levels and thus shapes a country’s economic development. The paper gives an overview of the corporate foresight process realised at the Institute for Sustainable Technologies – National Research Institute (Radom, Poland) based on an original technology foresight model, which takes into account the results from national and sectoral foresight processes in order to generate and prioritise future research priorities and technologies of the institute. The paper gives evidence of the practical implementation of the institute’s corporate foresight scientific outcomes into the national R&D agenda through the launch of the strategic research programme “Innovative Systems of Technical Support for Sustainable Development of Economy”.
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The negative effects caused by the economic recession of the recent year, led to the necessity to recognize the changes in the consumer behaviour that may have a lasting impact, and they definitely will. The situation in the Slovak consumer market is described and characterized by the survey which was conduced in 2013. The article also raises three hypotheses considering the basic fact about consumers and their impact on the intensity of behavioural changes. In order to verify our results surveys and studies carried out by many companies in various countries are analyzed in the last chapter.
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Innovation is one of the most important factors for business growth. Human capital plays a significant role in the successful process of innovation. This article deals with employee motivation in the innovation process and the main scientific aim of this study is to present results of research that was undertaken in the Czech Republic at the beginning of 2013. Questionnaires were used for the survey and statistical analyses such as Chi square test or Hierarchical cluster analysis were used for data processing. This study also provides a theoretical and practical overview of business innovation in the Czech Republic.
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The purpose of the article is to survey the significant literature on the role of institutions – formal and informal constraints that affect investment in physical and human capital – in economic performance and propose a new, comprehensive definition and classification of institutions, as well as to develop a conceptual model to illustrate the interaction between institutions and socioeconomic development. The literature shows that institutions played an important role in facilitating technological progress and leading the world into the modern economic regime. Moreover, quantitative research proves that institutions significantly impact socioeconomic performance around the globe.
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For organizations the losing key employees is the greatest threat; if the organizations lose the key workers, they cannot use their premises, data, information and other resources. The article aims at evaluation of the level of vertical knowledge transfer in organizations in the Czech Republic. The partial goals of this article are to determine dependencies between the examined qualitative features. The article has been drawn up using scientific methods, in particular logical methods, such as analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and comparison. The results were obtained from longitudinal quantitative research in organizations in the Czech Republic from 2010 to 2014. The article identifies the factors affecting vertical knowledge transfer and presents a method of eliminating the risk of losing key knowledge workers. Vertical knowledge transfer is a new supporting factor of organizations’ productivity and business continuity.
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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) occupy a large niche in the information and technology sector (ICT) and play an important role in the functioning on any state’s economy. This paper focuses on a specific local market and uses the Czech Republic as a case study in order to establish the success factors crucial for achieving economic success. It aims at determining those factors with the help of econometric success rate models based on the own data collected via the means of questionnaire survey among ICT enterprise. Our results show that the earnings-employee ratio, average revenues and the investment in own R&D play the most important role in the success of Czech SMEs in question. Both, financial and non-financial indicators perform significantly in the predictions of success.
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