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Article deals with some of the issues concerning national identity and ongoing integration processes in Europe. The conceptions of both the nation and the nation-state are examined from the point of their historical contexts and contemporary events and changes. It is being argued that the nation states in Europe are far from being mere myths or redundant structures since they successfully face the integration challenges and still fulfil many important functions. Author enlists all main currents of European integration (political field, economic co-operation, regional co-operation and civic contacts). Greater attention is paid to the idea of the Europe of regions. As the data from sociological researches indicate, the European public is not much in favour of further strengthening of regions’ influence and further divisions of nation states. As the important (if not the most important) stream of integration is considered to be the across border civic co-operation, i.e. establishment and maintenance of informal civic relationships. Aspects that might positively or negatively influence these relationships are demonstrated on an example of the across border co-operation on Czech-German border. The core of the across border co-operation and the creation of the across border community is made by approximately only 5% of local inhabitants, who maintain relationships on the “personal level”. The rest of the inhabitants have only occasional and incidental contacts with their foreign neighbours. Article points at some ambivalent tendencies and contradictory phenomena in the processes of European integration.
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Citizencracy as a Result of the Restoration of Civic Society. Article discusses the various arguments and against the proposal and acceptance of a new terminological innovation, proposed by the author. Such innovation concerns a new notion in the terminology of both sociology and political science: the concept of citizencracy and its derivatives such as citizencrat, citizencratic. Author argues that the concept of citizencracy expresses more accurately and adequately, what is after the fall of communism and promotion of the restoration of civic society traditionally called the necessity of the restoration of democracy. The concept of democracy is usually criticised for being a legacy of the post-feudal thought: it is the ”power of the people” as set against ”the power of the feudal aristocracy”. Such antinomy leads per analogiam to the understanding of the democracy as the ”power of the proletariat” in contrast to the undemocratic ”power of the bourgeoisie”. However it is not at all the case with the concept of citizencracy that does not stand only against the particular form of civilisation deficit but also against any civilisation deficit in general. Proposed innovative perspective shall not lead to the discarding of the term of democracy from the social scientific dictionary. On contrary, citizencracy comprises traditional democracy as its historical condition, as its logical basis, though it adds something ”extra” to the original concept of democracy. This ”extra” appears to be equal to the feature pointed out by the Polish sociologist Jerzy Szacki in his analysis of the resources of the renaissance of the idea of civic society. Citizencracy deepens and develops the traditionally pursued democracy and enhances it to the higher developmental stage.
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Experience of the Czech Population with the Labour Market. As a result of social change the labour market has emerged in the Czech republic. The process of its establishing is accompanied with the growing unemployment rate now. Some social categories, which were lifted on the primary labour market up through the redistribution of sources by socialist state before. Nowadays they are moving down on the secondary labour market again. Their members have already became aware that their downward in the secondary labour market does not represent only a transitional costs necessary for their future life in affluence. Their perception of the decline of their own social position as a definitive one weakens legitimacy of the market for them. Anomie is growing up among them. A lot of people say today: ”average men are getting worse now - compared it with the situation before 1989”. The most of people judge: ”The social change has enlarged our civil right, it has not touched our political right but it limited our social right.”
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Through this paper we propose a new approach to teaching evaluation. In this research I started from the premise that education is a process of evaluating and interpreting from data source. The evaluation shows the level of understanding where reached at a given time. Relativity units of measurement and limits of current instruments that commensurate level of knowledge, led us to seek new methods and techniques to quantify the degree of knowledge of a phenomenon or object of knowledge. Techniques that derived from fuzzy set theory have proved the superiority of abstract elements in the analysis and benchmarking, transcendent. Scientific recognition and appreciation that is currently enjoying fuzzy techniques have led us to consider them useful in the training process.
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Scotland means kilt, bagpipes, Loch Ness Monster, whiskey, medieval buildings and beautiful views. It is a country worth seeing. And who knew how to promote its brands. After 2008, when the number of tourists visiting Scotland decreased, especially in terms of tourism business, severely affected by the economic crisis, the organization VisitScotland aimed at raising revenues from tourism for the 2009-2012 timeframe. And it succeeded! Currently, the tourism industry is vital to Scotland’s economy, bringing up to £ 4,1 billion to the state budget and also providing jobs for 200,000 people. This paper analyses the promoting campaign “Homecoming Scotland” 2009 (“Return Home”). Tools and methods used by the Scottish are presented and effects at strategic level are evaluated. The study results indicate that a promoting campaign carefully designed and properly built for the country brand becomes a management option in the strategic development of the community.
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The main goal of the present work is to propose new ways of examining the performance of public servant, others than the ones already specified in the frame law, tested by the private system and well-known as being efficient. Although we are going trough period marked by a profound financial, economic and social crisis, the public servant is required to perform his duties to a high level of quality and to creatively contribute at the ongoing and proposal of new projects. Therefore, the ensuring of an efficient management can be materialized by using modern methods, techniques and tools in the public management context too. Thus, the development of the capacity of performance analysis and job satisfaction in the public institutions becomes a precondition for the dimensioning of labor productivity. Establishing priorities, strategy directions, strategic objectives, operational plans, assessment and control plans and performance indicators must take account of changing endogenous and exogenous variables of the public servant itself. Furthermore, the economic growth of a country or a public sector may be related, in terms of human resource utilization, to the increasing number of employees or to the better use of the existing employees. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the performance scale periodical is required for each public servant, in the dimensioning of proactive involvement in specific activity. This last aspect is statistically described through labor productivity- a key element of economic performance. The understanding of the forces that rule the labor productivity and the accumulation of fixed capital especially, improving the institutional infrastructures or generating new technologies is and will be a necessary objective in creating policies that increase workplace performance. The salaries and incentives management should take into account three essential elements: Ø the economic impact of salary and incentives granting system; Ø the impact of granting salary and incentives system on employee behavior; Ø the impact of granting salary and incentives system on the balance. These elements are a set of constrains which limits the maneuvering area of the public institutions and dictates the granting of salary and incentives based on the level of performance indicators of each public servant, after periodic analysis. So, there is an extremely varied range of performance indicators available and many others can be developed to fit the needs of specific public or local administration projects. Yet, performance indicators aren't Key Performance Indicators until they are selected and applied as key for a specific aspect. The analysis of fundamental economic correlation between salary dynamics and labor productivity dynamics is necessary to assessing the economic efficiency, this correlation being the maxim expression, overview of the balanced functioning of budgetary device. [Ro
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The paper discusses the development of Romanian Public Administration following the abolition of the Communist regime with the focus on Performance Management and Skill Retention. The challenge for the Romanian administrative system lies in the inertia caused by the previous regime and global influences emanating from entering the European Union in 2007. The paper presents proposed research which aims to provide a positive approach by emphasising the challenges and value-adding actions that will lead to the improvement of Public sector quality in Romania. This paper will also show that the recent international economic crisis has provided an opportunity for confronting the classical perception towards skills within the Public sector and the actual standards that should be obtained so as to ensure continuous improvement of professional talent within the administrative apparatus. Public sector management is increasingly seen as more than just modernising state institutions, it is also about fostering dynamic partnerships with civil society and the private sector in order to improve the quality of service delivery, enhance social responsibilities and ensure the broad participation of citizens in decision-making. This calls for increased attention to the issue of decentralised government as a means to support poverty alleviation goals and conflict prevention policies. These trends put increased emphasis on the performance of the civil service and on the need for an effective and efficient public management that is transparent and accountable. In the light of the recent financial crisis, not only in the private sector, which classically is more exposed to adversities, the public sector has had to consider structural changes. Osborne’s approach (2002) to defining Global influences on public administration can be summarised with the following statement: Globalization has the tendency to promote elites. In a shrinking state, professionalization of the public services becomes compulsory. Under these circumstances the fostering of talent and talented professionals becomes a necessity, not a whim. Although Romania is not explicitly tackling performance and performance management issues, it has taken a number of measures. These include the unified pay scheme for the public sector, which the Government has put into law, as well as the principle of contributions as the mainstay of the pension draft law. In addition, the streamlining of state agencies and authorities whose activity can be covered by existing ministries are also preconditions for a harmonization of competitiveness criteria in both the public and private sectors, as well as incentives to professionalization.
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This paper presents some of the results of an ample comparative study on public administration developed by the author. It contains five sections in which the main characteristics of the public administrations models in Finland and Sweden are looked at, a comparative analysis of the two is undertaken, on the basis of which substantial advantages and means of know-how transfer are identified, from the administrative systems of the Scandinavian states into that of Romania.
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The European Union is increasingly confronted with compliance problems. In line with the recent trend of 'agencification' in modern societies, a suggestion to address compliance problems is the use of European agencies as they are expected to improve the way rules are applied. This is no grounded expectation, however. Empirical evidence on this presumably positive impact of agencies on compliance within the member states is lacking. This article provides a conceptual evaluation of the assumption that agencies play a positive role in securing compliance. By linking the state of the art in compliance theories with an analysis of the phenomenon of agencification within the European Union, light can be shed on this potential role for agencies in improving compliance. While theoretically agencies could play a positive role in securing compliance, the ‘improved-compliance’ legitimation for agency-establishment is still to be empirically tested and calls for a new research agenda
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Inter-Generational Changes of Ethnic Identity among the Members of Ethnically Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Families. The article informs about the results of interdisciplinary research conducted among the members of Slovak, German, Croatian and Bulgarian minority groups in Hungary. The research is concerned with the issues of ethnic identification of members of Slovak minority living in Hungary. It is focused on the analysis of inter-generational relations of social identity within its specific macro-social context. The inter-generational relations were perceived as differences in the social identity among three groups - objects of evaluation: present generation of Slovak minority members and their precedent and next generations. A macro-social frame of identity was delineated as a measure of adherence to large social formations such as city, region, majority and minority group, “mother” nation and state. The preliminary research results pointed to the stark differences in the identification with particular social formations from the perspective of evaluated objects. The Slovak respondents evaluated present generation, their predecessors and descendants differently in all monitored characteristics. Thus, the significance of the object of evaluation upon the measure of identification and perception of adherence to social formations was confirmed. Differentiated evaluation of all three objects of evaluation had various character and directions. Sociológia 2002 Vol 34 (No 2: 117-130)
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Social-Psychological Aspects of Female Criminality. The article analyses the low rates of female criminality as related to much higher rates of male criminality. It purports to bring together biological, psychological and sociological insights, which explain the factors behind the low rates of female criminality and its future developmental trends. The research results revealed a different acceptance of antisocial behaviour among the girls and among the boys. The issue of inter-sexual differences and criminality is far from being solved. It still draws the attention of social scientists to the different receptions of social norms among men and women as well as to other explanatory variables of higher crime rates among male population. Answering such questions might lead to the more efficient means of criminality prevention. Sociológia 2002 Vol 34 (No. 2: 131-144)
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Beyond some questions of modernization theory. As more social theorists suggest (Fukuyama, Habermas), the 1989 revolutions should be considered as modernizing revolutions that have caused the 're-birth of history' or a return to 'mainstream' western development in societies of Central and Eastern Europe. Modernization theory is a very broad theoretical strategy that includes a variety of theories. This article inquires current understanding of modernization and its different theoretical roots. Four concepts of modernization are particularly stressed: 1. Modernization as the result of technological development and innovation; 2. Modernization as a change caused by introduction of new forms of social organization; 3. Universal spread of the pattern of 'present industrial society'; 4. Sum of globaly occuring evolutional changes leading to 'global cosmopolitan society'. Modernization is explained here not as an a priori given process but as a result of intense individual and socio-institutional activities that are characteristic for different ways of social development in particular countries. Sociológia 2002 Vol. 4 (No. 2: 99-116)
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Four Paradigms of Slovak Sociology after 1948. After 1989, the research devoted to the histories of so called “small” sociologies assumed a particular significance. Despite various “end of history”, the history continues to create and form new, independent and autonomous societies - new social formations. The history of each new society created the preconditions for its current societal development. The historical reflections within the field of history of sociology identified certain phases, which were crucial for the transformation of societal preconditions into their actual developments. The historians Slovak sociology gradually developed general schemes of its particular development in relation to the societal development. The authors recognised four paradigmatic patterns in the development of Slovak sociology: 1. The paradigm of continuity and discontinuity of Slovak sociology, 2. The paradigm of its liquidation, 3. The paradigm of its public and concealed existence, 4. The paradigm of the development of sociology as a science and its ideological abuse. Sociológia 2002 Vol 34 (No 2: 145-158)
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Purpose: The aim of this observational study was to examine postoperative and retrospective preoperative evaluations of multiple dimensions of patient quality of life after a three-layered closure repair for incisional hernia. Methods: After suture repair of an incisional hernia (mean follow-up of 4.6 years), 72 patients (32 female, 40 male, mean age 63.6 years) completed the SF-36 Health Survey Questionnaire to evaluate their current postoperative as well as their past preoperative quality of life. Results: All domains improved significantly after the operation. Relative to age-matched controls, the preoperative quality of life was evaluated negatively in seven domains, while the postoperative quality of life was evaluated negatively for only two domains. Conclusions: In this study, patients retrospectively evaluated their physical and mental health as poor before an incisional hernia repair. After the operation, patient quality of life improved, but the perceived quality of life did not completely normalize. Further prospective studies will be useful to examine the quality of life before and after ventral hernia repairs.
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