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Papers’ abstracts of the last issue
Karin Hilmer Pedersen, Lars Johannsen
MISUSE, PUNISHMENT AND NEPOTISM. GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON CORRUPTION IN LATVIA
In global context international organizations like World Bank, UNDP and UNIFEM have begun to recommend that women should increasingly constitute a growing share of the civil service. This recommendation is an expansion of the positive discrimination position to increase gender equality rooted in the belief that women are morally superior to men, that is, are less inclined to accept corruption. Thus in societies characterized by systemic corruption gender based recruitment promises perhaps not a quick fix but at least a supplement to other anti-corruption efforts. Given the prevalence of corruption in Latvia this paper questions is Latvian female civil servants really are morally superior to their male colleagues, or are the differences in attitudes towards corruption, punishment and nepotism an artefact of a socio-economic gender gap? Based on a survey of 500 Latvian civil servants, it is found that Latvian women do perceive corruption to be more widespread than men but are less inclined to support increased penalties for civil servants and firms caught in the act. These results are indicators of a socio-economic gender gap. However, corruption is particular inherently difficult to research when respondents are asked about their own activities. Knowing that these activities are immoral if not outright illegal respondents are likely to ‘colour’ their answers. Therefore the present research capitalizes on the later years methodological developments by, for the first time, introducing the list experiment to the study of nepotism in surveys. Holding one group of respondents constant and only vary the list of answers slightly for the remaining respondents it is possible – without the respondents knowing this – to trace the prevalence of nepotism among Latvian civil servant. Using this technique no differences between the genders with respect to nepotism were found. In turn, the upbeat positive story is that Latvian civil servants espouse values that underpin modern administrative thought. The paper does not discuss positive discrimination as such but given the find that women are not morally superior to men this argument should not be used in the affirmative for a change in recruitment policies to the civil service.
Key words: Latvia, gender, corruption, nepotism, punishment, positive discrimination.
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Arvydas Virgilijus Matulionis, Monika FrĪjutĪ-RakauskienĪ, Kristina –liavaitĪ
BETWEEN THE LOCAL AND EUROPEAN IDENTITY: AN ANALYSIS OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN LITHUANIA(RUSSIANS< POLES, AND BELARUSIANS)
The article overviews and analyses some data collected in Lithuania in the framework of the international research project ENRI-East („Interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: Nations Between the States Along the New Eastern Borders of the European Union“, www.enri-east.net) in 2008-2011 by a consortium of 11 teams of scientific institutes of England, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Germany and Lithuania. The project was coordinated by the Center for Comparative Eurasia Studies and Surveys (CEASS-Center) of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna (IHS-Vienna) and primarily funded by the European Union’s Seventh framework Programme under an FP7-SSH Grant Agreement #217227. This paper is mainly based on results of qualitative research conducted in the framework of the project among Belarusians, Poles and Russians in Lithuania, i.e. ethnic groups settled next to the borders with their historical homelands. The qualitative biographical in-depth interviews were conducted in accordance to the methodological guidelines developed by ENRI-EAST team. In each ethnic group (Belarusians, Poles, Russians) 12 interviews were conducted with members of three generations (young (from 16 till 22), middle (from 35 till 50) and older generation (from 65 and older). The majority of interviews were conducted in Russianlanguage. The Russian and Belarusian informants are mainly from Vilnius city. The informants from Polish group were interviewed in Vilnius city and Vilnius region. The interviews were conducted in July-August of 2010. The main criteria for selection of informants is their age group (generation), gender and identification with particular ethnic group. In the paper the authors discuss how informants construct their identities with Lithuania, historical homelands (Russia, Poland or Belarus) and Europe or EU. The qualitative research revealed that for informants of all generations identification with the locality, city (Vilnius), country of residence (Lithuania) is more important than with Europe or EU. Nevertheless, the identity with Europe or EU is built by most of informants of all generations. The informants of younger generation of all ethnic groups express more enthusiasm and are more positive regarding Lithuania’s integration into the EU.
Key words: ethnicity, European Union, local and European identity.
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Rana Zamin Abbas, Hasan Sohaib Murad, Ahmed F. Siddiqui, Muhammad Razzaq Athar
MIRROR UP TO BENEVOLENT PATERNALISTIC LEADERSHIP (BPL): AN EXPLORATORY ACCOUNT
The paper aims to address the fundamental questions: What is BPL? Why is the Quest for BPL? And how BPL can bring about positive change? – For this purpose, the paper reviews different definitions and perspectives of Benevolent Paternalistic Leadership (BPL) along with antecedents and outcomes to assess the current state of BPL literature. After reviewing current state of BPL literature, paper explores the quest for Benevolent Paternalistic Leadership along with the challenges faced by BPL at organizational as well as civilizational levels. To address how BPL can bring about positive change, it explores the ideas of political leaders, the role of courage and insights from the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah. The paper finally emphasizes the need to incorporate these rich ideas into BPL literature. Using sources of BPL literature, sources of organizational literature, sources of civilizational literature specifically the ideas of political leaders, along with the sources of Qur’anic literature and authentic Ahadith, this paper firstly explores the relevant literature of BPL and explores the challenges of BPL at different levels both at organizational and civilizational. Secondly, it highlights the ideas given by political leaders, their courage and Islamic guidance for setting the future directions for the management practice. World of management is facing multi-faceted crisis with reference to leadership. Signs of this crisis are clear indicators of something missing which needs to be filled to overcome this multi-faceted crisis. This study comes at a time of stock-taking at organizational and civilizational levels with reference to BPL. It addresses a timely need of the importance of BPL and by melting rich insights from different authentic sources into one place, paves way for peace, harmony and success in the world of management at both levels: organizational as well as civilizational.
Key words: benevolent paternalistic leadership, challenges, organizations, civilizations, political leaders, courage, Qur’anic verses, authentic Ahadith.
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Vladimir Menshikov, Eduards Vanags, Olga Volkova
AGGREGATE CAPITAL, ITS STRUCTURE AND INTERACTION WITH LABOUR MIGRATION (THE CASE OF LATGALE)
In the late 20th – early 21st centuries, sociologists more and more frequently are using the theory of capital, the development of which was greatly contributed by Pierre Bourdieu. In the article, there are substantiated the necessity and the possibility to use the theory of capital evaluating and analyzing situations in different spheres of social life, including employment, labour migration. In 2012, the sociologists of the Institute of Social Research, Daugavpils University, carried out a research project “Aggregate Capital, Its Structure and Relation to Labour Migration”, where the theory of total capital was widely used. The project was aimed to evaluate the volume and structure of the total capital of Latgale region’s inhabitants, taking into account state’s needs for its social and economical development and different needs of region’s inhabitants, in particular connected to the labour migration. Using results of different studies aiming to examine the competiveness of employed part of Latvians as well as the role of different types of capital, hypothesis has been highlighted – basis for growth of the human capital (at the same time for the growth of financial and social wellbeing of region’s inhabitants) is the cultural capital of family. Executing the study basic hypothesis has been acknowledged: in the modern environment of the “society of knowledge”, having a high proportion of the services sector, the basis for the growth of the human capital (that in fact has a direct effect on the economical capital) is the cultural capital of personality. For the major part of economically active inhabitants the cultural capital is not only a source of social and moral benefits, but also a source of financial income. Also additional hypothesis has been proved – higher predisposition for the labour migration is more typical for economically active region’s inhabitants with fairly high amounts of some indicators of the total capital, especially physical capital, but with comparatively lower amount of the cultural capital, which could transform into the human capital, and further into the economical capital in Latgale or Latvia.
Key words: region, aggregate capital, resource approach, resource capitalization, work migration.