Value Attainment, Orientations, and Quality-Based Profile of the Local Political Elites in East-Central Europe. Evidence from Four Towns

The present paper is an attempt at examining the value configuration and the socio-demographical profiles of the local political elites in four countries of East-Central Europe: Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland. The treatment is a comparative one, predominantly descriptive and exploratory, and employs, as a research method, the case-study, being a quite circumscribed endeavor. The cases focus on the members of the Municipal/Local Council in four towns similar in terms of demography and developmental strategies (i.e. small-to-medium sized communities of around 35,000 inhabitants, with economies largely based on food industry and commercial activities): Tecuci (Galați county, Romania), Česká Lípa (Liberec region, Czech Republic), Targovishte (Targovishte province, Bulgaria), and Oleśnica (Lower Silesia province, Poland). Hypothesizing that the local elites of the former Sovietized Erurope tend to differ in outlook, priorities, and value attainment, as compared to their Western counterparts, the paper considers the former’s attitudes and perspectives in regard to seven values: a series of values customarily connected with the concept of ‘democracy’ (i.e. citizen participation, political conflict, gradual change, economic equality), state intervention in economy, decentralization and increased local autonomy, cultural-geographical self-identification. The study uses, as well, five models of value attainment in what concerns the ‘ideal portrait’ of the local councilor (Putnam 1976): ethical, pragmatic, technocratic, political, and gender. According to the results of a study applying a standard written questionnaire among the local councilors of the three communities in the period December 2010-February 2013, the paper distinguishes among three corresponding types of local elites: (1) ‘predominantly elitistic,’ (2) ‘democratic elitist,’ and (3) ‘predominantly democratic,’ following two types of explanation accounting for the differences among the four cases: the legacy of the defunct regime and the degree of administrative decentralization

Employing geographical principles for sampling in state of the art dialectological projects

The aims of this paper are twofold: First, we locate the most effective human geographical methods for sampling across space in large-scale dialectological projects. We propose two geographical concepts as a basis for sampling decisions: Geo-demographic classification, which is a multidimensional method used for the socio-economic grouping of areas. We also develop an updated version of functional regions that can be used in sociolinguistic research. We then report on the results of a pilot project that applies these models to collect data regarding the acceptability of vernacular morpho-syntactic forms in the North-East of England. Following the method of natural breaks advocated for dialectology by Horvath and Horvath (2002), we interpret breaks in the probabilistic patterns as areas of dialect transitions. This study contributes to the debate about the role and limitations of spatiality in linguistic analysis. It intends to broaden our knowledge about the interfaces between human geography and dialectology

Cultural Orientations Framework (COF) assessment questionnaire in cross-cultural coaching: A cross-validation with Wave Focus Styles

This paper outlines a cross-validation of the Cultural Orientations Framework assessment questionnaire (COF, Rosinski, 2007; a new tool designed for cross-cultural coaching) with the Saville Consulting Wave Focus Styles questionnaire (Saville Consulting, 2006; an existing validated measure of occupational personality), using data from UK and German participants (N = 222). The convergent and divergent validity of the questionnaire was adequate. Contrary to previous findings which used different measures (Ronen & Shenkar, 1985; Schwartz, 1999; House et al., 2004; Bartram et al., 2006), the results from this particular study indicated few national differences between UK and Germany, however differences by gender were observed. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the development and use of the COF in practice. This may allow for a more finely grained understanding of culture than previous models such as Hofstede’s cultural values framework (1980; 2001), if further evidence for its validity is obtained and published

KEEPING AND ENCOURAGING NEW BUSINESS

The key for keeping and encouraging new businesses consists in giving a variousnumber of facilities. The paper tries to explain the way the firms choose their businesses locations,the use of new technology in the production process and the methods of gaining and keepingcustomers.business; strategy; encouraging businesses; communication methods

THE ROLE OF DATABASE MARKETING IN THE OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE SERVICES RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

The relationship marketing aims the construction of a durable relation between the enterprise and the final client, identified at an individual level. The particular part of the relationship marketing has two main concepts: individuality and the relation. This paper presents the concepts of relationship marketing, database marketing and geomarketing. We present the importance of implementing a marketing database in a service providing enterprise and its implications on one hand for the client and on the other hand for the enterprise. The paper point out the marketing database instruments and the advantages for the elements of the marketing mix. The implementation of a marketing database will aid the enterprise to better target and attract the client, to transform them into loyal consumers and in the same time it can help refresh the image of the enterprise.relationship marketing, one-to-one marketing, customer relationship management, database marketing

THE ROLE OF DATABASE MARKETING IN THE OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE SERVICES RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

The relationship marketing aims the construction of a durable relation between the enterprise and the final client, identified at an individual level. The particular part of the relationship marketing has two main concepts: individuality and the relation. This paper presents the concepts of relationship marketing, database marketing and geomarketing. We present the importance of implementing a marketing database in a service providing enterprise and its implications on one hand for the client and on the other hand for the enterprise. The paper point out the marketing database instruments and the advantages for the elements of the marketing mix. The implementation of a marketing database will aid the enterprise to better target and attract the client, to transform them into loyal consumers and in the same time it can help refresh the image of the enterprise.relationship marketing, one-to-one marketing, customer relationship management, database marketing

Links between moral identity and political purpose during emerging adulthood

We examined the links between moral identity—the centrality of moral principles to identity—and political purpose during emerging adulthood. We analyzed data from two waves of a longitudinal study of civic purpose. T1 surveys were collected before high school graduation and T2 survey were collected two years later. We categorized people (N = 1,578 at T1 and N = 480 at T2) into political purpose groups based on the person-centered perspective and then performed multinomial logistic regression analysis to test whether moral identity was associated with categories of political purpose. The findings from our study indicate that moral identity at T1 is linked with the maintenance and formation of T2 political purpose

The relationships between corporate meeting planner's personality traits and their choices of meeting places

This study is to determine the influence of personality on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The Big-Five model of personality which consists of five traits namely openness, conscientiousness, extraversion,agreeableness, and neuroticism was employed to operationalise the personality construct. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed service organisations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical analysis. The results revealed that only openness (positively) and agreeableness (negatively) contributed significantly to the prediction of novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. This study, which also seeks to determine the relationships between some demographical variables and novelty preference, found that demographical information is not a good predictor of meeting destination choice. The main implication of this study is pertaining to the segmentation and targeting of the corporate meeting market. This study also helps in bridging the gap between tourism marketing and organisational research