Resource-Based Learning of Students in The System of Cross-Cultural Training of Future Specialists in Fitness and Recreation

The article considers the problem of introduction of resource-based learning of students in the practice of the educational process of higher education institutions that provide training under the educational program «Fitness and Recreation». The aim of the study is to clarify the place of RBL of students in the system of cross-cultural training of fitness and recreation professionals. The study involved 233 students of higher education institutions of Ukraine. Research methods: theoretical, empirical and methods of mathematical data processing. The essence and place of resource-based learning of students in the system of cross-cultural training of future specialists in fitness and recreation were determined, a subsystem «Resource-based learning of future professionals in fitness and recreation» was developed, which consists of three interrelated components: target, implementation and performance; mechanisms of information search for acquisition of cross-cultural knowledge in the field of fitness industry are considered

Cross-Border Cooperation Programme As an Impetus for Establishment of New Modes of Governance in Croatia

Generated as a response to the requirements in managing European cross border cooperation programmes, Neighbourhood Programme Slovenia-Hungary-Croatia 2004-2006 (NP) in particular served as an impetus for establishment of new modes of governance in Croatia. Together with Hungary and Slovenia, Croatia participates in this trilateral Programme as an external EU border candidate state. The NP is implemented as a grant scheme in Croatia for the first time requiring many institutional changes for its implementation. On all levels of government, the NP contributed to the establishment of stronger relations among institutions, horizontally and vertically, and a transfer of know-how in preparation and implementation from experienced partners, Slovenia and Hungary. Such a complex programme generated also problems due to weak administrative capacity, different sources of financing and socio-economic discrepancies. On national level, weak capacity of the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration (MFAEI) has directly influenced the initiation and implementation of NP and difficulties in the decision-making process occurred. The relationship between MFAEI and the Delegation of the European Commission was unclear and there were difficulties in developing new administrative procedures. Additionally, insufficiently transparent information dissemination mechanisms through different government levels influenced the quality and selection of project proposals in certain counties. Socio-cultural differences in Croatia were insufficiently considered while setting up the coordination system resulting in the extent and quality of submitted proposals and their success in the selection procedure. Some regions showed successful coordination on county level contributing to selection of greater number of proposals from those counties, while in others, there was a lack of capacity in preparing coherent project proposals. In accordance with the presented first Croatian experiences in the trilateral European cross-border programme, the following can be concluded: In terms of socio-developmental impacts, the joint-project proposal preparation process of the cross border partners created intensive inter-institutional cooperation and inter-institutional communication. However, only successful project proposals result in inter-institutional collaboration through joint implementation of projects, which is considered fundamental to the creation of a network society and building of social capital.

Methodological aspects in cross-national research

Die Beiträge diese Heftes gehen zumeist auf mehrere Tagungen des Research Committee 33 (Logik und Methodologie) der International Sociological Association zurück. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Fragen der Messung sowie die Vergleichbarkeit, Reliabilität und Validität in der international vergleichenden empirischen Forschung. Die Beiträge sind vier Themengruppen zugeordnet. Im ersten Teil geht es um Design und Implementation kulturvergleichender Studien (Instrumentarium, Question Appraisal System, EU-Projekte, Fragebogenverstehen, Interpretation der Ergebnisse). Der zweite Teil ist verschiedenen Aspekten der "Äquivalenz"-Problematik gewidmet, vor allem in Bezug auf das International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) und den European Social Survey (ESS). Im dritten Teil wird die Harmonisierung soziodemographischer Information in unterschiedlichen Untersuchungen behandelt (amtliche Statistik, ESS, ISSP). Im abschließenden vierten Teil werden sozioökonomische Variablen in international vergleichender Perspektive diskutiert (Einkommen, Bildung, Beruf, Ethnizität, Religion). (ICE)"Cross-national and cross-cultural survey research has been growing apace for several decades and interest in how best to do them has possibly never been greater. At the International Sociological Association Research Committee 33 (Logic and Methodology) several sessions were dedicated to cross-cultural cross-national survey methodology and the vast majority of the papers in this volume were presented at that conference. Researchers involved in comparative research have always been worried about measurement issues, comparability, reliability and validity of their data. But the design and execution of comparative studies has changed markedly since the early cross-national projects of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies." (excerpt). Contents: Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Janet A. Harkness: Methodological aspects in cross-national research: foreword (5-10). I. Designing and implementing cross-cultural surveys - Johnny Blair, Linda Piccinino: The development and testing of instruments for cross-cultural and multi-cultural surveys (13-30); Elizabeth Dean Rachel Caspar, Georgina McAvinchey, Leticia Reed, Rosanna Quiroz: Developing a low-cost technique for parallel cross-cultural instrument development: the Question Appraisal System (QAS-04) (31-46); Felizitas Sagebiel: Using a mixed international comparable methodological approach in a European Commission project on gender and engineering (47-64); Timothy P. Johnson, Young Ik Cho, Allyson Holbrook, Diane O'Rourke, Richard Warnecke, Noel Chávez: Cultural variability in the effects of question design features on respondent comprehension (65-78); Kristen Miller, Gordon Willis, Connie Eason, Lisa Moses, Beth Canfield: Interpreting the results of cross-cultural cognitive interviews: a mixed-method approach (79-92). II. Different issues of comparability or "equivalence" - Michael Braun, Janet A. Harkness: Text and context: challenges to comparability in survey questions (95-108); Nina Rother: Measuring attitudes towards immigration across countries with the ESS: potential problems of equivalence (109-126); Vlasta Zucha: The level of equivalence in the ISSP 1999 and its implications on further analysis (127-146). III. Harmonising socio-demographic information in different types of surveys - Thomas Körner, Iris Meyer: Harmonising socio-demographic information in household surveys of official statistics: experiences from the Federal Statistical Office Germany (149-162); Kirstine Kolsrud, Knut Kalgraff Skjak: Harmonising background variables in the European Social Survey (163-182); Evi Scholz: Harmonisation of survey data in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) (183-200). IV. Socio-economic variables in cross-national perspective - Uwe Warner, Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik: Measuring income in comparative social survey research (203-222); Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner: How to measure education in cross-national comparison: Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner-Matrix of Education as a new instrument (223-240); Harry B.G. Ganzeboom: On the cost of being crude: a comparison of detailed and coarse occupational coding in the ISSP 1987 data (241-258); Paul S. Lambert: Ethnicity and the comparative analysis of contemporary survey data (259-278); Christof Wolf: Measuring religious affiliation and religiosity in Europe (279-294)

Smart City: Concepts and two Relevant Components

In the last 30 years, the Smart City (SC) definitions have changed, they expressed different meanings by different people, but still no universally accepted definition, yet. The paper aims to summarize the existing relevant definitions to and propose a concept for characterizing the smartness of a city through intelligent planning and monitoring, guided by actionable information that underpins computer-assisted decisions and institutional digital transformation. As a practical approach, the SC concept is promoted by two components namely: spatial urban territorial planning and cultural heritage via virtual exhibitions. The article highlights the schematic diagram of cross-sectoral interactions between different stakeholders grouped by roles, and the expected impact for these interactions, a proposed functional system architecture for cultural heritage digital transformation and concrete steps for virtual exhibitions implementation

RepositóriUM: implementing DSpace in portuguese: lessons for the future and research pathways

In this paper we describe the implementation of the Minho University (UMinho) Institutional Repository (RepositóriUM), Portugal. UMinho translated and has been using the first Portuguese version of DSpace, an Open Source software system developed in a partnership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Hewlett-Packard (HP). The five phases established for the implementation plan are pointed out in this work (1. installation, translation, and configuration; 2. upload of thesis and dissertations; 3. establishment of pilot communities; 4. making the repository public, and 5. opening to the overall UMinho community), as well as, the reasons that led to the choice of the six pilot communities of different areas of knowledge (Information Systems; Polymers Engineering; Biological Engineering; Management, and one from the Humanities and another from the Social Sciences areas) to participate in this implementation period. In this paper we wish to share the lessons learnt, and the pathways for research, in particular for cross-cultural research, according to some questions and observations obtained during the first 10 months of experience. With this information as a background, some research pathways have been identified and are starting to be further developed in the context of MSc or PhD research at UMinho

A discussion of barriers to successful exploitation of ERP systems in China

The research presented in this paper aims at identifying, assessing and discussing potential social, cultural, organisational and system barriers to successful exploitation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE). In spite of the urgent need for research in this area, there is a scarcity of studies focusing on ERP post-implementation, in contrast with an over abundance of studies focusing on implementation and project management aspects. The need for the research thus emerged from the growing awareness in the field that there is a lack of studies addressing the organisational exploitation of ERPs after the implementation stage. The study adopted a deductive research design based on a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. This survey was preceded by a Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) analysis and a set of Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat (SWOT) analyses that enabled the researchers to narrow the scope of the study and identify an appropriate industry sector and region, namely the Electronic and Telecommunication Manufacturing Sector in the Guangdong province. The questionnaire design was based on a theoretical ontology of barriers drawn from a systematic literature review process. The questionnaire was sent to the operational managers and the information technology (IT) managers of 118 SOEs in China, from which 42 valid and usable responses were received and analysed. The findings identified that ICT system-related barriers are currently perceived by respondents as more crucial to ERP post-implementation. In contrast, due to China’s rapid economic development, continuous reforms and fluid nature of organisational environments, cultural and organisational ERP barriers were assigned a lower priority by the SOEs studied. As a result of this analysis, this paper presents and discusses 25 ERP exploitation barriers, from which 9 barriers were considered critical. The study also explored and identified 15 correlations between the barriers identified

From Inscriptions to Lexica and Back: A Platform for Editing and Linking the Languages of Ancient Italy

Available language technology is hardly applicable to scarcely attested ancient languages, yet their digital semantic representation, though challenging, is an asset for the purpose of sharing and preserving existing cultural knowledge. In the context of a project on the languages and cultures of ancient Italy, we took up this challenge. This paper thus describes the development of a user friendly web platform, EpiLexO, for the creation and editing of an integrated system of language resources for ancient fragmentary languages centered on the lexicon, in compliance with current digital humanities and Linked Open Data principles. EpiLexo allows for the editing of lexica with all relevant cross-references: for their linking to their testimonies, as well as to bibliographic information and other (external) resources and common vocabularies. The focus of the current implementation is on the languages of ancient Italy, in particular Oscan, Faliscan, Celtic and Venetic; however, the technological solutions are designed to be general enough to be potentially applicable to different contexts and scenarios

Developing a Structurational Approach to Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM)

The literature on culture provides a set of general concepts and ideas as a way of looking at the world (Hofstede 1980). However, the typologies of culture have inherent weaknesses, e.g., they do not reflect the variety of values and attitude that may exist in a country, nor do they explain how cultures have developed over time (Skok and Doringer 2001). These limitations lead our research to investigate the potential impact of cultural differences on eCRM using concepts from Structuration Theory by ,. In this paper the authors highlight the dimensions of culture and its potential impact on eCRM systems, using a Structurational analysis based on . The authors use the practice lens for studying technology in organizations based on , to develop a framework of studying different agencies and their structures within eCRM systems context. The authors conclude by a framework of Structurational analysis of eCRM systems displaying different agencies and their structures. This framework of analysis will be used to conduct a comparative case study in future research

Investigating the impact of cross-cultural on CRM implementation: a comparative study

In a competitive world there is a need for companies to maximise all their resources. One of the resources that are often overlooked is that of existing customer base. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a tool that is becoming increasingly popular as it provides a method of maximising existing customer resource as well as adding value from the customers’ perception. CRM consists of three simultaneous considerations that drive CRM strategy: (1) people, business culture and relationships, (2) processes, and (3) technology. In a globalise economy, cross-cultural is becoming of extreme importance to many researchers and practitioners, but there is a lack of literature on the impact of cross-cultural on CRM implementation. Multinational organizations face the situation of how to adopt CRM implementation process according to differences in culture factors from country to country