Search results for "socioeconomic development"
showing 10 items of 12 documents
Climate change policies and agendas: facing implementation challenges and guiding responses
2020
Climate policies are essential to mitigate climate change and to develop successful adaptation processes. However, there is a paucity of international studies that analyse the status of climate change policies. This paper reports on research undertaken in a sample of 13 highly diverse countries, in regards to their geography, socioeconomic development, vulnerability elements, adaptation, and climate-risks. The results draw attention to the global spread and standardisation of climate change policies, namely through the adoption of comprehensive National Adaptation Plans/Strategies (NAPs/NASs) that include mitigation measures and evaluation mechanisms. Although NAPs tend to take into account…
The European Union’s Development Policy: A Balancing Act between ‘A More Comprehensive Approach’ and Creeping Securitization
2016
More than a decade after the release of the European Security Strategy (ESS) in 2003, its affirmation that development and security policy should work together is still one of its most discussed features. The vision of a more comprehensive — if not integrated — approach to security and development was underwritten by substantial changes to the EU’s external relations bureaucracy following the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. This ambition raises several important questions regarding the potential ‘securitization’ of EU development policy and foreign aid. Have security concerns had a growing influence on EU development policy and aid allocation? Do key concepts that have become prominent since the ESS wa…
Business competencies and innovation capability in cross-border small regional enterprises
2017
This paper explores the socio-economic aspects of human capital, especially the IT users' innovation capability in regional cross-border small and medium-sized enterprises in Poland and in Germany. Socio-economic aspects of human capital are crucial for the socioeconomic development that may be achieved through virtual access to online learning tools and by diagnosing IT users' innovation capability and their business competencies, in relation to information and communication technologies. This paper presents an initial report on experimental research that was conducted online using the author's diagnostic tools. Conclusions and findings of this work contribute to socioeconomic development …
The Role of ICT Actors and Networks in Development: The Case Study of a Wireless Project in Nepal
2011
The role of ICT actors in the formation and extension of ICT4D projects is important. The actors through their extended network and aligned interest can enhance the effectiveness of the project which in turn enables socioeconomic development opportunities. However, few studies have been conducted to understand the role of these central players. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to address this knowledge gap by conducting a qualitative case study in the Myagdi district in the mountain region of Nepal. In this study we explored the Nepal Wireless Networking Project (NWNP) and examined how an activist started it from one mountain village and gradually extended across more than 150 vil…
Conversations with Civil Servants: East European Public Administration Reform in Search of Socioeconomic Development
2012
Countries of central and eastern Europe find themselves in a position of making important choices about design and organization of their civil service. In many cases public administration reform was delayed, because it was judged to be of lesser urgency than the creation of a market economy. It is, however, increasingly recognized that an effective and professional civil service is an important precondition for a sustainable market economy as well as for socioeconomic development in general, and the opinion is gaining ground that civil service and market economy should coevolve.
Socially desirable responding:enhancement and denial in 20 countries
2015
This article investigated the dimensionality, measurement invariance, and cross-cultural variations of social desirability. A total of 3,471 university students from 20 countries completed an adapted version of the Marlowe–Crowne scale. A two-dimensional structure was revealed in the pooled sample, distinguishing enhancement (endorsement of positive self-description) and denial (rejection of negative self-description). The factor structure was supported in most countries; medium-sized item bias was found in two denial items. In a multilevel analysis, we found that (a) there was more cross-cultural variation in denial than enhancement; (b) females tended to score higher on enhancement where…
The Low Dimensionality of Development
2020
AbstractThe World Bank routinely publishes over 1500 “World Development Indicators” to track the socioeconomic development at the country level. A range of indices has been proposed to interpret this information. For instance, the “Human Development Index” was designed to specifically capture development in terms of life expectancy, education, and standard of living. However, the general question which independent dimensions are essential to capture all aspects of development still remains open. Using a nonlinear dimensionality reduction approach we aim to extract the core dimensions of development in a highly efficient way. We find that more than 90% of variance in the WDIs can be represen…
Population trends of birds across the iron curtain: Brain matters
2011
One approach to assess human impact on species’ population dynamics is to correlate ecological traits of species with their long-term population trends. Yet, few studies investigated population trends in multiple regions that differ in human impact to reveal which traits explain population trends over larger geographic areas and which only regionally. We examined the relationship between various species traits and long-term population trends of 57 common passerine bird species from 1991 to 2007 in three adjacent regions in central Europe that experienced differences in socioeconomic history: North-Western Germany, Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. We tested effects of habitat, dietary…
Intellectual Capital as a Key Factor of Socio-economic Development of Regions and Countries
2013
Abstract The main goal of the paper is to present the concept of intellectual capital (IC) from regional perspective and define intangible assets as knowledge that can be converted into value or profit. Most of the measurement methods designed by now apply for measuring the intellectual capital at corporate level. Some efforts are being made to present the IC concept in the regional perspective. Development of research on a new regional approach to the intellectual capital theory has been noticed. A sample model of IC for countries and its main sub-components have been presented as well. Some selected knowledge indicators for measuring intellectual capital at national level have been illust…
Lines of development in social research on disability in Finland between the years 1970–2010
2013
This article reviews the development of social research on disability conducted in Finland during the 40-year period from 1970 until 2010. The main focus is the connection of the research with the socioeconomic development of the country. The review starts from the emergence of a new disability service paradigm during the late 1960s. This new paradigm centred around the concept of rehabilitation, and had its roots in the birth of a postmodern welfare state during the same decade. The second shift began during the 1980s and was characterized by the precedence of human rights issues. Both of these changes paralleled international developments, but equally had their roots in the Finnish post-w…