Corporate Culture in Preschool Organisation Administration: European and Asian Context

The relevance of the study lies in the need to introduce corporate culture in the field of preschool education to improve the managerial level and pedagogical compliance of employees who influence the development of preschool children as individual members of society. The purpose of the study is to analyse organisational culture in the administration of preschool institutions, based on a comparison of Asian and European cultural paradigms. The research consisted of two stages, namely theoretical and empirical, and involved the use of general scientific research methods, including analysis, synthesis, comparison, systematisation, questionnaires, surveys, and statistical data processing. In the course of the study, foreign scientific literature was analysed in order to determine the phenomena of preschool institution administration and its corporate culture. An empirical study was conducted, the essence of which was an online survey among kindergarten administrators in Germany and Kazakhstan. It is determined that both the German and Kazakh corporate administration cultures have weaknesses, common to which is the lack of full-fledged freedom in decision-making and conducting activities. It was discovered that the two countries have a common view on the development of administrator's corporate competencies, including strategic importance, change management, leadership, performance management, learning orientation, responsibility, focus on results, activity, and social intelligence. It is confirmed that German kindergarten heads are distinguished by their productivity and focus on learning, while Kazakh ones attempt to pay attention to responsibility and thoroughness. The practical value of the research is to compare two views on the corporate administration culture in preschool organisations in the context of European and Asian paradigms

DEVELOPMENT THROUGH INTERVENTION? REVISITING CRITICISM OF HUNGARIAN DEMOCRACY

Hungarian public administration culture has traditionally been considered as overtly legalistic and proceduralist, which appears to be in contrast with claims of weakening the rule of law or facing sanctions under Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union. This article offers an overview on the criticisms put forth by academic writers and EU institutions regarding the Hungarian development path and puts them into the wider context of democratization through transaction (transitology, democracy export) theory. The article compares findings of contemporary interventionist authors with the propositions of such iconic writers as Dankwart Rustow (1970) and Samuel P. Huntington (1984) and attempts to connect the dots between these realms of thought. These authors all share the view that democracy shall be exported the more and quicker the better. Transitology, though, has had its critics, while contemporary interventionist theory appears to be rather monolithic without considerable criticism. The article uses the approach of Payne (2006), and of other authors, to question various statements of contemporary interventionists. Not least, recent developments in Afghanistan provide historical evidence that the ambitions of transactional democratisation are predetermined to fall short on non-democratic institutions imposing democracy using non-democratic measures on recipients of various sorts.

Investigation of Obstacles Affecting Implementation of Job Rotation Process

Nowadays, for ideal level of organizational performance, organizations should develop human resource policies continually. Since employees are considered as the most valuable factor of success and production, the most important assets and a main source of competitive advantage. Modern institutions adopt Job rotation as a fundamental technique for developing staff at all levels of management and in different fields. It provides all members with opportunities to develop their skills, competency and knowledge in different kinds of various jobs. The main purpose of this empirical study is to identify the factors affecting the implementation of job rotation process in Erbil Administrative Technical Institute and Shaqlawa Technical Institute. This study is descriptive and the sample size of population included 115 employees and lecturers who worked in Erbil Administrative Technical Institute and Shaqlawa Technical Institute and 108 valid responses were generated from the employees and lecturers of the two institutes. The tool of the study was a questionnaire. Thus, the items of the study were developed according to the questionnaire employed a 3-point Likert scale. The collected data were then analyzed by statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). The findings indicated staff interests or willingness in implementing job rotation, the management/ administration culture, knowledge or manager education were the main obstacles followed by the cost of implementing. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made for the decision makers.

Władczość i niewładczość administracji w jurysdykcyjnym postępowaniu administracyjnym

The implementation of a new administration culture (based on a partnership approach of public administration to citizens) causes the growing use of non-imperious forms and methods of public administration activity. This tendency also includes jurisdictional administrative proceedings, in which authoritative and non-authoritative actions of the public administration are intertwined. The aim of the article is to look at these tendencies and determine whether they are in accordance with the essence of the administrative law relation as a key notion of administrative law.

The transposition of the 2014 EU Directives on public procurement by Portugal: woes and expectations

The new EU Directives on Public Procurement are oriented to promote the application of the concept of strategic public procurement which has been subject to several communications and discussions promoted by the European Commission and European Parliament. This new approach to Public Procurement has deep implications in the legal framework adopted by each Member State as well as in the public administration culture and organization in order that the new objectives of promoting the qualification of markets, the increase of innovation, the respect by social cohesion and environmental sustainability and a better access to public markets by SME’s will be achieved aligned with the UE 2020 Agenda. In this paper, the process and the results of the transposition of this Directives by Portugal are studied not just in terms of the respect for the Directives rules but also considering its likely positive and negative impacts on Portuguese public markets which are also synthetically described herein.

Internal ministerial advisory bodies: An attempt to transform governing in the Slovak Republic

In the Slovak Republic, a number of internal ministerial advisory bodies, intended to provide high-quality analyses and evidence based policy making for national policy, have been established over the last two years. We have studied how the rational technocratic model of scientific policy advice as a specific mode of governing, acted out through these new institutional sites of expertise, survives in a highly politicised environment of the Slovak public administration. Central to our study was the reconstruction of an intersubjective account central to the work of organising on which the analytical centres and their staff, as well as their patrons, participate. Complementary to this, we focused on intersubjectively shared elements of the analysts’ community and subculture within the dominant CEE public administration culture. The vision of governing with expertise shared by analytical centres rests on the principles of transparency, orientation on professional merit (primarily econometric, analytical skills), voluntarism, conflict avoidance, political opportunism and institutional autonomy. Analytical centres identify themselves as a distinct professional group – in fact, they form a distinct organisational subculture around traits such as demographic characteristics (predominantly young males with economic or mathematical/IT background), symbols, hierarchies, working culture, humour, as well as artefacts. Analysts see their mission in the provision of impartial, objective analytical evidence for informed decision making, yet they negotiate the boundary between politics and expertise on a daily basis, and, as we found, in numerous aspects of analysts’ work politics cannot be entirely bracketed.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LAND AND CULTURE IN SELECTED TEXTS BY CHENJERAI HOVE

This article explores the significance of land in Chenjerai Hove’s stories. The setting of the stories affects the choices of the protagonists, depending on their status on the land. Hove’s selected novels, Shadows and Ancestors, explore this phenomenon in the context of the Native Purchase lands of the then Rhodesia. The cultural disruption of moving to commercial land as opposed to the land of ancestors has an impact on identity of the characters, both personally and as perceived by others. At times, such perceptions contradict each other, but they also have implications for the characters’ economic and psychological well-being. This article therefore sets out to explore the relationship between land and culture as depicted in Hove’s novels. The main argument is that, while the Native Purchase areas accorded economic status to the Africans involved, it fractured their cultural identity as they had to live by the dictates of the colonial administration. Culture refers to a way of life and includes manner of dress, food, language, social interaction and many other aspects. This in turn adds insight to how the interface of administration of land affects Zimbabwean citizens as literature here holds up a mirror to real life.Â

„Tenke det, ønske det, ville det med – men gjøre det! ...”. Opposisjonsinnlegg ved Steen Buscks disputatsforsvar ved Aarhus Universitet 25. november 2011 med avhandlingen Et landbosamfund i opbrud. Sundby Mors 1660-1800, 2011.

<p>English summary</p><p><br />Steen Busck’s doctoral dissertation, Et landbosamfund i opbrud (A Rural Community Breaking etc.), is a detailed and well-documented study of the parish of Sundby Mors in Northern Jutland in the period 1660-1800. The author analyses all aspects of this small, rural community of some 200 inhabitants in the late eighteenth century – landscape, demography, social structure, economy, administration, culture and mentality, drawing on his wide knowledge and reading, as well as nearly all available sources in public archives, to produce a very solid local history of Sundby Mors in two volumes, with nearly 1200 pages. It is a monumental work, in more than one sense. According to Busck himself, the study should be a total history, local history, microhistory and a case study of an early modern agricultural community. Although overlapping to a certain extent, these labels point in different directions, but the author does not make an effort to distinguish between them. Claiming that his purpose is to find ”typical” elements in a local society which he claims is unique, and using methods which are not comparative or synthetic, but rather descriptive and individualistic, he gets into difficulties when he tries to draw general conclusions.</p><p><br />Steen Busck’s main question is whether the parish of Sundby Mors underwent any "modernisation” dusring the studied period. However, his definitions of a "traditional” and a "modern” society represent extreme models, which would be hard to find in the real world, and so he concludes that Sundby Mors failed to modernise, although he finds changes and developments in many different fields, which seem to warrant a more nuanced conclusion. Also, his sources, which are mainly official records, are heavily weighted in favour of traditional agriculture and resident population, more likely to show stabilty than change. And although Steen Busck draws on other local studies in analysing the different aspects of the local society and economy, he does not attempt any general comparisons, which might indicate whether Sundby Mors was more or less ”modern” than other contemporary local societies, in Denmark or elsewhere. Admittedly, Busck faces "the pioneer’s dilemma”: the more original the study, the more unique it is, the less scope for comparisons. At present, and probably also in the future, Steen Busck’s monumental study stands alone in its thoroughness and totality.</p><p><br />And ”the taste is the proof of the pudding”. Notwithstanding the critical comments presented above, Steen Busck has written a very solid, many-facetted, interesting and readable local history of a rural parish under absolutism, demonstrating, more than anything, the growth of the state’s power in a local community. Future historians will appreciate, use and refer to his study with respect and admiration.</p>

The First Episode of Language Reform in Republican Turkey: The Language Council from 1926 to 1931

Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and the consolidation of the Kemalist regime in 1926, the President of the new republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk launched a reform process which aimed at changing Turkey's laws, administration, culture and, most significantly, its image. One facet of this process of transformation was the language reform that commenced with romanisation of the Turkish script in late 1928 and reached its zenith later on in the 1930s. Between 1932 and 1934, the Türk Dil Kurumu – the Turkish Language Institute, a radical reformist institution founded by Atatürk in 1932 – banished thousands of Arabic and Persian words from spoken and written Turkish and fabricated new, ‘authentically’ Turkish, words to replace them. The radical-reformist zeal subsided in 1935 as a result of the linguistic chaos of the previous years and came to a halt in 1936 with the proclamation of the so-called Sun-Language Theory. However, so much had changed during those few years and has done since, that even secondary school and university graduates in contemporary Turkey are not able to read and understand, for instance, Atatürk's famous Speech of 1926 from its original, and hence feel the need to consult ‘modernised’ or simplified versions. In this respect, the legacy of the language reform in early republican Turkey remains a matter of bitter controversy and pits the reformist Kemalists against an array of Islamists, conservatives and even liberals. The current debate on what proper Turkish is neatly overlaps with the major fault line that still divides Turkish society.

Comparison of the Reveal Test, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Culture Method, and Selective Media for Recovery of Salmonella Enteritidis from Commercial Egg Layer Flock Environments

Salmonella is the leading cause of foodborne illnesses in the United States, and Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) is the second most frequently isolated Salmonella serovar. Egg products are most often associated with outbreaks of SE infection. To prevent SE contamination of eggs, many producers are implementing flock inspections for SE at their facilities. A rapid and simple method for detecting SE in poultry environmental samples is critical for effective control of SE. In this study, the Reveal test for SE was compared with the conventional U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) culture method for detecting SE in naturally contaminated environmental samples. The efficacy of two enrichment media, tetrathionate broth (TT) and Rappaport-Vassiliadis medium (RV), and three selective plating media, brilliant green agar with novobiocin (BGN), xylose lysine tergitol 4 agar (XLT4), and bismuth sulfite agar (BS), also were compared for SE isolation. One hundred twenty-eight environmental drag swab samples were collected from two previously identified SE-positive chicken flocks in two U.S. states and analyzed in parallel using the Reveal test and the FDA culture method. Twenty-five samples (19.5%) yielded SE when the Reveal test was used, and 23 samples (18.0%) were positive for SE by the FDA culture method. No significant difference in efficacy (P = 0.527) was found between the two methods. The Reveal test had a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 83, 94, and 92%, respectively. Overall, a significantly greater number of positive samples was obtained after enrichment in RV compared with TT. XLT4 and BGN were more efficient than BS for isolating SE. However, no single method or medium successfully recovered SE from all SE-positive environmental samples.