Search

Communication is an indispensable part of international cooperation and it requires managing different cultures. Being prepared to see and understand different values, trying to understand contrasting views in a consortium, can decrease the potential of misperception which otherwise may act as a real barrier to cooperation. This is why international cooperation necessitates negotiation across cultures. In the case of collaboration, parties come together for a joint work which itself may create common values/understanding, besides the set goals. This is because collaboration requires strong we-feeling and commitment. The purpose of this paper is to focus on cross-cultural communication and collaboration in the area of Open and Distance Learning (ODL), concentrating on the communication processes in project management. Cross-cultural studies point to different communicative behaviours of individuals in multinational work environments e.g. the cultural characteristics affect the preferences towards the use of the media. For the purposes of this paper, the authors make a phenomenological-oriented case study of project management based on interviews with partners of a multilateral Grundtvig (adult learning) project, affiliated with distance education institutions in eight different countries. The authors test their assumptions for constructive and cooperative communication in e-Learning projects; delineating the effects of different cultures as regards the expectations from (1) international projects and (2) communication media.

Auditors' liability is a hot topic nowadays. Due to the increased risks of auditors and the lack of appropriate insurance, a limitation of auditors' liability seems appropriate. Based on the economic study of the London Economics, the European Commission issued a consultation paper to discuss a European harmonization of auditors' liability. But to harmonize a liability cap on auditors, one needs to examine not only the economic implications, but also the legal restraints and differences of auditors' liability regimes within the European Union. This paper shows that there are large discrepancies concerning auditor's liability towards third parties within the legal systems of the European Union. In Belgium, an auditor is liable towards each interested party. However, the public role of an auditor is not acknowledged in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. In those countries the purpose of audited statements is to fulfil the auditor's duty to the shareholders collectively and not to the stockholders as individual parties or third parties. In Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, an auditor has to encompass a special duty of care towards the third party to be liable. Only a special relationship of the auditor towards a third party could imply auditor's liability toward those parties. This element wasn't discussed in the London Economics Study. However, these findings could have a major impact on the debate to harmonize an auditor's liability cap because the more parties can pursue an auditor, the more damage can be claimed and the higher the liability cap needs to be fixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance wage differences between men and women. In addition, the gender wage gap varies across the wage distribution. Differences in the association between training participation and wages for men and women across the earnings spectrum may offer an explanation as to why the discrepancy in female/male earnings is larger at some point of the wage distribution compared to others. Approach: Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and unconditional quantile regression, this paper examines whether the association between workplace training and wages differs between men and women at different points of the wage distribution across 14 European countries. To partly control for endogeneity in training participation, detailed measures of cognitive skills have been included in the models. Findings: Findings show gender differences in the association between training and wages across the wage distribution. In most countries, results indicate larger training coefficients for women than men at the lower end of the wage spectrum whereas they are larger for men at the top. This pattern holds across most countries with the only exception of Liberal ones, where women benefit less than men across the entire wage spectrum. Conclusions: The findings of this work reveal that distributional variations in returns to workplace training follow a similar pattern across industrialized countries, despite their different institutional settings. Moreover, differences in training coefficients of men and women at different parts of the wage distribution suggest that training could reduce gender wage differences among low earners and potentially widen the gap in wages among individuals at the top of the wage distribution.

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function Production theory and Actor-Centred Institutionalism. Based on these theoretical notions we derived several hypotheses, which I tested using multilevel analysis of the data from the European Social Survey (2006), in a sample of 37,237 respondents from 22 European countries. My findings indicate that various extensiveness of social security policies matter for the level of SWB, and for the impact of education on SWB. I found negative impact of low education on SWB in all countries, except in Northern and Western European countries. This might suggest that social security policies of the latter countries have diminished the negative impact of low education on SWB. Moreover, my findings indicate positive relationship between individual education and generalized trust; as well as between generalized trust and SWB in countries with all five types of social security policies.

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border higher education institutions in Mainland China have experienced the process from accidental and disorder to a systematic and quality orientation.

Objective: To systematically review the literature and map published studies on 4-8-year-olds' intake of discretionary choices against an ecological framework (ANalysis Grid for Environments Linked to Obesity; ANGELO). Design: Articles were identified through database searches (PubMed, PyscINFO®, Web of Science) in February and March 2014 and hand-searching reference lists. Studies were assessed for methodological quality and mapped against the ANGELO framework by environment size (macro and micro setting) and type (physical, economic, policy and socio-cultural influences). Setting: Studies were conducted in the USA (n 18), Australia (n 6), the UK (n 3), the Netherlands (n 3), Belgium (n 1), Germany (n 1) and Turkey (n 1). Subjects: Children aged 4-8 years, or parents/other caregivers. Results: Thirty-three studies met the review criteria (observational n 23, interventions n 10). Home was the most frequently studied setting (67% of exposures/strategies), with the majority of these studies targeting family policy-type influences (e.g. child feeding practices, television regulation). Few studies were undertaken in government (5·5%) or community (11%) settings, or examined economic-type influences (0%). Of the intervention studies only four were categorised as effective. Conclusions: The present review is novel in its focus on mapping observational and intervention studies across a range of settings. It highlights the urgent need for high-quality research to inform interventions that directly tackle the factors influencing children's excess intake of discretionary choices. Interventions that assist in optimising a range of environmental influences will enhance the impact of future public health interventions to improve child diet quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve efficient and effective quality improvement, European universities have gradually adopted organizational strategies, structures, technologies, management instruments, and values that are commonly found in the private business sector. Whereas some studies have shown that such managerialism is beneficial to the quality of job performances of university employees, others have argued that managerialism is largely counterproductive and that it results in lower performances. The latter situation is called a "managerialism contradiction". This paper tests two lines of reasoning underlying a potential contradiction governing the relationship between managerialism and job performances, while using university employee survey data from six European countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, UK). The results tend to support the assumption that managerialism, in these six countries at least, has a positive effect, albeit a modest one, on the quality of performances. The most important conclusion is therefore that there is no managerialism contradiction at work in European universities.

The evaluation of government-financed research has become increasingly important in the last few decades in terms of increasing the quality of, and payoff from, the research that is done, reducing the cost of doing it, and lending public credibility to the manner in which research is funded. But there are very large differences throughout the world in the extent to which systems used promote these results. This paper briefly presents the dimensional results of a study designed to comparatively evaluate the national-level research evaluation models in sixteen countries on five merit-defining dimensions. (Contains 6 figures.)

This paper reflects on the usefulness and applicability of comparative inquiry for policy and practice in education development projects involving universities within the EU or EEA (Socrates, Erasmus, etc.) and especially in technical aid and outreach programmes (Tempus etc.), using concrete examples, exploring the distinctions made in EU regulatory documents and funding frameworks between research and development. The tension is shown between overt political objectives such as the transfer of assumed know-how to solve immediate priority problems of common concern, and educational objectives of extending understanding among equal partners. It is suggested that the more a development project is a shared learning programme, the more applicable and fruitful are comparative methods. Experienced examples are considered of research investigation applied to development programmes from within, whether as practitioner research or by independent research commissioned by practitioners, to assist in pursuing development objectives; of surveys commissioned by the EC across programmes to evaluate the overall effectiveness of a scheme and identify best practice for the future; and of research undertaken independently, taking advantage of access to the project framework to explore questions which are not necessarily or exclusively instrumental. The need is identified to bring these into a coherent system, and recommendations are outlined for future policy.