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This study reports a content analysis of the first 10 years of the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership (JNEL). A team of 10 researchers spent two years piloting, and comprehensively reading and coding 97 theoretical articles published between 2010-2020. This analysis found the journal published education and leadership-focused articles with an emerging area of democracy-focused articles. The journal produced a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods articles, which differ from previous content analysis studies conducted in other nonprofit and philanthropic studies journals. The keywords were separated into the 16 categories of the NACC curricular guidelines, which demonstrated the variety of education and leadership-focused topics covered in the first 10 years of the journal. This study has implications for nonprofit and philanthropic studies as JNEL is a lesser-known emerging journal that caters to practitioners and scholars.

Many companies recruit employees from different parts of the globe, and faking behavior by potential employees is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems that applicants from some countries are more prone to faking compared to others, but the reasons for these differences are largely unexplored. This study relates country-level economic variables to faking behavior in hiring processes. In a cross-national study across 20 countries, participants (N=3,839) reported their faking behavior in their last job interview. This study used the random response technique (RRT) to ensure participants’ anonymity and to foster honest answers regarding faking behavior. Results indicate that general economic indicators (gross domestic product per capita [GDP] and unemployment rate) show negligible correlations with faking across the countries, whereas economic inequality is positively related to the extent of applicant faking to a substantial extent. These findings imply that people are sensitive to inequality within countries and that inequality relates to faking, because inequality might actuate other psychological processes (e.g., envy) which in turn increase the probability for unethical behavior in many forms.

Background: The importance of using evidence to inform the policymaking process has been well established in the literature and practice. In Western countries evidence-based policy (EBP) is already accepted and implemented in many policy areas, including disability policy. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) the interest in EBP (evidence-based policy) is new and limited, hampered in many aspects by the regional specificity of the public administration and welfare services reform. Aims and objectives: The present article aims to explore the development of evidence-based disability employment policy in Romania, in a specific area of work integration: sheltered workshops. Methods: The article draws on the findings of extensive research on sheltered workshops that included multiple research methods, such as public policy analysis, social documents analysis, and secondary data analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. Findings: A number of issues concerning the implementation of evidence-based disability policy in Romania have been identified. Some of these issues are related to the administrative and policy capacity of the government. Others are linked to the limitation of the advocacy capacity of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) active in the disability area, or to the weak presence of the academic/research community in the disability policy forum. Discussion and conclusions:There is a limited knowledge of how evidence-based disability policy is developed in CEE countries. This article will emphasise the role of the sheltered workshops in shaping the policy solutions in the area of work integration for persons with disabilities. The article will contribute to better understanding of the disability policy reform, looking closely at how the evidence is built and used within the disability policy process.

This paper1 focuses on the acquisition of adverbs in French L3 and aims to identify the possible role of transfer in this particular linguistic context. The data come from children born in Canada who speak Romanian as a heritage language and are exposed to English as the societal language as well as to French (L3) in school. The variable under scrutiny is the position of adverbs in light of Cinque’s (1999) universal hierarchy. The results indicate that children have nativelike competence for adverb placement in the three languages; however, some non-convergent uses arise in French signaling possible transfer of other parametric settings from Romanian. We suggest that this is a case of non-facilitative transfer due to structural similarity between Romanian and French.

The Romanian non-profit sector is experiencing an explosive growth, an increase of 60% in the last ten years due to the rapid economic and political changes taking place in the region. Currently, there are over 100,000 non-profits with approximately 40% of them being active (FDSC, 2017). This exploratory research aims to provide an understanding of the current Romanian non-profit governance model, the balance of power between board members and the executive director, and their implication on organizational relations with the community. The research analyzes the board – executive relation in the current social-economic context and the board’s involvement in the organization. The study also looks at how these affect the relations of the organizations with the community. Finally, the paper also analyzes how the financing model impacts the Romanian non-profit governance model. An online capacity-building assessment was used to collect the data. It was administered in the period August – October 2015 (for 55 active non-profit organizations with a 66% response rate).

Public services represent an important dimension of quality of society, as they create the contextual conditions for people to further their quality of life. Romanian public administration reform has brought about a constant institutional transformation, which has influenced both the specific features and the quality of the services. This article aims to analyse trends regarding the perceived quality of public services in Romania, in European comparative perspective, using the data of the European Quality of Life Survey (2003–2016). The article aims to understand the low satisfaction with public services in Romania against the background of the public service reform measures taken by government in this period. The article describes the context of Romanian public administration and public service reform, the most important public policy measures adopted and the most important challenges. The lack of vision in the public service reform, the partial introduction of reform elements, the permanent and, sometimes, conflicting changes are issues that may have influenced the way in which the population perceives the quality of public services. The decentralisation process of public services and the insufficient allocation of public funds for delivering such services at local level might have an impact on their quality and quantity perceived by the population. Keywords: public services; public administration reform; citizens’ satisfaction; New Public Management; New Weberianism.

Social enterprises are embedded in the local context, their organizational characteristics and operational strategies being influenced by the institutional settings, political culture and historical traditions and events. Similar to other European countries, Romania has included the modernization of the welfare systems in the development agenda of the last decade. One of the areas of interest was to better understand and promote the dynamics of the social enterprises as economic, social development actors and facilitators. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, this paper aims to explore the role of social enterprises as a component of Romanian welfare system. It starts with an overview of the history of the Romanian social enterprise, its roots and drivers; it continues with the identification of the roles, challenges and development processes of the social enterprises as welfare services. Keywords: social economy; social enterprise; welfare system.

This study charts the lexical development of three sequential bilingual kindergarteners whose first language, Romanian, was acquired naturalistically at home, and whose second language, English, was acquired in kindergarten. The children’s lexical development in English and Romanian was assessed at five different points over a two-year period via the PPVT-4 (peabody picture vocabulary test 4) and a specially adapted PPVT-4 for Romanian. The children’s lexical repertoires were further analyzed to uncover home versus school and cognate versus non-cognate acquisitional differences. In addition, because there is no database of lexical items acquired by monolingual Romanian children, the PPVT-4 adapted for Romanian was administered to 22 monolingual six-year-old Romanian children in Sibiu, Romania. The findings indicate the following: (i) the three bilinguals’ receptive vocabulary in English was below average when they joined kindergarten, and at or above average two years later, (ii) their lexical growth in Romanian was steady, (iii) the bilinguals’ scores for words belonging to a home register reflected ceiling effects in English and Romanian (i.e., were very well known), (iv) academic words were known to an equal extent in English and Romanian, but scores were lower than for the home register, and (v) there was no definitive evidence of cognate facilitation. A comparison of the monolingual and bilingual Romanian repertoires reflects the following: (i) equally high scores for home items, (ii) differences in scores in the academic register in favour of the Romanian monolinguals, and (iii) important lifestyle and cultural differences between the groups. The Romanian children, for example, were more familiar than their Canadian counterparts with items related to home maintenance, such as șmirghăluiește (‘sanding’) and mistrie (‘trowel’), or items probably learned in school, such as foca (‘walrus’) and broască țestoasă (‘tortoise’).

This chapter presents the evolution and current situation of social enterprise (SE) in Romania. It analyses the historical background that has influenced the inception and development of social enterprises in the country. The chapter presents the main stages that can be distinguished in the development of social enterprises in Romania, highlighting for each stage important legislative benchmarks. It provides a presentation of the different SE models that people have identified. The chapter analyses current trends and challenges in the Romanian SE field. In Romania, the revival of the associative sector and the development of social-economy organisations, including social enterprises, were made possible by the systemic political changes that occurred after 1989. The development of a policy environment fostering the growth of social enterprises in the country has been strongly influenced by the structural changes that have taken place since the 1990s in two main strategic areas: social-policy reform and public-administration reform.

Soft skills retain a certain importance in fully understanding the NEET phenomenon: however, only few researchers have focused on them specifically. The aim of this work is two-fold: a) to detect the differences in terms of soft skills and psychological well-being between urban and rural NEETs; and b) to evaluate which of the soft skills analysed may be predictors of psychological well-being. A sample of young 6998 18−34 years old representative of the Italian population was used. Although gender and educational attainment play a key role in determining NEET status, the degree of urbanisation must be considered because it appears to influence the well-being and perceived soft skills of a group of NEETs. The present study shows that females with low educational attainment residing in rural areas have lower levels of well-being than females with low educational attainment residing in urban areas. A similar influence exists in relation to one particular soft skill: positive vision. Furthermore, soft skills predict psychological well-being wherein degree of urbanisation and gender seems to play a determining role. Policies should, therefore, consider these issues in their design and implementation phases. Keywords: NEETs; rural; urban; soft skills; psychological well-being. ····· Abilitățile psiho-sociale (descrise sub această denumire în articol) au importanță în înțelegerea fenomenului NEET (tineri care nu lucrează și nu se află nici în cadrul sistemului educațional – NEET – l. engl.); cu toate astea, puțini cercetători s-au concentrat pe aceste abilități. Scopul acestui studiu este împărțit în două: a) să determine diferențele în termeni de abilități `soft` și bunăstare psihică între urban și rural în rândul NEET și b) să evalueze care dintre aceste abilități ar putea fi predictori ai bunăstării psihologice. S-a folosit un eșantion de 6998 tineri între 18 și 34 de ani, reprezentativ pentru populația din Italia. Deși genul și educația joacă un rol important în determinarea statutului NEET, gradul de urbanizare trebuie luat în considerare, deoarece se pare că influențează bunăstarea și abilitățile psihice ale grupului de NEET. Prezentul studiu arată că femeile cu educație mai puțină, din mediul rural, au un nivel mai scăzut de bunăstare decât femeile de acest fel din mediul urban. O influență similară există în relație cu o anumită abilitate `soft`: viziunea pozitivă. Mai mult, abilitățile `soft` prognosticând bunăstarea psihică, gradul de urbanizare pare să joace în această ecuație un rol determinant. Așa că politicile sociale ar trebui să ia în considerație aceste elemente în cadrul aspectelor legate de design-ul acestora și în procesul de implementare. Cuvinte-cheie: NEET; rural; urban; abilități `soft`; bunăstare psihică.

Using the policy narrative framework, this article examines the pathways through which the development of policies (related to rural/small towns young NEETs in various EU countries) are based on evidence. To do this, we consider the Youth Guarantee (YG), an EU program (2014–2020) developed in several member countries with the aim of socioprofessional inclusion of NEETs (young people aged 15–24 that are not in employment, education, or training). It examines how evidence is used for national policy-making and is taken into account by stakeholders. This study involves documentary analysis of YG in three European countries: namely, Romania, Italy, and Portugal. In addition, it involves 27 interviews with policy-makers and NGO leaders. The results show a predominantly statistical use of data exclusively managed by public institutions. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of consulting evidence from academia and NGOs to improve this policy.

In 2014, European countries began implementing the Youth Guarantee Programme (YGP), one of the European Commission’s most important initiatives designed to combat the issue of youth unemployment. This led to a decrease in the number of young NEETs over the subsequent 6 years. Based on data concerning the extent and size of the NEETs phenomenon at the European level, the number of NEETs who benefit from various measures, and data regarding programmes for NEETs financed by ESF, this paper presents an overview of the YGP implementation in Romania during the 2014−2020 period. It does so by identifying the main challenges and barriers that prevented the achievement of the proposed results. In that regard, the main barriers in the implementation of YGP in Romania are related to the lack of coordination of measures between institutions; a lack of flexibility in registering young NEETs; low levels of partnership with local authorities, companies, and NGOs; delays in funding measures; and a lack of centralised monitoring data in order to provide a picture of progress and thus necessary improvement measures. Keywords: NEETs; rural; youth; employment; education; Youth Guarantee. ······ În 2014, statele europene au început să implementeze programul Garanția pentru Tineret, una dintre cele mai importante inițiative ale Comisiei Europene în domeniul șomajului în rândul tinerilor, ceea ce a dus la scăderea numărului tinerilor NEETs în următorii șase ani. Pornind de la date privind amploarea fenomenului NEETS la nivel european, numărul tinerilor NEETs care beneficiază de diferite măsuri și programele pentru NEETs finanțate prin Fondul Social European, lucrarea prezintă o privire de ansamblu asupra implementării Garanției pentru Tineret în România în perioada 2014−2020 și identifică principalele bariere și provocări care au împiedicat atingerea rezultatelor propuse. Dintrea cestea, menționăm lipsa de coordonare inter-instituțională, lipsa flexibilității în ceea ce privește înregistrarea tinerilor NEETs, nivelul redus al parteneriatelor între autorități publice, companii, ONG-uri, întârzieri în primirea finanțărilor, lipsa monitorizării centralizate în vederea determinării progresului și a măsurilor de îmbunătățire necesare. Cuvinte-cheie: NEETs; rural; tineri; ocupare; educație; Garanția pentru Tineret.

This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child’s struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study commenced at age 5;6, when the child, Alex, was in English kindergarten and diagnosed with a reading deficit. The initial diagnostic assessment uncovered his near-complete lack of phonological awareness, a key ingredient of emergent reading. An intervention using a multisensory approach to reading was used twice a week until the child was 7;9, at which point he was completing grade 2 in French immersion. Alex’s phonological processing abilities were assessed in all three languages immediately after remediation in order to determine: (i) whether his phonological processing skills improved in English, the language of the intervention; (ii) whether there were similar effects in the two non-remediation languages (Romanian and French); and, finally, (iii) whether children at-risk for reading difficulties are able to continue their education in an L3, such as French in an immersion context.

The Cognate Facilitation Hypothesis proposes that L2 learners register phonetic/orthographic similarities between L1 and L2 lexical items, ascribing L1 meanings to L2 counterparts. This study's purpose was to examine how cognate facilitation varies in degree between frequency and registers (academic versus general). Data were collected from L1 speakers of Romanian or Vietnamese via Schmitt's (2000) Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), at the 10,000 and Academic levels together with a newly designed VLT comprising extremely low-frequency words. The Romanian group outperformed the Vietnamese one on the cognate-rich Academic level only on account of cognates, but the effect size was moderate and due to dispersion. On the 10,000 level, the Romanian group outperformed the Vietnamese one and once again cognate facilitation was evident only in the Romanian group. However, this time the effect size was large. The same was true in our low-frequency section. Our findings underline the special advantage that cognates bestow on L2 learners in low-frequency bands. For testing, we recommend that performance on cognates and non-cognates be considered separately rather than holistically. The findings also highlight the probability that, in highly specialized disciplines, speakers' language backgrounds would impact the ease or difficulty of acquiring discipline-specific terminology.

The purpose of this article is to present and analyze the organizational profile and distinctive development pattern of a successful bottom-up social enterprise in Romania, namely, the Retirees’ Mu...

The aim of this article is to provide structured information on the profile, trends, and challenges of worker cooperatives in Romania. Its main purpose is to help refine the current explanatory framework for worker cooperatives in post-communist countries in the light of empirical evidence drawn from research conducted in Romania. Building on the literature and empirical research, it identifies and highlights some of the present issues and challenges facing Romanian worker cooperatives. Our analysis has shown that many of the elements that are considered key to the successful development of worker cooperatives on the basis of international good practice are missing in Romania. While some enabling elements are impossible to replicate, there are others that might be improved and could help worker cooperatives develop further: a shift away from policies that discriminate against cooperatives in terms of access to credits and the development of governmental programs that could open the public market more to these entities; a better organization of type II cooperatives and of the services they offer to their members; better public image and communication strategies, and greater investment to enhance the advocacy skills of these organizations.

To add to the growing body of literature on university–community engagement, this case study describes a 2-year partnership between a University and 11 nonprofit organizations that was formed as part of a grant funded Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. The article describes and analyzes a significant challenge that emerged between the parties involved in this particular relationship, respectively, the clear disconnect between the expectations of the partnership versus the reality. We argue that these differences were created by and often led to power imbalances. In addition, the formal structures of the grant acted as a sensemaking device for some of the nonprofits but were challenged by others. Negotiation over aspects to the program occurred continuously throughout the program. Despite the disconnect observed between expectations and realities, the expected capacity building outcomes were, for the most part, realized in the end. Specific examples of the expectations versus realities are analyzed and discussed.

For universities to create beneficial and sustainable engagement with the community requires attention to three dimensions: internal (politics, organizational dynamics, and culture interior to the university); external (relationships and dynamics of the community, management of power and resource imbalances, and development of a community identity); and personal (the psychology, competencies, and career issues of the faculty). Sustainable types of engagement are those that lead to valued capacity building for the community and positively address each dimension. We offer illustrations of the challenges and strategies for building successful university–community relationships.

Over the last years, the interest for the potential of social economy organisations to support and produce economic and social development has increased substantially. Against the background of this increased interest in the area, the interest for the research of this economic sector having specific characteristics and grouping various organisations under the same identity has also increased. Starting from recent research, the main purpose of this article is to describe the landscape of social economy actors and the key elements in the evolution of the social enterprises in Romania. In the first part, we present structured information about the status quo of social economy entities such as they appear by analyzing the data collected at national level by the National Institute of Statistics and by analyzing the juridical and institutional framework of each type of organization. The analysis mainly focuses on three types of organisations – cooperatives, NGOs with an economic activity and mutual organisations. In the second part, the authors identify and analyze several key policy fields enabling the development of social economy actors. The last part of the review is dedicated to a discussion concerning the development of a specific policy framework to support the social enterprises in Romania.

ResumeQu’est-ce qui suscite la satisfaction et la confiance des citoyens a l’egard des agences gouvernementales federales americaines ? Ces determinants sont-ils les memes pour toutes les agences, ou varient-ils ? Dans le present article, nous examinons les elements de l’efficacite percue par les citoyens en tant que determinants de la satisfaction et de la confiance a l’egard des agences federales au moyen d’un echantillon transversal de repondants portant sur plusieurs annees et plusieurs agences. Nous nous sommes interesses a six agences federales influentes en contact avec une vaste section transversale de citoyens americains pour observer les differences dans les determinants de la satisfaction et de la confiance, qui comprennent la perception de la qualite des services et des informations fournies, des facteurs demographiques, les attentes des citoyens et l’adoption du gouvernement electronique. Nous allons examiner ces differences, et plus particulierement les implications de nos observations pour la pratique de l’analyse comparative des performances. Etant donne que l’un des principaux objectifs d’une serie d’initiatives federales recentes consistait a mieux mesurer l’efficacite des bureaucrates dans le but d’ameliorer la qualite des services offerts aux citoyens sur la base d’analyses comparatives, ces observations font ressortir la complexite des initiatives du gouvernement pour atteindre cet objectif. Nous proposons, en guise de conclusion, des idees pour ameliorer les analyses comparatives a l’echelle des differentes agences.Remarques a l’intention des praticiensLa principale observation mentionnee dans cet article pour les praticiens de l’administration et de la gestion publiques concerne la difficulte liee a l’identification des partenaires de comparaison et, des lors, a la comparaison de l’efficacite de differentes agences dans le but d’epingler les bonnes pratiques necessaires pour ameliorer leur travail. Ces difficultes viennent de la nature variable de ce qui determine la satisfaction des citoyens a l’egard de differentes agences, aux missions et aux objectifs variables. Nous allons analyser une autre strategie permettant d’identifier les partenaires de comparaison sur la base des similarites dans les determinants de la satisfaction (ou de ce que nous appelons « la selection des partenaires de comparaison par les determinants »).

What drives citizen satisfaction and trust with US federal government agencies? Are these determinants constant across agencies, or do they differ? In this article, we examine elements of citizen perceived performance as determinants of satisfaction and trust in federal agencies using a multi-year, cross-sectional, multi-agency sample of respondents. Focusing on six high-incidence federal agencies experienced by a large cross-section of American citizens, we observe differences in the determinants of satisfaction and trust, which include perceptions of the quality of the services experienced and the information provided, demographic factors, citizen expectations, and e-government adoption. We discuss these differences, with a particular focus on the implications of these findings for the practice of performance benchmarking. Given that one central objective of a variety of recent federal initiatives has been to better measure bureaucratic performance with the goal of improving the quality of services delivered to citizens through benchmarking, these findings highlight the complexity of government efforts to realize this goal. In conclusion, suggestions for improving cross-agency benchmarking are provided. Points for practitioners The key finding in this article for public administration and management practitioners relates to the difficulties inherent in identifying benchmarking partners, and thus in effectively benchmarking performance across agencies with the goal of identifying best practices useful in improving performance. These difficulties arise from the differential nature of what determines citizen satisfaction across agencies with different missions, purposes and goals. An alternative strategy for identifying benchmarking partners based on similarities in satisfaction determinants — what we call ‘benchmark partner selection by determinants’ — is discussed.

Using the information provided by the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau, this research attempts to improve our understanding of the nature, scale, extent, and sources of federal funding to social service and educational nonprofit organizations. Using 2001 as the base year, this research is divided into two parts. The first part looks into federal funding provided to social service organizations by laying out the amounts of grants awarded by 57 different federal agencies and looking into its geographic and per capita distribution. The second part traces federal funding provided to universities and provides information on the institutions and states receiving the most grants and the federal agencies that provided them. The data’s utility, limitations, and potential uses to academicians and practitioners are also discussed.

The aim of this article is to provide structured information on the level of development and spatial distribution of collective organizations in Romania. Collective organizations are analyzed based on social economy theory. Building on the empirical research, the article identifies and highlights some regional disparities in the development of social economy entities. The comparative analysis regarding the level of development and spatial distribution of collective organisations in Romania draws on the secondary fiscal data analysis. The analysis of the regional profiles of Romanian social economy entities reveals that their socioeconomic power is bigger in the developed regions of the country.