Social Capital Across European Countries: Individual and Aggregate Determinants of Group Membership

Social capital refers to norms and networks of reciprocity, trust, and cooperation that facilitate coordinated action for a mutual benefit. Theoretical and empirical studies have documented the positive contribution of social capital in social welfare and development. This study empirically explores the determinants of social capital, in the form of group membership, across European countries. Data is derived from the European Community Household Panel, which covers a large sample of individuals from a set of European countries. Binary logistic regression models are applied to regress an index of individuals' group membership on a set of individual characteristics (income, education, gender, age, marital status, employment), as well as aggregate characteristics of countries (GDP per capita, income inequality, social trust, trust in public institutions, corruption, unemployment, and violation of political and civil rights). Results provide evidence of the impact of both individual and aggregate factors on group membership. These factors constitute a possible means to rebuilding patterns of social capital, especially in Southern European countries, where special‐interest groups and patron‐client relations prevail over generalized norms and networks of reciprocity, trust, and cooperation that promote wider social welfare and development objectives.     

Volunteerism,compassion and religiosity as drivers of donations practices

• The topic of donations is one of high relevance and has been widely covered in contemporary marketing literature. It is a topic of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners alike, particularly due to its implicit links to fundraising activities and research. The reality of what makes an individual donor ultimately part with his money and give it away to a nonprofit organization is a hot contemporary topic. This study looks into the role of religiosity as a predictor of donations practices. Also volunteerism and compassion, two acts of pro‐social behaviour are analysed as predictors of donations practices. Using data collected from a survey of 612 charity donors in Portugal, the results show unequivocally that religiosity does influence donations practices, and so being a predictor of donations practices. Moreover, pro‐social behaviour is a predictor of donations practices when in the case of volunteerism, but not in the form of compassion.
• The findings are particularly useful for nonprofit organizations that want to attract and retain individual charitable donors and may also help to increase donation regularity, to obtain higher amounts, and donations both to religious and to secular organizations. Finally, it can be stated that the understanding of religiosity sheds light on knowledge about donations practices, and that this study also makes an important contribution to academia, as it is the first study conducted in Portugal that assesses the drivers of donations practices.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business incomes in rural Nicaragua: the role of household resources,location, experience and trust

This paper analyses the determinants of business income for rural households in Nicaragua. A sample of 1030 households was studied in order to assess the importance of material and behavioural factors that influence income from business activity. The households are involved in manufacturing, trade, services or have a mixture of businesses. They generally have a low income and asset value. Households supplement their income from wages and agricultural activities. To estimate non-farm business income per employed person we analyse the impact of resources, location, entrepreneurial experience and trust. Our results show that household resources and entrepreneurial experience are significant determinants for business income in all sectors. Trust is also important, particularly generalized trust. The contribution of other forms of trust, such as institutional trust, depends on the sector in which households participate.     

The antecedents of charity trust and its influence on charity supportive behavior

This study develops and tests a model that evaluates eight antecedents of charity trust and its influence on volunteering and donating. Secondary data from a national Australian survey (N = 1,377) was collected and data was analyzed using partial least square path analysis. Key findings include identifying individual and organizational antecedents of charity trust and its influence on charity supportive behavior. Results show that organizational transparency is a very strong antecedent, followed by the individual awareness level of an individual towards the organization. We also examined the effect of gender as a moderating influence but did not find a significant effect. We conclude with managerial implications and areas for future research.     

Doing well by doing right: a fundraiser's guide to ethical decision‐making

• The level of trust a prospective donor has in a charity will, in part, determine whether the individual chooses to support the charity as well as the amount of that support. A key factor involved in trust is an organization's ethical standards. Donors prefer to make donations to organizations that maintain the highest principles. If an organization can consistently make the best possible, most ethical decisions, it will be recognized as being an ethical institution, which in turn will enhance the trust it engenders, and, therefore, the support it can attract. A number of ethical decision‐making models exist. Adopting a decision‐making model will ensure that a methodical approach is used and that the incidents of rash decision‐making will be reduced. Using an ethical decision‐making model will help individuals arrive consistently at the best solutions to ethical dilemmas, defend those decisions, enhance public trust, secure more donors, and raise more money. The value of sound decision‐making and effective ethical decision‐making models are reviewed in this paper.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relative deprivation,reference groups and the assessment of standard of living

This paper proposes two new indices of relative deprivation, derived from an extension of the concept of generalized Gini to the measurement of distributional change. Population- and income-weighted relative deprivation indices are then defined and, using panel data from the Consortium of Household Panels for European Socio-Economic Research (CHER), we check which of the various ways of defining individual deprivation best fits the answers given by individuals on the degree of their satisfaction with income. We find that the deprivation indices proposed are consistently and negatively correlated with income satisfaction as reported by respondents, that income weighted measures fit better than population weighted measures and that this fit improves with countries that experienced deep institutional changes such as the transitional economies of Eastern Europe.     

Trust in the employer: the role of high-involvement work practices and procedural justice in European organizations

Despite the central role of trust in the organizational sciences, we know little about what makes people trust the organizations they work for. This paper examines the antecedents of employees' trust in their organizations drawing on survey data from over 600 European professional workers and managers. The results revealed direct as well as indirect relationships of both human resource (HR) practices and procedural justice with trust. The relationships of both HR practices and procedural justice with trust were partially mediated by perceptions of organizational trustworthiness (in terms of perceived ability and trustworthy intentions of the organization). Justice and HR practices were also found to interact such that justice forms a stronger predictor of trust in organizations when HR practices are less developed. In addition, employees' dispositional propensity to trust explained significant variance in employee trust in their organization, even when it was controlled in our analysis. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Finding a Bowling Partner: The Role of Stakeholders in Activating Civil Society in Germany,Spain and the United Kingdom

An 'activism index', combining data on membership of civil associations and societies and the level of activism suggests that, notwithstanding cultural differences, civil activism in European countries could be a great deal higher than its current level. If higher civic participation is to be achieved, each stakeholder group within local governance can play an 'activation' role in relation to citizens, both as individuals and in relation to the voluntary organizations which represent citizens in their collective activities. In practice, different stakeholder groups play this role in widely differing ways in the contexts of Germany, Spain and the UK. In the future, we can expect the lead role in activating civil society in each country to be taken by different stakeholders, depending on the trust currently placed in them by other stakeholders in the community and by the resources which they command.     

论慈善私益捐赠

我国慈善私益捐赠包括私益募捐和个人直捐两种。但是,我国《公益事业捐赠法》尚未规定私益捐赠,导致私益捐赠参与人的权利、义务、责任,私益捐赠财产权的类型及其归属缺乏立法保障。建议尽快出台《慈善法》,采取"大慈善"立法体制,将私益捐赠、公益捐赠、赞助、资助和志愿者服务等利他行为统一纳入其调整范围。同时,要加强对慈善私益捐赠资金使用、慈善项目运作的监管,保障慈善参与人权利,确立慈善参与人的信义义务和责任体系。     

Social capital and entrepreneurial process

The paper examines the relationship between social capital and entrepreneurial engagement of individuals in 35 nations from Europe and Asia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research that attempts to investigate the influence of three-dimensional social capital concept – trust, networks and norms – on three stages of entrepreneurial process – preference, trial and success – using such large and comprehensive cross-sectional micro data. In general, we find that all three dimensions of social capital matter in the entrepreneurship context, albeit differently. They become beneficial in different ways and at different stages of entrepreneurial involvement. For example, among trust variables, institutional trust in general, and trust in business-oriented and business-supporting actors in particular, exert significant positive effect on entrepreneurial process. Individuals with formal membership in professional associations are more likely to perceive entrepreneurial opportunities, while some close or strong-tie networks might prevent them from progressing in the entrepreneurship ladder. Finally, individual level civic norms appear to be negatively associated with early-stage entrepreneurship, while the success in becoming an entrepreneur is not found to be bound by people’s civic norms.     

Multi‐level Environmentalism and the European Union: The Case of Trans‐European Transport Networks

In the European Union, trans‐European transport networks (TENs) are a vital element in the constitution of one European space in order to enable the free movement of people and goods throughout the Union. Their construction, however, often causes environmental degradation. Opposition to EU politics is mostly voiced at the level of individual nation‐states. As the case of TENs reveals, however, protest against European policy projects with environmental side effects can take the form of ‘multi‐level environmentalism’, linking lobbying and ‘conscientization’ in Brussels with direct action at the national and local levels. Civil society theory, social movement theory and governance theory help ensure a theoretically informed answer to the question of how the resistance to TENs is organized and framed. By questioning dominant problem definitions and solution strategies, environmental movements and movement organizations, both in Brussels and in the individual nation‐states, point to the possibility of looking at social and political reality from another, non‐hegemonic point of view. In this way, they contribute to challenging the often biased technocratic, growth‐oriented character of the European Union.     

Which institutional investors matter for firm survival and performance?

Using data that spans three decades, we assess the diverse roles of institutional investors in impacting survival and performance of chronically underperforming firms and contrast the results for consistently overperforming firms. We find material differences in investor roles and investment returns between these samples. Differentiating among institutional types, controlling for prior performance and attrition bias provides insights unattainable by examining aggregated holdings. For underperformers, results are negative for activist pension funds and long-term institutions, positive for activist hedge funds and short-term institutions, and mixed for institutional blockholders.     

Liberalising the German model: institutional change,organisational restructuring and workplace effects

Institutional change at supranational, European Union level affects national and firm level institutions in various ways. This article traces effects of liberalisation measures in the airport industry enacted in two airport firms in Germany. The study, based on qualitative empirical research, found that EU liberalisation facilitated company creation of subsidiaries (subsidiarisation) and elevated shareholder interest in corporate governance. These factors affected institutional practices and cultural norms within the German industrial context that in turn influenced significant alterations in employment and workplace relations. Considerable disruption of the German social partnership model of corporate governance and industrial relations was observed. However, in addition to patterns of convergence towards neoliberal practices and outcomes frequently observed in Anglo‐Saxon systems, the study found some elements of effective retention of cultural institutional resources of the German model. Both ‘path departure’ and social embeddedness appear to coexist.     

Trust generated by aid agency web page design

• Two experiments examined how material presented on an aid agency web homepage influenced perceptions of trust in the organisation. Experiment 1 manipulated whether the agency's homepage showed photographs of a crisis-need, photographs of the crisis-need and the agency's response or photographs of the agency's response. Experiment 2 held the crisis-need-response information constant, but manipulated information on the proportion of donated funds which the agency used to cover administration versus those used to deliver services. In both experiments the participants' dispositional (personality) level of trust and altruism was significantly related to rated trust in the charity. Analysis of covariance was used to control for dispositional trust and altruism, and found that the manipulations in both experiments produced significant changes in rated agency trust. The results are discussed in relation to designing aid agency web pages, and to encouraging individuals to make on-line donations.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of flexible work practices on employee attitudes: evidence from a large-scale panel study in Germany

We explore the effects of flexible work practices (FWPs) on the work attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intention) and non-work attitudes (leisure satisfaction and perceived health) of employees based on representative large-scale German panel data. Because unobserved individual characteristics can easily act as confounders, we estimate both pooled ordinary least squares models and individual fixed-effects models. Controlling for time-constant individual heterogeneity, we find that the three considered FWPs – flexitime, sabbaticals, and working from home – significantly increase job satisfaction and that sabbaticals and working from home (but not flexitime) significantly decrease turnover intention. In addition, sabbaticals but not flexitime or working from home significantly increase leisure satisfaction. The effects of FWPs on health are mostly weak and statistically insignificant. Models that do not control for such individual heterogeneity either underestimate the positive effects of FWPs or find detrimental effects. Our findings indicate that organizations in Germany can increase job satisfaction and decrease employee turnover intention by offering FWPs.     

Online donation behavior in nonprofit organizations: The role of congruent processing styles

With the advent of technology, donors are increasingly donating via online channels. This shift deems it necessary for nonprofit organizations to better understand the online donor behavior. As such, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we investigate if nonprofit organizations are perceived differently in terms of their cognitive and affective natures. Then, we examine how different consumer processing styles, i.e. cognitive and affective, interact with consumer perceptions of nonprofit cognitive/affective orientations in influencing their donation intentions. Our results indicate that consumers with a high need for cognition are more willing to donate to predominantly cognitive nonprofit organizations, while those with high need for emotion are more willing to donate to predominantly affective nonprofit organizations. Based on these results, we suggest that nonprofit organizations can garner more donations if they request funds from donors whose processing styles are congruent with the organization. Additional recommendations for future research are provided.     

Privacy and Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: A Model of Managerial Cognition and Relational Trust Development

This paper explores the impact of experience at the current organization, prior experience at other organizations, and individual propensity to trust on workplace electronic monitoring and trust formation between employees and management. Taking a cognitive approach, these relationships are investigated through the lens of cognitive categorization theory. The paper discusses trustworthiness as the category label of a group of traits and behaviors that subsequently leads to lower levels of turnover, increased organizational commitment, and lower levels of electronic monitoring. Organizational and individual level outcomes are explored with respect to electronic monitoring procedures in organizations. The discussion focuses on implications for practice and future research as well as several ethical and managerial implications, and provides recommendations regarding implementation of electronic monitoring systems for managers.     

European Universities as Complete Organizations? Understanding Identity,Hierarchy and Rationality in Public Organizations

Abstract

This article investigates the form of European universities to determine the extent to which they resemble the characteristics of complete organizations and whether the forms are associated with modernization policy pressure, national institutional frames and organizational characteristics. An original data set of twenty-six universities from eight countries was used. Specialist universities have a stronger identity, whereas the level of hierarchy and rationality is clearly associated with the intensity of modernization policies. At the same time, evidence suggests limitations for universities to become complete, as mechanisms allowing the development of some dimensions seemingly constrain the capability to develop others.     

Construction,dimension reduction and uncertainty analysis of an index of trust in public institutions

Research on social capital in general and trust in particular is markedly increased. The worldwide problem of low and decreasing levels of trust in many public institutions is greatly debated. This is a very important problem because the trust citizens have in public institutions may foster democratic practices and facilitate better provision of public services. Moreover, trust is a central element of social order and survival of any democratic regime: it affects institutional performance, wellbeing, economic development and crime reduction. Public institutions should pay very much attention to citizens’ trust in them and in particular when introducing reforms aiming at improving their functioning. Trust is difficult to be assessed due to its quite elusive meaning. An index of general trust in public institutions is proposed within the framework of composite indicators. It is shown how to reduce the dimension of the index by finding out the most and least important aspects of it. Uncertainty analysis is used to test whether dimension reduction results are robust or not with respect to plausible changes in variable values and variable transformations. An application to data from the European Social Survey is discussed. The results show the very important role of the trust in politicians and political parties in explaining the level of general trust in public institutions.     

Ownership structure,expectations, and short sales on the Nasdaq

We estimate expected short interest for Nasdaq stocks. Extending prior work, our research is among the first to investigate the impact of ownership structure on short-selling activity. We find that short interest is negatively related to institutional ownership and positively related to inside ownership; stocks with greater liquidity and smaller relative spreads are more heavily shorted. We also develop a measure of the unanticipated level of short selling; relative to the reported amount of short interest, this unexpected level of short selling seems at first to better represent the opinions of informed investors engaging in costly short-selling activities. However, the power of the unanticipated level of short-selling factor is displaced when we make allowances for traditional market, firm-size, and momentum variables.