			Home About us Contact

External Assistance (external + assistance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	40%

Selected Abstracts

Member Experience, Use of External Assistance and Evaluation of Business Ideas

JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2010
Maw-Der Foo
How do members' experience and external interactions shape evaluation of the team's business idea? With a sample of 74 teams that participated in a business idea competition, we showed that experience as defined by size, mean work experience, and assistance from individuals with business founding experience related positively to the teams' business idea evaluations. The benefits of external founders are more pronounced for smaller than for larger teams. Having a founder in the team did not relate to idea evaluation but interaction effects showed smaller sized teams had worse evaluations if they did not have a founder in the team. [source]

Privatization and the allure of franchising: a Zambian feasibility study,

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2003
John L. Fiedler
Abstract Efforts to privatize portions of the health sector have proven more difficult to implement than had been anticipated previously. One common bottleneck encountered has been the traditional organizational structure of the private sector, with its plethora of independent, single physician practices. The atomistic nature of the sector has rendered many privatization efforts difficult, slow and costly,in terms of both organizational development and administration. In many parts of Africa, in particular, the shortages of human and social capital, and the fragile nature of legal institutions, undermine the appeal of privatization. The private sector is left with inefficiencies, high prices and costs, and a reduced effective demand. The result is the simultaneous existence of excess capacity and unmet need. One potential method to improve the efficiency of the private sector, and thereby enhance the likelihood of successful privatization, is to transfer managerial technology,via franchising,from models that have proven successful elsewhere. This paper presents a feasibility analysis of franchizing the successful Bolivian PROSALUD system's management package to Zambia. The assessment, based on PROSALUD's financial model, demonstrates that technology transfer requires careful adaptation to local conditions and, in this instance, would still require significant external assistance. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

"We Have A Consensus": Explaining Political Support for Market Reforms in Latin America

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2002
Leslie Elliott Armijo
ABSTRACT By the 1990s, to the astonishment of many ob0servers, most Latin American countries had reformed their systems of national economic governance along market lines. Many analysts of this shift have assumed that it circumvented normal political processes, presuming that such reforms could not be popular. Explanations emphasizing economic crisis, external assistance, and politically insulated executives illustrate this approach. Through a qualitative investigation of the reform process in the region's four most industrialized countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, this study argues, to the contrary, that reforming governments found or created both elite and mass political support for their policies. [source]

Natural resources and ,gradual' reform in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 4 2003
Richard Auty
Abstract Among low-income transition reformers, natural resource rents are an important initial condition that helps explain choice of reform strategy. Resource-rich Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and resource-poor China and Vietnam all claim to pursue gradual reform, but their strategies differ. In China and Vietnam, low resource rents have nurtured developmental political conditions and encouraged efficient resource use, which initially promoted agriculture as a dynamic market sector, capable of absorbing labour from the lagging state sector. In contrast, the scale and ease of natural resource rent extraction in the Central Asian countries has consolidated authoritarian governments that postpone reform. Despite high energy rents, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan still extract agricultural rents in ways that repress farm incentives, perpetuate environmental degradation and liquidate irrigation assets. Uzbekistan uses its rents to subsidize a manufacturing sector, that is neither dynamic nor competitive. As its dynamic sector, Turkmenistan promotes natural gas exports that depend on volatile markets. Resource-driven development models suggest that reform is required in both countries to avert a growth collapse. Turkmenistan's large energy rent-stream may postpone a collapse for some years, but Uzbekistan's position is already precarious: it has run down its rural infrastructure and accumulated sizeable foreign debts and will require external assistance to recover from a growth collapse. Such assistance should be made conditional on accelerated economic and political reform. [source]

Strengthening democratic governance of the security sector in conflict-affected countries,

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2005
Nicole Ball
Security for people, communities and states is essential for sustainable development, democratisation and conflict mitigation. Politicised, badly managed or ineffective security bodies and justice systems often create instability and insecurity, largely due to the lack of effective democratic systems. Strengthening democratic security-sector governance after conflict presents enormous challenges, particularly: (1) developing and implementing a legal framework consistent with international law and democratic practice; (2) developing effective, well-functioning civil management and oversight bodies; (3) developing viable, accountable and affordable security forces; (4) ensuring that the institutional culture of the security forces supports the legal framework, international law, good democratic practice and civil management and oversight bodies. Addressing these challenges requires professional security forces, capable civil authorities, rule of law and regional approaches. Reform activities should be guided by local ownership, sensitivity to the politics of reform, local capacity, local context and a comprehensive sector-wide framework. Local stakeholders must make hard decisions about priorities on the availability of domestic resources available and the costs and benefits of accepting external assistance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]