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Cross-national Differences (cross-national + difference)
Selected AbstractsThe European perspective of psychiatric reformACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA, Issue 2001T. Becker Objective:,To provide a framework of mental health care reform across Europe. Method:,On the basis of summary quantitative indices and expert ratings of broad aspects of mental health care structure, the process and outcome of psychiatric reform common trends and differences are outlined. Results:,There has been a broad trend away from an institutional model of care with the mental hospital as the dominant institution, and community- and general hospital-based mental health services of varying comprehensiveness are in place in most countries. The social and broad community aspects of psychiatric reform have generally been somewhat less successful than changes in service set-up. Assessment of reform outcomes proves particularly difficult. Conclusion:,Psychiatric reform processes have achieved some of their aims, and there are broadly similar trends. Regional variation is substantial and may be as important as cross-national differences. Mental health care reform is ongoing across the European region. [source] Association between tobacco control policies and smoking behaviour among adolescents in 29 European countriesADDICTION, Issue 11 2009Anne Hublet ABSTRACT Aims To investigate the associations between well-known, cost-effective tobacco control policies at country level and smoking prevalence among 15-year-old adolescents. Design Multi-level modelling based on the 2005,06 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Study, a cross-national study at individual level, and with country-level variables from the Tobacco Control Scale and published country-level databases. Setting Twenty-nine European countries. Participants A total of 25 599 boys and 26 509 girls. Main outcome measures Self-reported regular smoking defined as at least weekly smoking, including daily smoking (dichotomous). Findings Interaction effects between gender and smoking policies were identified, therefore boys and girls were analysed separately. Large cross-national differences in smoking prevalence were documented. Intraclass correlations (ICC) of 0.038 (boys) and 0.035 (girls) were found. In the final multi-level model for boys, besides the significance of the individual variables such as family affluence, country-level affluence and the legality of vending machines were related significantly to regular smoking [b(country affluence) = ,0.010; b(partial restriction vending machines) = ,0.366, P < 0.05]. Price policy was of borderline significance [b(price policy) = ,0.026, P = 0.050]. All relationships were in the expected direction. The model fit is not as good for girls; only the legality of vending machines had a borderline significance in the final model [b(total ban vending machines) = ,0.372, P = 0.06]. Conclusions For boys, some of the currently recommended tobacco control policies may help to reduce smoking prevalence. However, the model is less suitable for girls, indicating gender differences in the potential efficacy of smoking policies. Future research should address this issue. [source] Preparing for the ,real' market: national patterns of institutional learning and company behaviour in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 5 2008Anita Engels Abstract European companies have reacted in different ways to the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Phase I. While some companies engaged in an active trading behaviour focused on additional revenues, others adopted a strategy orientated to mere compliance with the scheme and aimed for balanced accounts only. This article provides the outcomes of a survey on company behaviour under the EU ETS in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark from 2005 to 2006, in which cross-national differences in trading behaviour are linked to national patterns of policy implementation and the political economies in which companies operate. Thus, specific country patterns of institutional preparation and institutional learning for the ,real' CO2 allowance market in Phase II of the EU ETS (2008,2012) are sketched. Whereas Phase I is distinguished by a net over-allocation of allowances, Phase II is expected to entail some level of scarcity of allowances. We argue that companies are prepared differently to meet the challenges of the future EU ETS. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Technological revolution meets policy and the market: Explaining cross-national differences in agricultural biotechnology regulationEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2003Thomas Bernauer The European Union (EU) has imposed severe restrictions on agricultural biotechnology, particularly in terms of approval and labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food. The United States has adopted a far more permissive approval policy and has not required labeling. This article explains these differences in terms of the collective action capacity of consumer and producer interests, and the institutional environment in which regulation has taken place. We find that the regulatory outcome in the EU can be traced back to nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) increased collective action capacity due to public outrage, an institutional environment favorable to anti-biotechnology NGO interests (multilevel regulatory policy making) and a disintegration of the producer coalition due to NGO campaigns and differences in industrial structure. Biotechnology politics in the United States has been dominated by a strong and cohesive coalition of pro-biotechnology upstream and downstream producers and farmers. Because of lower public outrage and a less favorable institutional environment (centralized regulatory policy making), anti-biotechnology NGOs in the United States have been largely excluded from agricultural biotechnology policy making. [source] Extreme right-wing voting in Western EuropeEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002Marcel Lubbers In this study we explain extreme right-wing voting behaviour in the countries of the European Union and Norway from a micro and macro perspective. Using a multidisciplinary multilevel approach, we take into account individual-level social background characteristics and public opinion alongside country characteristics and characteristics of extreme right-wing parties themselves. By making use of large-scale survey data (N = 49,801) together with country-level statistics and expert survey data, we are able to explain extreme right-wing voting behaviour from this multilevel perspective. Our results show that cross-national differences in support of extreme right-wing parties are particularly due to differences in public opinion on immigration and democracy, the number of non-Western residents in a country and, above all, to party characteristics of the extreme right-wing parties themselves. [source] ,Beyond Left and Right': The New Partisan Politics of WelfareGOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2000Fiona Ross The ,new politics of the welfare state,' the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries' capacities to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and institutions play a prominent role in accounting for cross-national differences in leaders' abilities to diffuse responsibility for divisive initiatives. One important omission from the ,new politics' literature, however, is a discussion of partisan politics. ,Old' conceptualizations of the political right and left are implicitly taken as constants despite radical changes in the governing agenda of many leftist parties over the last decade. Responding to this oversight, Castles (1998) has recently probed the role of parties with respect to aggregate government expenditures, only to concludethat parties do not matter under ,conditions of constraint.' This article contends that parties are relevant to the ,new politics' and that, under specified institutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive. In some notable cases the left has had more effect inbruising the welfare state than the right. One explanation for these cross-cutting tendencies is that parties not only provide a principal source of political agency, they also serve as strategies, thereby conditioning opportunities for political leadership. By extension, they need to be situatedwithin the ,new politics' constellation of blame-avoidance instruments. [source] Whole-system approaches to health and social care partnerships for the frail elderly: an exploration of North American models and lessonsHEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 5 2006Dennis L. Kodner PhD Abstract Irrespective of cross-national differences in long-term care, countries confront broadly similar challenges, including fragmented services, disjointed care, less-than-optimal quality, system inefficiencies and difficult-to-control costs. Integrated or whole-system strategies are becoming increasingly important to address these shortcomings through the seamless provision of health and social care. North America is an especially fertile proving ground for structurally oriented whole-system models. This article summarises the structure, features and outcomes of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for Elderly People (PACE) programme in the United States, and the Système de soins Intégrés pour Personnes Âgées (SIPA) and the Programme of Research to Integrate Services for the Maintenance of Autonomy (PRISMA) in Canada. The review finds a somewhat positive pattern of results in terms of service access, utilisation, costs, care provision, quality, health status and client/carer satisfaction. It concludes with the identification of common characteristics which are thought to be associated with the successful impact of these partnership initiatives, as well as a call for further research to understand the relationships, if any, between whole-system models, services and outcomes in integrated care for elderly people. [source] Divergence or convergence: a cross-national comparison of personnel selection practicesHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2002Y. Paul Huo Striking a balance between globalization and localization in human resource management (HRM) requires a better understanding of the cross-national differences in terms of both the status quo and the socially desirable HRM practices. With this purpose in mind, we examined the hiring practices in ten different countries or regions using the Best International Human Resource Management Practices Survey (BIHRMPS). Our empirical findings revealed more divergence than convergence in current recruiting practices, but they also suggest that organizations around the world are indeed in the process of converging on ways of recruitment even though the current selection criteria may still be driven by each country's prevalent cultural values. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Auditors' Perceptions of Time Budget Pressure, Premature Sign Offs and Under-Reporting of Chargeable Time: Evidence from a Developing CountryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 3 2006Teerooven Soobaroyen This study examines the existence and effects of auditors' time budget pressure, premature sign-offs (PSO) and under-reporting of chargeable time (URT) in the context of a developing country, namely Mauritius. Several antecedent variables of budget pressure were also considered. Based on a mailed questionnaire survey, the perceived extent of time budget pressure (as measured by budget tightness) was found to be significantly lower than in other developed countries (United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and United States). Significant cross-national differences were also observed for the levels of PSO and URT. Although budget tightness was significantly related to PSO, this was not the case for URT. This has led to the suggestion that URT may be less dependent on levels of budget tightness and may have become an ,institutionalised' practice within audit firms. Finally, none of the hypothesised antecedent variables were significantly related to budget tightness. [source] A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter TurnoutAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009Mijeong Baek This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages,gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws,explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout. [source] Customer-Driven Product Development Through Quality Function Deployment in the U.S. and JapanTHE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2000John J. Cristiano Quality Function Deployment is a tool for bringing the voice of the customer into the product development process from conceptual design through to manufacturing. It begins with a matrix that links customer desires to product engineering requirements, along with competitive benchmarking information, and further matrices can be used to ultimately link this to design of the manufacturing system. Unlike other methods originally developed in the U.S. and transferred to Japan, the QFD methodology was born out of Total Quality Control (TQC) activities in Japan during the 1960s and has been transferred to companies in the U.S. This article reports on the results of a 1995 survey of more than 400 companies in the U.S. and Japan using QFD. The research questions investigated in this study were developed both inductively from QFD case studies in the U.S. and Japan and deductively from the literature. The reported results are in part counterintuitive. The U.S. companies reported a higher degree of usage, management support, cross-functional involvement, use of QFD driven data sources, and perceived benefits from using QFD. For the most part, the main uses of QFD in the U.S. were restricted to the first matrix ("House of Quality") that links customer requirements to product engineering requirements and rarely was this carried forward to later matrices. U.S. companies were more apt to use newly collected customer data sources (e.g., focus groups) and methods for analyzing customer requirements. Japanese companies reported using existing product data (e.g., warranty) and a broader set of matrices to a greater extent. The use of analytical techniques in conjunction with QFD (e.g., simulation, design of experiments, regression, mathematical target setting, and analytic hierarchy process) was not wide spread in either country. U.S. companies were more likely to report benefits of QFD in improving cross-functional integration and better decision-making processes compared to Japanese companies. Possible reasons for these cross-national differences as well as their implications are discussed. [source] Neither Hybrid nor Unique: A Reinterpretation of the East Asian Welfare RegimeASIAN SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY REVIEW, Issue 3 2008Kyung-Zoon Hong Some researchers have been convinced that welfare developments in East Asia, especially Japan and Korea, can be fitted into the existing three worlds of welfare model, while others have insisted that existing welfare regime theories are not able to explain East Asian welfare regimes. This article assumes that we need to go beyond both of these traditional explanations. In the welfare state research fields, welfare regime approaches tend to focus on specific contextual conditions and cross-national differences. As a result, they tend to overemphasize history at the expense of theory. This article tries to combine deductive causal modeling with an institutional,historical context by identifying the contingent rent political game model and deducing important characteristics of East Asian welfare regime from this model. This model opens out the possibility of change in East Asian welfare regimes following the processes of democratization and globalization. Details of this are given in the conclusion. [source] Organizing Flexibility: The Flexible Firm in a New CenturyBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2001Arne L. Kalleberg Research on organizational flexibility should examine the linkages between numerical and functional flexibility. Unfortunately, studies of each type of flexibility generally neglect the other. Moreover, the most popular conception of the interplay between these two forms of flexibility , the core,periphery model , is incomplete in important ways. I discuss evidence and limitations of the core,periphery model of the flexible firm, and outline some promising attempts to conceptualize how organizations may combine functional and numerical flexibility. I focus mainly on the USA and the UK, though I also review evidence and issues involved in cross-national differences in organizational flexibility. [source] | ||||||||||||||||