Les étudiants et la fonction publique: une etude des perceptions,des valeurs professionnelles et de I'attrait cornparatif

Sommaire. Cette communication donne les résultats dune enquête entreprise en 1973 par ses auteurs à l'occasion de laquelle ils distribuèrent un questionnaire comprenant quarante-trois questions à 323 étudiants de deux universités et trois cégeps de la province de Québec. Les opinions exprimées par ces répon-dants indiquent qu'une trés grande majorité des étudiants préfèrent orienter leur future carrière vers le secteur privé plutôt que vers le secteur public. 11s conçoi-vent le travail dans le secteur privé comme étant créateur, captivant et comme demandant de l'initiative. Par opposition ils ont tendance à considérer que le travail dans la fonction public requiert peu d'initiatives et est routinier. Nos conclusions confirment des études antérieures suivant lesquelles les anté cédants socio-économiques des personnes questionnées déterminent leurs perceptions et leurs attitudes vis-à-vis de I'emploi. Nous avons trouvé que les étudiants des couches socio-économiques inférieures avaient une opinion plus favorable de l'emploi dans le secteur public que leurs collégues plus favorisés. Les femmes éftaient plus favorable au service public que les hommes. Les étudiants des collèges avaient une nieilleure opinion de la fonction publique que leurs anînéks des universit.és. La fonction publique fédérale a un peu plus de prestige que la fonction publique québécoise bien que les étudiants ne soient pas -plus tentés de traveler pour le gouvernement fédéral que pour le gouvernement provincial. Abstract. This paper reports the results of a survey done by the authors in 1973. A close-ended questionnaire of forty-three items was administered to 323 students of two universities and three cégeps in the province of Québec. The attitudes expressed by our sample indicate that an overwhelming majority of students prefer the private sector as opposed to the public service, for future employment. The nature of work in the private sector is perceived to be challenging, captivating, and requiring initiative. Work in the public sector is generally looked upon as routine and requiring little initiative. Our findings support the conclusions of previous studies that the socioeconomic background of the respondents determines the nature of their perceptions and attitudes towards employment. We found that the students of lower socioeconomic status were more favorably inclined towards public service than those with higher status. Women were more attracted to public service than men. The cégep students had a better image of the public service than did their seniors in the universities. The federal Public Service projects a slightly better image than the Fonction Publiqué Québécoise. However, the students are not more attracted to work for the federal government than the provincial government.     

The political nature of brand governance: a discourse analysis approach to a regional brand building process

The present paper takes the empirical phenomenon of place branding as an appropriate point of view to understand the communicative process of brand governance in the realm of the public. The paper explores the modalities through which a brand governance emerges as a negotiated and contested mechanism reproduced through language. By drawing on the analytical approach of interpretative repertoires, the analysis demonstrates that a process of governance can be seen as a ‘text’ in a constant state of negotiation in which the level of involvement in the brand building process can be discursively contested, with language illustrating the ways in which different actors express their positionalities (hegemonic or subalternate). The analysis suggests that this can be seen as a power political process in which politics of space and time are expressed linguistically by the different actors involved in brand governance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Diffusion of Drone Warfare? Industrial,Organizational, and Infrastructural Constraints

Many scholars and policymakers are concerned that the emergence of drone warfare—a first step toward the robotics age—will promote instability and conflict at the international level. This view depends on the widely shared assumption among International Relations scholars that military hardware spreads easily, especially in the age of globalization and real-time communications. In this article, we question this consensus. Drawing from the literature in management, we advance a new theory of diffusion of military innovations and test its two underlying causal mechanisms. First, we argue that designing, developing, and manufacturing advanced weapon systems require laboratories, and testing and production facilities, as well as know-how and experience that cannot be easily borrowed from other fields. Second, we argue that the adoption of military innovations requires both organizational and infrastructural support. We test our two claims on three types of combat-effective drones: loitering attack munitions (LAMs), intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones (ISR), and unmanned combat autonomous vehicles (UCAVs). We find that even wealthy, advanced, and militarily capable countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have struggled to produce or adopt such platforms. We conclude that concerns about the diffusion of drone warfare appear significantly exaggerated, as do claims that globalization redistributes military power at the global level. More generally, our analysis sheds light on how the interaction between platform and adoption challenges affects the rate and speed of diffusion of different military innovations.     

Is Coercion a Ground of Distributive Justice?

In his rich and stimulating book, Blake argues (among other things) that comprehensive coercion triggers egalitarian obligations of distributive justice. I argue that (1) coercion is not a necessary condition for egalitarian justice to apply; (2) Blake’s use of a moralised conception of coercion is a mistake; (3) coercion is a redundant member of any set of sufficient conditions that might explain why distributive justice applies; (4) Blake’s emphasis on providing conditions for the exercise of autonomy might support a much more cosmopolitan theory of distributive justice.     

An Exploratory Study of the Mental Toughness Psychological Skills Profile Psychometrics,and the Mediating Effect of Social Support Sources on Mental Toughness and Suicidal Ideation Among Military Police

Research suggests that social support and mental toughness (i.e., the ability to effectively cope with stress despite adversity and/or failure) may be associated with decreased suicide risk, although methods for measuring mental toughness remain largely undeveloped. The relationship remains largely unknown. In response to this research gap, the psychometric properties of the Mental Toughness Psychological Skills Profile (MTPSP; Asken 2005), and its association with suicide ideation, were evaluated in a sample of active duty U.S. Air Force Security Forces personnel, a subpopulation especially vulnerable to suicide risk. 273 participants from two Air Force bases completed self-report scales including the MTPSP. Results indicated that the MTPSP is comprised of five subscales: Negative Mindset, Positive Mindset, Confidence, Achievement, and Health Behaviors. All five MTPSP factors were independently correlated with general distress, somatic anxiety, positive affect, presence of meaning in life, search for meaning in life, positive self-bias, social support sources, and suicide ideation. The Confidence factor was the only factor that had a significant association with suicide ideation when all five factors were considered simultaneously (β?=??0.18, p?=?.016), but was fully mediated by social support (β?=??0.17, p?=?.033). Self-confidence may be associated with reduced suicide risk because those individuals tend to report higher social support.     

Performance-based funding and university research productivity: the moderating effect of university legitimacy

The introduction of competitive funding mechanisms in higher education is found to generally increase research productivity. However, the diversity within higher education systems may lead universities to behave in substantially different ways in response to the adoption of competitive funding criteria. In particular, we argue that the legitimacy of universities, defined as their level of recognition based on the adherence to socially accepted norms and expectations, is crucial in shaping their reaction. This paper investigates the change in research productivity experienced by Italian universities following the introduction of the first Performance-based Research Funding System (PRFS) in 2003, focusing on the moderating effect of university legitimacy. Using a sample of 75 universities observed during the period 1999–2011, we find that the introduction of PRFS leads to an increase in research productivity, and this increase is significantly more pronounced among more legitimate universities.     

Divergent Perspectives: Exploring a Multiple Informant Approach to Cyberbullying Victimization and Perpetration

The present research adopts a multiple informant approach to identify victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying. Similar approaches have been successfully applied in the field of traditional bullying, and they are highly relevant for studying cyberbullying as well. Three informants can provide key perspectives on cyberbullying incidents: victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. To collect data on these actors, all eighth-grade students in 11 secondary schools were invited to participate in a survey. In total 1458 respondents completed peer-nomination questions on cyberbullying involvement. The results indicated that the prevalence of cyberbullying varied depending on the type of informants that was consulted. In addition, limited overlap was observed between the reports of different informants, resulting in different profiles of victims and perpetrators, depending on the informants that identified them. In sum, different informants tended to have divergent views on cyberbullying, which has important implications. It warrants accurate reporting and critical reflection on the sources of data in cyberbullying research. Moreover, it demonstrates the need to study a more diverse set of informants to advance the understanding of cyberbullying and to enhance prevention efforts.     

Innovative regulations,incomplete contracts and ownership structure in the water utilities

Using an incomplete contract framework, we analyse new forms of regulation and private participation in public services. This paper explains contractual efficiency in the absence of financially guaranteed investments in public private partnerships. The example of a number of African countries underlines how a series of national, normative law reforms can give rise to innovations in approaches to regulation. This new hybrid form of regulation, inspired by a French regulation approach combining commission regulation and franchise bidding, could be more effective than previous approaches to regulation, in the sense of being more stable and more closely aligned with stakeholder expectations. This approach to regulation would appear to be more efficient economically, while integrating the objectives of solidarity tariffs and social water access connections. Based on these analyses, our results show (1) the impact on the robustness of new lease contracts on financing constraints, and (2) the advantages of Asset Owner Companies that reconcile explicit commitments and special purposes. We demonstrate that this achieves optimum efficiency by encouraging parties to determine jointly the optimal level of costs and investment. In addition, the mechanism fosters discussion about the possibility of institutionalizing Asset Owner Companies by predetermining the distribution of risk in lease contracts.