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The purpose of this paper is to revise the Kano evaluation table and separating indifference attributes in order to develop satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes.

The indifference requirements have been separated and reclassified, and after revising Kano satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes based on the new evaluation table, the developed Kano model has been examined in the city of Isfahan regarding attributes of candidates in the presidential election of 2013.

According to the new classification, the indifference attributes can be separated into seven types. The results of the case study also show that among 20 priorities of the presidential candidates, payment of subsidy, offering loan and financial facilities are must-be attributes; protecting investment and national production, export incentives and increasing national unity are attractive attributes; and the remaining are one-dimensional attributes.

The case study implies that the findings are dependent on the cultural and social context of the respondents. On the other hand, the findings of Kano model analysis are limited to short-time periods.

This research is typically unique in separating indifference attributes and in revising the satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes of the Kano model. Practically, the application of the Kano model in the presidential election is also a new subject.

To resolve the wide and growing disparity of incomes within the USA and between highly and poorly developed countries, self‐empowerment of the poor – while devoutly to be encouraged and wished for – will not suffice without continued and enhanced global commitments of assistance from private, public domestic and international governments and institutions in the tasks of educating and training of the poor for better jobs, improved health practices and viable democracies. The effort will require the transfer of billions of dollars to development from the estimated $1.5 trillion currently spent on military arms worldwide and more equitable land distribution without political and social upheaval. Human nature must be pressed to eschew selfish materialism, indifference and political opportunism, for the common good of current and future generations.

Focuses on recent environmental decline and market failure to account adequately for environmental values. Looks beyond economics and market failure, and highlights the role of politics and government failure. To remedy poor political performance in respect of the environment, advances the primacy of constitutional reform, entailing the prescription of minimum environmental safeguards. Recommends greater use of referenda as well as the electoral system of proportional representation. In respect of the international and global dimensions of environmental problems, stresses the need for a supranational constitution or charter to restrain single sovereign nations from blocking the united welfare of countries.

This chapter reviews the book titled Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India by Akhil Gupta and also critically examines the central premise of the book relating the nature of the Indian state to the poverty of its citizens. Gupta’s primary contention is that poverty in India is largely a result of massive bureaucratic failures of the state that severely limit opportunities for the poor and increase their vulnerability to structural violence.

I examine this contention in the context of seven decades of poverty amelioration policies in India with particular attention to the causes and consequences of the policy failures, and the role of the state in exacerbating the conditions of the poor. I conclude by examining the theoretical implications of the book for studies on state violence and normalization of structural violence.

The central finding of the chapter supports Gupta’s assertion that the bureaucratized practices of the state limit the poor’s ability to access and receive goods. Drawing on Gupta’s proposed theory, the chapter argues that the economic development plans of the Indian state that are designed to mitigate poverty are instead frequently invoked to normalize it in the public imagination thereby legitimizing structural violence.

This chapter examines the ethnographic data collected by the author of the book reviewed here.

In addition to offering a theoretically informed and oriented review of research on the Indian state’s role in normalization of poverty, this chapter also identifies some of the limitations of Gupta’s work, and identifies possible research directions for future research on poverty and structural violence in India.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a bidimensional tool to measure overall service satisfaction: the evaluative space grid (GRID scale). The GRID scale provides a common measure for both positivity and negativity through 25 grid cells. The authors propose to use the GRID scale as an integrated measure of both satisfaction and dissatisfaction to capture mixed reactions or ambivalence.

Within a cross-sectional between-subjects survey design, this study compares overall satisfaction with bank services as measured on the GRID scale versus a traditional semantic differential (SD) scale.

The results show that the GRID scale performs as well as the SD scale with respect to different criteria, such as reliability and discriminant, convergent, nomological and predictive validity. However, it allows to measure separately indifference and ambivalence.

Such a distinction assists decision-makers with recommendations on different strategies not only to create customer loyalty based on satisfaction but also to encourage them to think how to decrease the levels of dissatisfaction and ambivalence.

The GRID scale would address survey needs of every business suffering from average performances. This tool provides them better in-depth overall satisfaction information, especially regarding the “middle-ground” customers.

In line with contemporary trends in the developing world, countries in South Asia are under pressure from both political and civil societies and the international donor community to recast their administrative systems. New tools and practices in public governance have been advanced to remedy structural deficiencies, procedural flaws, managerial incompetence, and weak accountability in the public sector. International organizations emphasize the need to improve the relationship between governance and socio-economic outcome; and accountability, transparency, probity, predictability, and participation are acknowledged as essential ingredients for effectively managing development. This article focuses on two South Asian countries (Pakistan and Bangladesh) and examines the various measures adopted by their governments to reshape governance and public management in recent times.

While LIS scholarship emphasizes the need to be multi-literate by equipping people with critical information literacy, digital literacy, and media literacy skills to combat the phenomenon of fake news in the contemporary information society, the concept of political information literacy is still in its infancy. This chapter addresses this gap by developing an understanding of political information literacy and challenges the premise that information professionals and information organizations should remain neutral in the face of phenomena like censorship through noise and disinformation. In this endeavor, it reviews contemporary information environments vis-à-vis the growth of fake news and misinformation, and current information literacy approaches utilized by information organizations. Thereafter, it explores several cognitive barriers, such as the role of confirmation bias, information avoidance, information groupishness, and information overload, which affects people’s ability to process information. Finally, it encourages information professionals to hold regular information sessions on politically charged topics, tackle the cognitive factors increasing misinformation, and cultivate multidisciplinary approaches to confront fake news.

The Eastern and Western worlds are diametrically opposed to each other not only politically and militarily but also economically and socially. In the socialist lands the communist one‐party system is dominant; in the West it is political pluralism, in Comecon the planned economy prevails, and in the Common Market and the USA it is the market economy, of course, although not in the form it took in the nineteenth century. From a social point of view the Eastern bloc guarantees full employment at a lower standard of living, in the market economy the higher standard of living is accompanied by structural, cyclical unemployment. Each system claims to be superior to the other.