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The scope of the participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) in providing public services as well as the models and formats of implementing State–CSO partnerships have varied both in sectorial terms and from a historical perspective. The discussion on State–CSO partnerships in service delivery has recently produced many studies, especially related to public management reform agenda, although many ideas based on public governance have appeared in recent years within the Brazilian context. This study features a historical analysis of the State–CSO partnerships in three different areas: AIDS, social assistance, and culture, and seeks to identify the main characteristics of each management model (bureaucratic, managerial, and new public governance), based on an analysis of sectorial norms produced by the federal government to regulate these relationships.

In the context of Dynamic Factor Models, we compare point and interval estimates of the underlying unobserved factors extracted using small- and big-data procedures. Our paper differs from previous works in the related literature in several ways. First, we focus on factor extraction rather than on prediction of a given variable in the system. Second, the comparisons are carried out by implementing the procedures considered to the same data. Third, we are interested not only on point estimates but also on confidence intervals for the factors. Based on a simulated system and the macroeconomic data set popularized by Stock and Watson (2012), we show that, for a given procedure, factor estimates based on different cross-sectional dimensions are highly correlated. On the other hand, given the cross-sectional dimension, the maximum likelihood Kalman filter and smoother factor estimates are highly correlated with those obtained using hybrid procedures. The PC estimates are somehow less correlated. Finally, the PC intervals based on asymptotic approximations are unrealistically tiny.

The energy efficiency policy is a priority component of the overall economic policy of different countries striving to ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of national economic development. The improvement of energy efficiency represents an important economic task for the post-Soviet countries, characterized by excessive energy intensity of the economy, and the solution of this task requires proper information and analytical support: a system for accounting and analyzing energy consumption indicators. The present research is aimed at developing the tools to support decision-making in the sphere of evaluation and estimation of performance of the State energy efficiency policy of territories and testing these tools on the example of Russian regions. The study has been carried out using the methods of statistics, economic, mathematical and econometric modeling, structural, dynamic and comparative analyses. The following tools have been proposed: the method for differentiated accounting of various factors’ influence on the dynamics of energy consumption in the regions and for estimating the index of technological efficiency of electricity consumption; the method for the empirical classification of territories by types of their energy and economic development. We’ve revealed the general trend and typological features in the dynamics of electricity consumption efficiency indicators in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and carried out the decomposition factor and comparative analysis of energy consumption patterns of the Volgograd region over 2005–2014 on the basis of the proposed tools.

Israel, characterized by various knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms, provides an interesting case study for examining sector-based differences and “small country” regional patterns. This chapter has a dual goal of exploring sector and regional differences of knowledge-intensive firms in Israel. The first goal is to depict similarities and differences between firms in three knowledge-intensive sectors: Life Sciences, information technology, and Cleantech. The second goal questions whether the geographical distribution of these firms across regions is associated with different levels of knowledge concentration and organizational homogeneity. Regional and sector-based differences were measured by firm-level network structures, funding patterns, and innovation proxies. One way analysis of variance tests were conducted for attaining these research goals. The main findings show that while most regions exhibit similar patterns of firm and network characteristics, many differences exist on the sector level that are associated with sector-specific attributes. These findings support the notion of a “small country inter-regional homogeneity effect.”

This chapter is focused in a methodological frame to study the practices of entrepreneurial agents and the startups in nontechnological sectors in the middle-income countries. The startup of ideas involves three phases that comprise the first life cycle of a possible company considering too sociocultural aspects as external factors implied in the creation, prototype, and entry to markets. In Latin America, the type of risks experienced by companies in their early stages of life and incubation are not known in a timely manner. The lack of information on entrepreneurship and its agents in countries such as Mexico also inhibits visualization of heterogeneity of contexts to business development, and how some regions are more propensity to boost startups than others, in different sectorial and branches of knowledge. Mexico like rest countries in Latin America has a high percentage of SMEs focused in sectors that are innovative but not are participating in the last technological waves. For this reason, it is necessary to know how these agents prepare, manage, and apply entrepreneurship in accordance with institutional, technological, and sociocultural dispositions to structure their experiences and make more vigorous the territorial entrepreneurial. Small and medium businesses are building new paths taking advantage of territorial and cultural opportunities. Applying the framework proposed in the last part of this chapter is presented a case of study of an entrepreneur oriented to craft brewer production in Tijuana, Mexico.

Active legal regulations, judicial practice, and law-enforcement experience have been used as the research core.

The works by A. Atsupov and S. Baklanovskii, devoted to classification tasks, as a way of discovering system features of multiple conflicts, have served for the research’s theoretical foundation.

The basis of such classification, including the classification by the subject content, has been studied using the works by R. Kraakman, P. Davies, H. Hansmann, G. Hertig, K. Hopt, H. Kanda, and E. Rjck.

Inter- and outer-group conflicts as well as the dependence on the social structure have been investigated using the studies of L. Coser. The interrelation between the social structure, a conflict’s institutionalization, and defining the extents of its admissibility have been analyzed with the help of the works by B. Collins, N. Grachev, D. Rant, A. Inshakova, K. Frohnapfel, V. Letyayev, etc.

When defining a self-sufficient group of corporate conflicts by the primary content criteria, the research authors have relied on the works by V. Dolinskaya and V. Slesarev, devoted to the subject of the private law theory.

V. Yadov’s scientific research has helped state corporate conflicts’ goals in terms of their classification. Here we imply the research, pointing out that such conflicts will either directly or indirectly be connected with the property sphere.

The actions of corporate conflicts’ parties, which predetermine their classification by the correlation with lawful behavior, have been examined owing to the works of L. Coser.

The issue of corporate conflicts and economic relations’ criminalization by embezzling, seizure, and rearranging the property, which includes bankruptcy proceedings, has been studied by means of Yu. Borisov, V. Dolinskaya, and N. Kavelina’s works.

The works by A. Inshakova and V. Slesareva, devoted to the sources of law, have contributed to corporate conflicts’ classification study.

The interconnection between the completion stage of the corporate conflicts dynamics and their settlement has been investigated in the framework of justifying the classification, basing on the completion method, taking into account the scientific results, reflected in the works by A. Antsupov, A. Danelyan, V. Laptev, and A. Shipilov.

In the course of study, corporate conflicts’ classification by their consequences, which can either be destructive and constructive, the research authors have used the studies by R. Freeman, devoted to the stakeholders’ theory, their interests’ balance, and the ways of forming the business’s economic environment.

The normative basis of the research are the provisions of sectoral codified acts by: the Arbitration Procedural Code of the Russian Federation, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, as well as special federal laws – The Federal Law “On Joint Stock Companies” as of December 26, 1995, No. 208.

The empirical basis of this research relies on the of the Russian Federation’s Constitutional Court’s Resolution as of July 18, 2003, No.14-P “On the case of verifying the constitutionality of the provisions of Article 35 of the Federal Law “On Joint-Stock Companies,” Articles 61 and 69 of the Russian Federation Civil Code, Article 31 of the Russian Federation Tax Code, and Article 14 of the Russian Federation Arbitration Procedure Code; the Russian Federation Constitutional Court Provisions as of March 15, 2003, No.3-P “On the Case of Constitutionality Review of Article 278 Paragraph 2 and Article 279 of the Russian Federation Labour Code and para 2 of Paragraph 4 of the Article 69 of the “On Joint-Stock Companies” Federal Law.

The following general scientific and specific scientific methods have been applied in this chapter: observation, complex and multi-sectoral analysis, synthesis, analogy, comparison, explanation, justification, induction, deduction, reduction, elementarism, system approach, comparative law method, specific sociological studies, logical, statistic, and so on.

European performing arts companies, intrinsically fragile, have been severely hit by the economic crisis. Within the global search for new economic models in the sector, a growing number of initiatives have been taken in the form of establishing collective and participatory firms. Their forms vary from simple interorganization resource pooling to proper registration of a cooperative. Our research aims to understand the motivations of project initiators for collectively organizing their business. We test the influence of instrumental versus ideologically driven motives as well as the influence of the socio-economic context on the decisions of performing arts entrepreneurs (artists, producers, or directors) to establish participatory firms. We relate these results to the success or failure of collective firms and to the degree of cooperation. We use a qualitative method based on semi-directive interviews conducted in 21 performing arts collective organizations, over two years and in six European countries. Interviews were integrally transcripted and processed using qualitative data analysis software (QSR NVivo 10) in order to realize axial coding. We found that while the context, instrumental logic, and ideologically driven motives influence the decision to establish collective organizations in performing arts, it is the ideological dimensions that are predominant and constitute a necessary condition for the success of a participatory organization. We observe that the more collective organizations are ideologically motivated, the more they are likely to be successful in the long run (success being assimilated to economic sustainability). We also find that the greater the importance of the ideological motive, the more integrated the cooperation. Eventually, these results provide significant information regarding the form of collective firms in performing arts. We observe the emergence of new forms of cooperatives that comprise cooperatives of production and projects or companies, establishing participatory and democratic governance, and pooling resources and financial risk while preserving the artistic freedom of artists. We view these emerging types of cooperatives as a promising avenue both for the sector itself and for the development of the cooperative movement beyond its traditional sectors. The findings suggest that public incentives, as they are currently set up, may miss their objective of promoting shared practices in the arts or even be counterproductive; thus, it would be to their advantage to be modified in light of the above results. We also defend the interest of trans-border cooperative organizations inspired by the cooperatives of production and their governance models and organizations. Despite a number of studies highlighting cooperation in the cultural sector, research on cooperatives in this sector remains embryonic. This paper contributes to this literature. We argue that applied research in this sector can be of contributive value to the literature on cooperatives and participatory firms.

We argue that aspects of the Luhmannian strand of systems theory could be mobilized in a crypto-normative way for an immanent critique of certain trends in contemporary social development, especially the growing economic determination of different spheres of life and the formation of sectorial industries – such as healthcare, education, crime control, etc. – with the consequent erosion of the autonomy of these spheres and the progressive exhaustion of social conditions for the exercise of freedom and the experience of difference.

A decisive step in this approach to systems theory lies in the indication of certain “elective affinities” between Luhmann and Adorno, reinforcing the plausibility of an internal connection between these different theoretical conceptions – not their mere instrumental appropriation and external juxtaposition. From this point of view, we argue that aspects of Luhmann's conceptual construction – notably the way the system-environment relationship is thought – hold a strong family resemblance with the Adornian mode of conceiving the subject–object relationship in the speculative key of negative dialectics.

Conceived as a critical model that modulates society's real abstractions toward difference and systemic autonomy, and especially as a critical model that underlines possibilities of reciprocal mediation between system and environment, systems theory seems to emphatically put itself in tension with what, at least in part, could be seen as its other: neoliberal governmentality, the generalization of the commodity form and the instrumentalization of the individual by unilateral systemic imperatives in global capitalism.