Book
Advances in Social Science, Management and Human Behaviour
The world is changing. From shopping malls to transport terminals, aircraft to passenger ships, the infrastructure of society has to cope with ever more intense and complex flows of people. Today, more than ever, safety, efficiency and comfort are issues that must be addressed by all designers. The World Trade Centre disaster brought into tragic focus the need for well-designed evacuation systems. The new regulatory framework in the marine industry, acknowledges not only the importance of ensuring that the built environment is safe, but also the central role that evacuation simulation can play in achieving this.
An additional need is to design spaces for efficiency – ensuring that maximum throughput can be achieved during normal operations – and comfort – ensuring that the resulting flows offer little opportunity for needless queuing or excessive congestion. These complex demands challenge traditional prescriptive design guides and regulations. Designers and regulators are consequently turning to performance-based analysis and regulations facilitated by the new generation of people movement models.
Technical competencies and specific engineering skills alone are not sufficient in the modern labor market but employers expect engineers to actively promote the products they create. Engineers often perceive their skills differently than employers do. Insufficient university training in a number of fields including the development of social, management and communication skills leads to an objective and understandable gap between the perceived and the required levels of such competencies. Based on the results of a survey of 3158 engineers conducted in 2011 in the Russian Federation, the study shows a number of deficits in the perception of innovation skills and the respective demand for these.
Technical competencies and specific engineering skills alone are not sufficient in the modern labor market but employers expect engineers to actively promote the products they create. Engineers often perceive their skills differently than employers do. Insufficient university training in a number of fields including the development of social, management and communication skills leads to an objective and understandable gap between the perceived and the required levels of such competencies. Based on the results of a survey of 3158 engineers conducted in 2011 in the Russian Federation, the study shows a number of deficits in the perception of innovation skills and the respective demand for these.
Already enough long time the Russian economy operates in rather stable macroeconomic conditions provided by existence of oil and gas "pillow". Even world financial crisis of 2008- 2009 didn't lead to long and essential falling of the prices for oil that allowed Russia to continue the policy on stabilizing the main macroeconomic indicators. At the same time, proclaimed by Russian Government, course on modernization of economy (actually proclaimed at the beginning of the 2000s, but not just at recent 4 years) should cause definite changes in national innovative system during this period and in these favorable financial conditions. In this article we will consider how the technological profile of the Russian innovative system has been changed and what forms of innovative behavior of key economic agents were established.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.