Empirical Generalizations Research Articles

Features of the Zemstvo Taxation in the Great Russian and Foreign Provinces of Russia in the Second Half of the 19th сentury

Introduction. The introduction of the bodies of zemstvo self-government in the Russian Empire led to the need to form the system of zemstvo budgets with their own income items, often falling on the same objects of taxation as state taxes. Most of the income came from taxation of land (state, private and peasant). In addition, the items of income were receipts from the taxation of real estate, trade and industrial enterprises, trade documents, etc. The zemstvo extended not only to Great Russian provinces but also to foreign ones, in so doing the functions of zemstvo had their own characteristics, since it was necessary to take into account ethnic and religious characteristics in provinces with a predominance of the non-Russian population. The purpose of the article is to clarify the comparison of the main sources of income of the zemstvo budget in ethnically different regions of the Russian Empire. Materials and Methods. The solution of research problems was provided by a complex of complementary theoretical (analysis of scientific literature, comparative analysis, comparison, generalization, systematization) and empirical (study and generalization of published and archival sources, hermeneutic) methods. Results. A comparative analysis of the principles and objects of taxation between the provinces of these groups (Kursk and Ufa) showed the similarity of approaches and priority of land taxation as the simplest and covering most of the payers. Discussion and Conclusions. The principles of forming zemstvo budgets throughout the Empire were unchanged, focused on the property approach of taxation, which was rather archaic due to the introduction of income taxation in the advanced countries, as the fairer one, while in Russia the main burden of taxation still fell on the shoulders of the peasantry, and led to the deficit of the zemstvo treasury. This brings the problem of forming zemstvo budgets to a further level of research into social, political and economic history.

Development of robotic circular reproduction in ensuring sustainable economic growth

To confront global challenges in the field of environmental security, humanity needs reproduction chains of a new type that correspond to the models of the green economy and the principles of sustainable development. The most relevant concept that meets these conditions is a circular economy. A new round of industrial development provides additional opportunities to introduce principles of circular reproduction. The proliferation of robots and the introduction of artificial intelligence systems will facilitate the implementation of circular innovations. The purpose of the paper is a study of current trends in the transformation of global value chains based on the symbiosis of virtual and physical production systems which form new operating models and contribute to sustainable economic growth. The research methodology includes general scientific methods of cognition, systemic and situational approaches, methods of structural and functional analysis, empirical generalization and comparison, as well as tabular and graphical methods of visualization of statistical and calculated data. The main results of the study are to gain new knowledge about the role of interaction between digital and physical spaces in ensuring the achievement of goals of sustainable development and the implementation of principles of circular reproduction. Studying robotic circular reproduction will increase the relevance of the concepts of a green economy and circular reproduction, which will promote effective implementation of the above concepts in the Russian Federation.

Акторно-сетевая теория в исследовании нации и национализма: методологический аспект

Methodological provisions of B. Latour's actor-network theory: methodically grounded doubt in the conceptual reality and reality of the social, the need to distinguish between the social in social relations and the social in associations, the methodological requirement of "symmetry in the interpretation of nature and society" and the related new understanding of the social actor, are essentially close to the influential constructivist (R. Brubaker) approach in understanding the nation and the national. The article analyzes the relationship between "categorical" and "network" concepts in the study of the nature of "national", methodological problems of "compatibility" of actor-network and constructivist approaches to building the concept of "nation"; the conclusion is drawn that the permissibility of "methodological syncretism" is limited to the area of practical-oriented "empirical generalizations" that guide the political practice of nation-building and the regulation of national conflicts.

Closed-loop economic model formation in the forest industry

The article is devoted to solving the problems of constructing a closed-loop model in the forest industry. The transition to a circular economy requires introduction of innovations in production based on a long life cycle of goods and resources, restoration, reconstruction, the possibility of joint consumption and processing. An urgent problem is the organization of utilization and processing of waste from the forest industry, since this leads to the conservation of primary wood material and significantly reduces the amount of deforestation. The aim of the study is to assess the level of implementation of closed cycles in the forest industry to conserve natural resources, to ensure the protection of people and the environment in production and management. The key role in substantiating the results of the study was provided by the scientific methodology for studying socio-economic phenomena and processes, methods of systemic, criteria-based, institutional analysis, empirical generalization, and a normative approach. To simulate the development of cyclic development, economic opportunities are identified that allow involving additional resources in the secondary circulation, reducing the volume of burial and burning of wood waste, and reducing harmful environmental consequences. The circular forestry model requires government action to overcome institutional, economic and political barriers.

Institutionalism in Accounting: a requirement of the times or a mechanism of social pressure?

The purpose of the study is to establish and identify the reasons for the formation of the institutional foundations of accounting, substantiate their advantages and disadvantages for Ukraine, as well as build an effective organizational and institutional architectonics of its development. The institutional influence on the accounting system in Ukraine and its reasons are established on the basis of an empirical generalization of the positions of various authors, as well as a critical analysis of the existing norms and practices. The method of regression analysis was used to select the basic branch of the national economy, on the example of which the study was conducted. It is substantiated that objectively this influence is associated with social and international requirements, however, for agricultural enterprises, the prerequisite for the introduction of institutional frameworks is the desire of these entities for international cooperation. The above arguments are based on the analysis of statistical data, the results of a questionnaire survey of 105 heads of Ukrainian agricultural companies. An empirical generalization was carried out on the basis of a critical assessment of the normative and legal framework for the development of accounting and accounting for the results of the survey, which made it possible to assess the genesis of the introduction of institutional accounting frameworks in the agricultural sector of Ukraine and substantiate the objective need for such a process. It has been proved that the discussion on the objectivity or compulsory development of the institutional foundations of accounting has real ground. For this purpose, for comparison, the results of a questionnaire survey of managers and accounting specialists in the public sector and indicators of the dynamics of the availability of funds in the single treasury account as of January 1 in recent years are presented, which made it possible to conclude that there are no objective reasons for the institutionalization of accounting and its compulsory nature in this sector.It follows from the study that the institutionalization of accounting is both an objective requirement of the time and a mechanism of public pressure at the same time. Its assignment to one category or another is determined by the existing needs, the branch of the national economy and the results that can be obtained.

Elastic s+C and Left-moving Yod in the Evolution from Latin to French

Abstract Elastic s+C is the idea that s+C clusters are heterosyllabic by default in all languages, and that some repair will occur in case, pending on language-specific circumstances, a heterosyllabic parse is illegal (preceding long vowel, preceding coda, beginning of the word). The repair at hand is the branching of the s on the following empty nucleus. This generalization is derived from the behaviour of left-moving yod in the diachronic evolution from Latin to French. The floating yod (here coming from palatalization k+i,e > j+ʦ) anchors as a coda if the preceding syllable is open (placēre > plaisir), but is lost in case it is closed (cancellāre > chanceler), except when the syllable-final C is s (cresc(e)re > croistre (mod. croître)). We know independently that intervocalic s+C clusters are regular coda clusters: they block diphthongization (testa > teste (mod. tête)). Hence s is elastic: s+C is a regular coda cluster unless there is a demand for s to vacate its coda position. It is shown that among all syllabic identities for s+C that are entertained in the literature only one is compatible with this pattern: in CsC clusters, i.e. in absence of a preceding vowel, s branches on the following empty nucleus, i.e. the one that separates it from the following C. This is confirmed by an independent pattern: the middle consonant of CCC clusters is lost unless it is s (CsC), but is regularly dropped in sCC clusters. Here as well s+C is a regular coda-onset cluster when preceded by a vowel (sCC), but s elastically becomes a non-coda when preceded by a consonant (CsC). This empirical generalization appears to be an unprecedented finding: s in s+C is a coda when preceded by a vowel, but a (branching) non-coda when not preceded by a vowel. It is shown that it may solve a good deal of the notoriously mysterious behaviour of s+C clusters as such, i.e. in other languages and in synchronic analysis. Word-initially s+C is not followed by a vowel and therefore a non-coda, thus accounting for the typical cross-linguistic pattern whereby s+C is exceptional word-initially, but not word-internally (where it is followed by a vowel). Also, the branching analysis solves the mysterious fact that s only shows exceptional behaviour when it is followed by a consonant: there is no empty nucleus it could branch on when followed by a vowel.

Dual-Task Performance: Theoretical Analysis and an Event-Coding Account

Theorizing on dual- and multi-tasking has not made much progress since the early insight of Telford (1931) and Welford (1952) that response selection may represent a bottleneck in human information processing. A closer look reveals that the questions being asked in dual-task research are not particularly interesting or realistic, and the answers being given lack mechanistic detail. In fact, present theorizing can be considered mere empirical generalization, which has led to merely labeling processing bottlenecks rather than describing how they operate and how they actually produce the bottleneck. As a template for how to overcome this theoretical gap, the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) is applied to dual-task performance. It is shown that TEC, which has not been developed to account for, and has not yet been applied to dual-task performance and its deficits, can nevertheless easily account for the key findings guiding resource and stage theories, while making the underlying mechanisms explicit and transparent. It is thus suggested to consider multitasking costs a mere byproduct of the typical functioning of the cognitive system that needs no dedicated niche theorizing. Rather, what is needed is more mechanistic detail and a more integrative account that can deal with findings related to both resource theory and stage theory.

Understanding the evolution of the forms of carrying out human resource development

ABSTRACT The forms of human resource development (HRD) have mostly been defined through categorizing similarities among the roles, goals, methods, and theoretical foundations of empirically observed HRD practices. However, this kind of empirical generalization fails to explain how these forms have emerged and how new forms of carrying out HRD develop. This article focuses on these questions. Its purpose is to show how the emergence of new forms of carrying out HRD can be explained on the basis of an activity-theoretical, evolutionary approach. This approach views changes in HRD as processes of ‘retooling’ that take place as an interplay between the emerging developmental challenges in production and the available HRD theories and methods. The conceptual tools provided will thus also help researchers and practitioners assess the requirements and possibilities for developing new forms of realizing HRD that match the complex challenges posed by the current economy. A case analysis is used to demonstrate the approach and its superiority over the classification of the types of HRD practices for understanding the variation in the forms of carrying out HRD and their development.

Scientific thinking styles: The different ways of thinking in psychoanalytic case studies

ABSTRACT Historian and philosopher John Forrester argues that psychoanalysis is characterized by a style of scientific thinking and reasoning that he coins “thinking in cases”. Since Freud, case studies have been used as a medium for sharing, demonstrating, discovering, expanding, consolidating and “thinking” psychoanalytic knowledge. In this paper, we seek to clarify and enrich Forrester’s idea of thinking in cases. We first attend to issues around the lack of definition for thinking styles, and we propose a more detailed description for what might constitute a scientific thinking style. Second, we outline how thinking in cases differs from other kinds of thinking styles. In doing so, we argue that some of the criticisms directed at case studies are the result of a confusion between statistical and experimental thinking styles and thinking in cases. Finally, we propose that there is more than one way of thinking in cases. We distinguish between cases as exemplars for analytic generalization, cases as exemplars for analogical learning, and cases in the service of empirical generalization. By making these implicit thinking styles explicit, we seek to demonstrate the importance of case studies at all levels of psychoanalysis: clinical, research, training and teaching.

Quantifier scope and information structure in Greek

In this paper, we investigate the availability of inverse scope interpretation in doubly-quantified sentences in Greek. A rather coarse and, as we show, inaccurate empirical generalization is that languages with relatively free word order do not have inverse scope readings, since movement is always spelled-out. In Greek there is little experimental work testing inverse scope with DP-quantifiers and there is considerable disagreement among linguists regarding its availability. Our goal is two-fold: i) to contribute towards a better understanding of the empirical facts and ii) to explore the relation between inverse scope availability and the syntax and semantics of different configurations. As we show, inverse scope is generally acceptable by Greek speakers, with the exception of environments with Clitic Left Dislocation. Our data add up to recent studies in other languages which suggest that the critical factor for the (non)-availability of inverse scope is the properties of each individual construction and not a dichotomy between different types of languages.

Teachers' Perceptions of Religious Literacy in the Development of Civic Participation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of teachers of religion courses who use the study of religion to prepare students for the pluralistic society awaiting them. The primary questions addressed in this study focused on perceptions of religious studies teachers regarding their definition of religious literacy, the content of a religiously literate person, the civic consequences of an education that ignores religious literacy, and how religious literacy might inculcate civic values. The participants of this study included five purposefully selected religious studies teachers from five different school types (i.e., Christian, Islamic, Jewish, nonsectarian, public). These participants were purposefully selected because their cases were information-rich' and illuminative; that is, they offered useful manifestations of the phenomenon of interest; sampling, then, is aimed at insight about the phenomenon, not empirical generalizations from a sample to a population. A qualitative case study method was employed to investigate four research questions: (1) How do religious studies teachers define religious literacy? (2) Why is religious literacy a necessary element in a students' secondary education? (3) What are the civic consequences of a society without religious literacy? and (4) How can religious studies inculcate civic values?

Designing to Debias: Measuring and Reducing Public Managers’ Anchoring Bias

AbstractPublic managers’ decisions are affected by cognitive biases. For instance, employees’ previous year's performance ratings influence new ratings irrespective of actual performance. Nevertheless, experimental knowledge of public managers’ cognitive biases is limited, and debiasing techniques have rarely been studied. Using a survey experiment on 1,221 public managers and employees in the United Kingdom, this research (1) replicates two experiments on anchoring to establish empirical generalization across institutional contexts and (2) tests a consider‐the‐opposite debiasing technique. The results indicate that anchoring bias replicates in a different institutional context, although effect sizes differ. Furthermore, a low‐cost, low‐intensity consider‐the‐opposite technique mitigates anchoring bias in this survey experiment. An exploratory subgroup analysis indicates that the effect of the intervention depends on context. The next step is to test this strategy in real‐world settings.

National Culture and Advertising Sensitivity to Business Cycles: A Reexamination

The author reexamines the cyclical sensitivity of national advertising expenditure with a longitudinal data set of 59 countries over 35 years. In contrast to prior studies, the author examines the effects of the entire set of Hofstede culture dimensions to study cross-country variation in the advertising sensitivity and investigates how the emergence and growth of online advertising has transformed the cyclical sensitivity of advertising spending. National culture substantially affects advertising’s cyclical sensitivity, but in different ways than hypothesized previously. Consistent with the literature, advertising sensitivity is lower in long-term-oriented and high-uncertainty-avoidant countries and is unrelated to individualism. However, power distance is unassociated with cyclical sensitivity, and masculinity and indulgence—the two dimensions ignored in previous research—reduce cyclical sensitivity. Moreover, there is evidence that culture operates differently for the cyclical sensitivity of online advertising. Advertising expenditure is cyclically much more sensitive than documented previously and has grown more so over time since the advent of online advertising. This study provides initial evidence that online spending is more elastic than traditional advertising and that traditional spending has become more procyclical. The author advances timely and refined empirical generalizations on the cyclical sensitivity of advertising expenditure.

Small field islands systems include a large proportion of the regional orthopteran species pool in arable landscapes

The tendency of species richness to increase with patch area is one of the most robust empirical generalisations in ecology and its logic drives conservation actions. Indeed, preference is often given to conserving large, highly connected areas over small isolated patches. However, small habitats have been shown to be important biodiversity refuges in managed landscapes. Field islands are small remnants of natural habitat patches surrounded by cropland. While their island-like position in a species-poor crop field makes them potentially strategic habitats for biodiversity conservation, they have not received much attention in ecological studies. We investigated how local (i.e. field island area and habitat diversity) and landscape factors (i.e. proportion of arable land) affected orthopteran species richness, community mean dispersal and habitat specificity in 71 field islands in central Sweden. We found that despite low numbers of species per field island, due to their intrinsic small size, taken together, a system of small field island increased species richness and included a large proportion of the regional species pool in the arable landscape in central Sweden. Furthermore, we found that patch area and habitat diversity determined orthopteran community composition in field islands. More diverse and, to a lesser extent, larger field islands benefit sedentary and habitat specialist species. This study shows that more care should be taken to incorporate and potentially also prioritize small and permanent habitat patches in the management of agricultural landscapes. The protection of field islands with diverse habitats may be important for the maintenance of sedentary and specialist species.

The institutionalization of accounting: the impact of national standards on the development of economies

The purpose of the study is to establish the essence and identification of the components of institutional accounting theory and substantiate the role and impact of these components on the national economy through the example of standardization. The author's general scheme of the institutional paradigm of institutional accounting and the approach to the development of his theory was built in the study based on a theoretical, empirical generalization, taking into account positive foreign experience, national scientific views and traditions. The examples of changes in GDP after the introduction of accounting standards (which are a structural component of institutional accounting theory) in the 6 largest countries of the world are given as an argument for the positive impact of institutional pragmatics on the national economy using the graphical method. It is proved that the dynamics that can be used to identify the impact of accounting standardization on a country's economy may be the dynamics of its GDP. The expediency of taking into account the institutional environment of Ukraine in the issues of formalization of the Institute of Accounting, as well as its political, environmental and social situation is substantiated. The conducted research confirms the influence of national peculiarities on the results of activation of institutional accounting principles and the presence of individual characteristics of values taken as arguments of indicators. It is substantiated that it is important to find effective indicators to illustrate the impact of each institutional component of accounting on the national economy.

Opportunity/Threat Perception and Inertia in Response to Discontinuous Change: Replicating and Extending Gilbert (2005)

We use extensive longitudinal data from companies in the book retailing and telecommunication industries to replicate and extend Gilbert’s qualitative study on the influence of opportunity/threat perceptions on resource rigidity and routine rigidity in incumbents’ responses to discontinuous change. After discovering important anomalies in an empirical generalization study, we engage in a generalization and extension study to unbundle opportunity/threat perception into the dimensions of gain/loss framing and perceived control and induce a revised theory of the effect of such appraisals on incumbent inertia. Specifically, we induce that (a) imminent loss framing relaxes resource rigidity only when decision makers perceive a moderate level of control; (b) resource rigidity also relaxes in response to gain framing, at least when decision makers perceive the discontinuity as a particularly relevant strategic issue and strongly sense that they can control it; (c) loss framing and low perceived control can amplify routine rigidity by exacerbating resource rigidity; and (d) structural separation creates perceptions of gain and control by fostering the emergence of a local organizational identity in the unit implementing the discontinuous change. We resolve long-debated contradictions in studies on managerial and organizational cognition and discontinuous change, particularly between studies invoking threat rigidity theory and studies invoking prospect theory. We also demonstrate the usefulness of replicating qualitative research that is based on multiple case comparison.

Copula functions in a cross-Sinitic perspective

AbstractThis paper investigates the distinct functions associated with the copula morpheme and their distribution across Sinitic languages. Based on fieldwork on five Sinitic languages, an empirical generalization will be presented regarding the scope and variation of copular multifunctionality. Specifically, language-specific variation is witnessed in topic and conditional marking as well as verum marking. Conversely, it is found that Sinitic languages converge on employing the copula in constructions expressing phrasal and clausal level focus. The paper further explores whether these copular constructions should receive a uniform syntax, or should be conceived of as having a set of underlaid heterogeneous structures.

Human Resources Policy of the Enterprise in the Conditions of Digitalization of the Economy: Change of Content and Prospects of Formation

Sustainable development of the enterprise in the conditions of continuous development of economy and social changes is based on the effective personnel policy as the personnel is the most valuable resource of the organization. The purpose of the work was to identify problems and determine the prospects of formation of personnel policy of the enterprise in the conditions of digitalization of the economy. The research is based on the use of general research methods, comparative and structural-logical analysis, empirical generalization, tabular and graphical methods of presentation of statistical and computational data. The work defines the elements of personnel policy and reveals the main functional directions of personnel policy development in the conditions of digitalization of the economy. The stages of formation of personnel policy at the enterprise are considered, as well as the directions of transformation of personnel policy in the conditions of digitalization of economy are defined. It is determined that the use of electronic document flow is a direction of increasing the efficiency of the functioning of personnel policy of the enterprise. It is concluded that the use of personnel electronic document management system is based on the use of telecommunication channels. The advantages of electronic information exchange application are revealed, and also stimulating and restraining factors of its development are identified. The attention is focused on the directions of development of personnel electronic turnover in the conditions of digital transformation. It is argued that the use of information technologies creates new tools in the work with the personnel of the enterprise, ensuring the growth of the efficiency of enterprises. As a result, it was concluded that the transformation of personnel policy of the enterprise is a necessary process in the conditions of digitalization. Information technologies create opportunities for using new tools of work with the personnel of the enterprise. Creation of info-communication platform, including technological, legal, financial components, knowledge and technology management system, will ensure the growth of efficiency of enterprises’ activity

Branching onsets 2.0

AbstractThis paper proposes a novel representation of branching onsets within the framework of Government Phonology 2. They are argued to be complex onset phrases, where the second member is directly embedded within the first and controls its head. The system predicts that for fricatives, the ability to become the first member of a branching onset depends on their place of articulation. In particular, [s]-like fricatives (S) are predicted to lack this ability, thereby explaining Kaye’s (1992) empirical generalization that SC clusters are never branching onsets.

What Can You Do With a Single Case? How to Think About Ethnographic Case Selection Like a Historical Sociologist

Most social scientists agree that case studies are useful for “theory building,” but ethnographic methods papers often look to survey research for case selection strategies. This is due to a common but untenable distinction between theoretical and empirical generalization, which obscures how theoretically inclined ethnographers make implicit external validity claims. I analyze several exemplary ethnographies to show that (a) the distinction between theoretically and empirically oriented ethnography revolves around competing conventions for making claims that others accept as provisionally externally valid, (b) comparative-historical sociology provides a framework for evaluating how theoretically oriented ethnographies make such claims, and (c) each approach to making validity claims is optimized by different kinds of cases. Empirically oriented ethnographies make inductive claims via “pointy” cases wherein a phenomenon is pronounced or bifurcated. Theoretically oriented ethnographers are like post–Millian historical sociologist who triangulate past studies with resolutive or negative cases to make constitutive arguments.