The Use of Primaries by Political Parties: The Case of PASOK - A Comment

This paper comments on Professor Papanikos’ recent publication in this journal entitled, “The Use of Primaries by Political Parties: The Case of PASOK”. I make a number of observations regarding the argument of the author that primary elections are an application of democracy in the internal procedures of a political party. The question raised is whether primaries enhance democracy, or restrict it, by diminishing the role of party members only in selecting party representatives and have no role in the discussion of policies. Another important issue is the age structure of the participants in the primary elections. Did it matter? More analysis and evidence is needed on this issue to find out whether the relatively younger candidate mobilized more young members and friends to participate in the primary elections of PASOK. Keywords: primaries, elections, voting, political parties, PASOK, Greece

8. The European Commission:

Focusing on the services and the cabinets, this chapter analyses the European Commission as a complex organizational, political, and social institution. Organizationally, it describes the Commission as a unique international bureaucracy which puts its French administrative tradition, consensus-based, and law-heavy internal procedures under the growing influence of an Anglo-American style of management. Politically, the chapter shows that the Commission increasingly behaves like a political executive that seeks to establish its own legitimacy vis-à-vis public opinion and member states by addressing partisan dynamics in the European Parliament. In terms of social relations, the chapter draws from the author’s ethnographic work to explore the transnational life of Commission civil servants and cabinet staffers who have made the Berlaymont their home.

Is the (Mass) Party Really Over? The Case of the Dutch Forum for Democracy

Over the past decades, the Netherlands has witnessed the rise of several influential populist radical right parties, including the Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn), Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) and, more recently, the Forum for Democracy (Forum voor Democratie [FvD]). By analyzing the party’s organizational structures, this article seeks to determine whether the FvD may be considered a new “mass party” and to what extent ordinary members can exert influence over the party’s internal procedures. The party’s efforts to establish a large membership base suggest that the FvD set out to build a relatively complex mass organization. Through targeted advertising campaigns, the party made strategic use of social media platforms to rally support. Thus, while the means may have changed with the advent of the internet, the FvD invested in creating some organizational features that are commonly associated with the “mass party” model. At the same time, however, the party did not really seek to foster a community of loyal partisan activists among its membership base but instead treated its members as donors. The party is clearly characterized by centralized leadership in the sense that the party’s spearhead, Thierry Baudet, maintains full control over key decision-making areas such as ideological direction, campaigning, and internal procedures. At first sight, the party appears to have departed from Wilders’s leader-centered party model. However, a closer look at the party apparatus demonstrates that the FvD is, in fact, very hierarchical, suggesting that the party’s internal democracy is much weaker than the party’s name might suggest.

The Underestimated Value of Internal Marketing: Impact on Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction through Organisational Restructure

<p>Internal Marketing, a long-debated concept amongst academics and practitioners, is suggested to be a competitive advantage to organisations that utilise its practices. Often dismissed as merely selling the marketing of a product or service to employees within an organisation, Internal Marketing encompasses a combination of the key elements of communication, training, and feedback in order to create motivated, customer-orientated employees. Through employees and managers working together towards a well communicated organisational cause of Internal Marketing, internal procedures can evolve to better service and satisfy customers. Organisational restructures are an ongoing concern as technological advances, value-adding business process, and globalisation change the way that businesses run and operate. In order to save on costs of operations, employment, and office rental space, downsizing an organisation may initially present itself as a cost-saving practice. Often unconsidered are the front-line customer-facing employees and customers of an organisation. Employees may feel distraught and concerned about losing their job, or having to find a new job, which may affect customer service, and subsequently customers may face the brunt of the domino effect, either intentionally or unintentionally, due to employees’ emotional disconnection from the organisation. This research is an exploratory study into Internal Marketing, specifically around an organisational restructure, to better understand its impact on employees and customers through different stages of a restructure. Through the use of online surveys, participants were asked to recall an organisational restructure they were involved in within the last five years. They were asked to report their perceptions of Internal Marketing, their own satisfaction with their job at the time, and their perceptions of Customer Satisfaction throughout different stages of the organisational restructure. The analysis found that Internal Marketing does have a significant positive relationship with Employee Satisfaction both during and after an organisational restructure. Although no significant relationship was found between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction at any stage of the restructure, there is a trend within the data suggesting that the relationship may be stronger before and after an organisational restructure. Benefits and contribution of this research for academics include development of a conceptual model, as well as the benefits and effects of Internal Marketing, and extending the existing literature. For practitioners, benefits include insights into better understanding of the role of Internal Marketing. Specifically, the differences in perception of the practice between employees and managers, and why it is important to understand and address Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction during an organisational restructure.</p>

The Underestimated Value of Internal Marketing: Impact on Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction through Organisational Restructure

<p>Internal Marketing, a long-debated concept amongst academics and practitioners, is suggested to be a competitive advantage to organisations that utilise its practices. Often dismissed as merely selling the marketing of a product or service to employees within an organisation, Internal Marketing encompasses a combination of the key elements of communication, training, and feedback in order to create motivated, customer-orientated employees. Through employees and managers working together towards a well communicated organisational cause of Internal Marketing, internal procedures can evolve to better service and satisfy customers. Organisational restructures are an ongoing concern as technological advances, value-adding business process, and globalisation change the way that businesses run and operate. In order to save on costs of operations, employment, and office rental space, downsizing an organisation may initially present itself as a cost-saving practice. Often unconsidered are the front-line customer-facing employees and customers of an organisation. Employees may feel distraught and concerned about losing their job, or having to find a new job, which may affect customer service, and subsequently customers may face the brunt of the domino effect, either intentionally or unintentionally, due to employees’ emotional disconnection from the organisation. This research is an exploratory study into Internal Marketing, specifically around an organisational restructure, to better understand its impact on employees and customers through different stages of a restructure. Through the use of online surveys, participants were asked to recall an organisational restructure they were involved in within the last five years. They were asked to report their perceptions of Internal Marketing, their own satisfaction with their job at the time, and their perceptions of Customer Satisfaction throughout different stages of the organisational restructure. The analysis found that Internal Marketing does have a significant positive relationship with Employee Satisfaction both during and after an organisational restructure. Although no significant relationship was found between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction at any stage of the restructure, there is a trend within the data suggesting that the relationship may be stronger before and after an organisational restructure. Benefits and contribution of this research for academics include development of a conceptual model, as well as the benefits and effects of Internal Marketing, and extending the existing literature. For practitioners, benefits include insights into better understanding of the role of Internal Marketing. Specifically, the differences in perception of the practice between employees and managers, and why it is important to understand and address Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction during an organisational restructure.</p>

Relations of COVID-19 and the Risk Management Framework

The routine approach used in risk management is based on the scheme that within the prevention period an organisation or a state prepares for the expected risks and once the risks occur, resources and internal procedures are implemented to mitigate their negative consequences. The objective of the paper is to analyse risk management and its constraints, its application in COVID-19 period and based on it provide mitigating strategies for specific problems/risks related to COVID-19. The research methods related to the topics are: (a) study of books, newspapers and other internet resources and (b) interviews with COVID-19 managers at district and regional level in the north of Slovakia. The proposals for mitigation strategies are based on the basic assumption relevant for COVID-19 that there are risks with unknown probability and unknown consequences. Therefore, the mitigation strategies are adapted to the current situation, which includes lack of data and know-how, lack of experience, political and economic unrest and social problems. The impact of constraints is based on an ad-hoc or unplanned and clearly structured approach. Problems and risks are identified and mitigation strategies are proposed. The proposed measures (quantitative/qualitative) should be evaluated and via benchmarking the development and efficiency of applied measures monitored and assessed. The output of identified risk-known and –unknown creates a framework for implementation.

AUDITORIA INTERNA DE ESTOQUE COMO FERRAMENTA NA PREVENÇÃO DE FRAUDES E DESVIOS DE MATÉRIA-PRIMA

Internal audit is of utmost importance to organizations, playing a key role in decision making. The purpose of this article was to analyze the importance of internal auditing as a tool to prevent fraud and diversion of raw materials in a multinational. The company studied is dedicated to the purchase and grinding of grains. In order to do so, a case study was carried out, performing an analysis of the internal procedures of the company studied and a real audit during the two-year period of the company's operations. The data were collected through observations, interviews and documents made available by the company. The techniques used for data analysis were descriptive and documentary analyzes. This study reveals the importance of internal auditing, since it has tools that allow the identification and resolution of problems and risks of fraud and diversion through control, analysis and advice that meet the needs of an.

Decentralize Your Dollars: Incorporating Participatory Grant Making into Resource Allocation Decisions

Participatory grant making is a concept that can support decentralized decision making, shared power, and racial equity in Extension programming. The underlying philosophy of participatory grant making is to empower individuals and communities with flexibility and support to make collective decisions about financial resources. In this article, we draw on our experiences and provide concrete examples to demonstrate the power of this model for improving Extension programming and internal procedures. We conclude that the concept could be adapted for an array of financial decision-making settings to help Extension stay relevant and rooted in the communities we serve.

Traceability to ensure food safety and consumer protection as typified by case studies of three meat processing plants

Ensuring food safety is a legal obligation of the manufacturer or of the entity that places the product on sale. Traceability is one of the tools that are used to ensure food safety. It allows the withdrawal of a dangerous or non-compliant product from the market and determines the source of a threat. The aim of the study was to compare the functioning and effectiveness of traceability systems in selected approved meat industry plants. The system functioning in a large meat processing plant, in which the circulation of documents was implemented in a computer system, was compared with two smaller ones, in which paper documentation was carried out, but supported by a computer system. In these plants, the traceability system was based on internal procedures. Properly developed traceability procedures and simulations support and enable response in a crisis. Computer systems streamline and facilitate the traceability process. However, the comparative analysis showed that the use of paper records allowed for efficient identification of the source of the threat. The possibility of performing product traceability was confirmed in these plants. Internal markings and codes and documentation flow, staff training, and awareness proved helpful.

Archives and the Atlantic Pact: how the NATO Archives preserves and protects the records of an Alliance*

In 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrated 70 years of consultation, consensus and conflict prevention. The same year also marked 20 years since NATO first opened access to its archives to the public. The establishment of the NATO Archives in 1999 was hailed by then Secretary General Javier Solana as an important signal of the Alliance’s commitment to transparency and openness. NATO declassified and publicly disclosed thousands of documents and opened a dedicated Reading Room at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Behind the scenes, the establishment of the NATO Archives and of the Archives Committee also changed the way in which NATO managed its historical records. Up to this point, there was no NATO-wide policy on archives, no organizational archives and no consistency in any of the traditional archival functions. Starting in 1999, NATO could boast a professional archives programme, implemented by trained archivists and governed by a committee of national experts. The programme can claim a string of successes over the last 20 years, implementing archival strategy in novel and unique ways to respond to NATO’s organizational structure. While the Archives are part of NATO’s political headquarters, NATO itself is composed of multiple formal entities under the overall direction of the North Atlantic Council and the Military Committee, including military commands, civilian agencies, military operations etc. Before 1999, each managed their archival material locally, according to internal procedures. This article outlines the Archives’ strategic policies and its governance, involving national experts of all its 30 member nations; presents its increasingly larger and more robust acquisition programme based on a strong and actively managed retention and disposition strategy; assesses its digital preservation activities; and provides an update on NATO’s declassification and public disclosure programme.